On Wed, 21 Apr 2010, Greg Brown wrote:
I am also not a fan of MVC frameworks for GUI applications.
Basically, I think their fundamental premise (that MVC is a valid
approach to global application design) is crap, but I'll save it for
another time or never.
I used to agree with this, but now I see some value in the concept of a
macro-level MVC design. I don't know that using a framework is
necessarily the right way to accomplish it, but I do think the design
pattern is valid. I also think it works well with the load/store model,
since load()/store() is basically a higher-level get/set, and the event
support can be provided by Pivot's new pub/sub messaging API.
I have no beef with macro components, as long as they're well-encapsulated
with well-defined, minimal interfaces.
On the other hand, I've seen designs where basically all of the high-level
state is stored on a single class. Major yuck-o. I've seen "model"
classes that are on the order of hundreds or thousands of lines of code.
Then there are the global event dispatchers that everything is tied to.
Kinda makes it hard to understand a class's interface and behavior when
it's calling back to global objects.
When every object is tied back to some application global data-structure
or other object somewhere on high (usually through a reference to a static
variable or method), I get nervous. It looks fragile.
I gave a 20 minute preso on my thoughts on rich GUI application design
earlier this year to my local flex user group. You might take a look if
you feel like it. It's small. It's on my home page:
https://www.allman.ms/
Ciao,
Michael
