Greg Vaughn's Blog

Naked Objects Exposed

I think I now have a handle on what makes Naked Objects interesting. I had previously perused the site and came to the preliminary conclusion that it's just a generic UI framework. Last night at the DFWPP (Dallas-Ft.Worth Pragmatic Practitioners) meeting I got to hear Dave Thomas talk about Naked Objects (and believe me, it is a topic rich with double entendres). It helps me to think of Naked Objects in a parallel manner to TDD (Test Driven Development).

On the surface TDD looks like it is primarily a means of testing. The 'aha' moment happens when you invert your thinking. TDD is primarily a design tool, and secondarily a testing method. It ends up that testable code is more cohesive and loosely coupled, and that's the major benefit. My 'aha' moment with Naked Objects happened when I began to see it as primarily a design and requirements gathering tool, and secondarily a UI framework. Coding in Naked Objects style promotes minimal temporal coupling (the GUI is modeless), complete business rules in the business objects (none of it hanging in the GUI layer), and explicit relationships between business objects (so the GUI knows what can be dragged and dropped onto what).

So, just as TDD taught us that testable code is well designed code, so now Naked Objects are teaching us that naked (or maybe strippable?) code is well designed code. Also in a parallel vein, we know that the unit tests from TDD are rarely going to be a sufficient amount of testing, so also the GUI of Naked Objects is rarely going to be a sufficient GUI. Just as the more traditional functional, system, and user acceptance tests can be added to a TDD-built system, so too can a more traditional menued, or script-driven GUI be added to a Naked Objects-built system.

Dave will be giving that Naked Objects talk (and also one on Coupling! I warned you about the double entendres) at the Atlanta Java Software Symposium this coming weekend. Come if you can! <shameless-plug>You can even hear me speak on JMX, IO Performance Tuning, and Expressive Code there too.</shameless-plug>

Comments

• Software cults
  Oh, my... another software cult in the making...

  Some reading fro those long winter nights:

  "On the diffusion of Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language" into Software Architecture"
  -- Rohit Khare, April 19, 1995

  Posted by: zoe_info on October 22, 2003 at 06:40 PM

• Software cults
  If I'm understanding your point correctly, I do share your concern about cults. One might well grow up around Naked Objects. However, simply because some people may blindly advocate a particular approach, that doesn't mean that the approach is categorically useless. I don't believe Naked Objects are a silver bullet. We should evaluate it to determine when and why it is useful.

  When I have done TDD I found that it forced me to implement well known design principles. I knew them already, but had mosly just paid them lip service. The experience of having practiced them has improved my designs overall even when I'm not doing TDD. I don't expect anything more than something like this out of Naked Objects.

  Posted by: gvaughn on October 22, 2003 at 10:12 PM

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.