Is Quick And Dirty Good Enough?

The blogsphere is buzzing about quick and dirty software development. Coté points out the depressing state of affairs where "Nothing seems to matter more than delivering product as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible". On the contrary, Michael Feathers argues that the bar is higher now. But despite his high ideals, is it really necessary? Is quick and dirty just good enough?

In a parallel but related track, there are a whole bunch of arguments attempting to explain the paradox why PHP applications seem better than Java.

However, maybe Clay Shirky is right on the mark, when he writes:

Expectations of longevity, though, are the temporal version of scale -- we assume applications should work for long periods in part because it costs so much to create them. Once it's cheap and easy to throw together an application, though, that rationale weakens. Businesses routinely ask teams of well-paid people to put hundreds of hours of work creating a single PowerPoint deck that will be looked at in a single meeting. The idea that software should be built for many users, or last for many years, are cultural assumptions not required by the software itself.

Indeed, as a matter of effect, most software built for large numbers of users or designed to last indefinitely fails at both goals anyway. Situated software is a way of saying "Most software gets only a few users for a short period; why not take advantage of designing with that in mind?"

The collorary is that when its quick and easy to slap together applications then you'll find a lot of applications that are meant to be throw away last longer than one's expectations. Its time to acknowledge that PHP is in fact good enough for developing web applications. The question of whether the app you build will last for many years is usually a secondary concern. When the app is built with all the functionality ( absent the structure ) it becomes a no brainer for the stake holders (usually the users) to say "if it ain't broke, why fix it?".

The Java community urgently needs a platform for quicker and hopefully less dirty development, otherwise we just might be doomed to maintaining someone elses monstrosity. Hope that scares everyone into some real action!