Chapter 2: Modeling the Real World

Overview

“I want to write a program. It’s gonna be a good program. Big, too. Lots of good stuff. So here we go, start coding.”

Let’s hope that if you’re reading this book, you’ve progressed beyond that mindset. A long time ago a friend of mine referred to how, when we’re just learning to program, we usually decide at some point that we’re going to write a “really big program.” And we dive in coding, and eventually the thing just falls apart, probably sooner than later.

And yet, even though when many professional programmers who try to write a “big program” use all the correct engineering approaches, they still fail in other areas. These areas are:

• Usability design (what some of the gurus simply call design)

• Correct use of modeling

Much of this book in your hand focuses on usability design. But this chapter focuses on modeling. By modeling, I mean taking something in the real world (such as a paper-based accounting system or perhaps an airplane cockpit) and writing software that represents this real-world thing. And that’s where people usually go wrong: When they build software to model the real world, they try to make it completely duplicate the real world.