Separation of Concerns
The predictions that spooked Britain and America into lockdown have two months on taken a hammering.
Whilst there remains widespread support for seeing out the coronavirus on the loose by staying mainly indoors throughout England right now, voices are rising to suggest there could have been another way.
One withering assessment of the stay-at-home-ignoring ‘professor pantsdown’ doing the sums – ultimately relieved of his crystal ball glazing role – states, Neil Ferguson’s Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time.
The accusations include; written in wildly out of date programming language, leading to a buggy mess, and way too many lines of code.
One example cited reveals 15,000 lines in a single file alone. Where there ought be only 500. Rendering conflicting results a cert and “fundamentally unreliable”. Incapable of giving the same answer twice when re-fed identical parameters.
Criticism alleges that a flagstone principal is absent. Namely the Separation of Concerns. Which guards against the horrors of CACE. Standing for, Changing Anything Changes Everything.
They further assert that anyone neglecting such central tenet nowadays would pretty quickly end up fired. And if ever getting to launch, any company relying on such shaky foundation would end up bust.
Is there a selling parallel?
If so, then how about to mistakenly rely on a sole contact prospectside.
Writing all your fifteen thousand lines of code for their needs would be to put in hours of calls, prep and documentation only for their eyes and no-one else’s.
No matter how tight you may feel you are together, where lies scope beyond them to scupper your plans?
Are you seriously covering each buying component when isolating focus to just a person alone.
There’s also the spectre of assumptions pushing out different results when seen through the lens of alternative eyes.
What compelling reason for progressing can find itself dismissed as anywhere from inconsequential to inaccurate when on the desk of another?
Or thirdly, can you truly afford to leave aside the modularity of your campaign? Where such tactics as rank- or level-selling unleash vital benefits. Such as from having peers, subject area experts and functional specialists pair up to actively talk in depth and achieve agreement with their counterparts.