Episode 2: the Controller Strikes Back

This post should have been about power law distribution of class / method sizes, organic growth of software and living organisms, Alexandrian level of scales, and a few more things.

Then the unthinkable happened. Somebody actually came up with a comment to Life without a controller, case 1, said my design was crappy and proposed an alternative based on a centralized, monolithic approach, claiming miraculous properties. I couldn’t just sit here and do nothing.

Besides, I wrote that post in a very busy week, leaving a few issues unexplored, and this is a good chance to get back to them.

I suggest that you go read the whole thing, as it’s quite interesting, and adds the necessary context to the following. Then please come back for the bloodshed. (Note: the original link is broken, as the file was removed; the "whole thing" link now points to a copy hosted on my website).

The short version
If you’re the TL;DR kind and don’t want to read Zibibbo’s post and my answer, here is the short version:
A caveman is talking to an architect.
Caveman: I don’t really like the architecture of your house.
Architect: why?

Life without a controller, case 1

In my most popular post ever, I argued (quoting Alan Kay and Peter Coad along the way) that classes ending in –er (like the infamous Controller, Manager, etc) are usually an indication that our software is not really OO (built from cooperating objects), but still based on the centralized style of procedural programming.

That post was very well received, with a few exceptions. One of the critics said something like “I’ll keep calling my controllers controllers, and my presenters presenters”. This is fine, of course. If you have a controller, why not calling it “controller”? Or, as Shakespeare said, a controller by any other name would smell as bad :-) . The entire idea was to get rid of controllers, not changing their name!

Now, getting rid of controllers is damn hard in 2012. Almost every UI framework is based on some variation of MVC. Most server-side web-app frameworks are based on MVC as well. Proposing to drop the controller would be just as useful as proposing that we drop html and javascript and start using something serious to write web apps :-).

Still, I can’t really sit here and do nothing while innocent objects get slaughtered, so I decided to write a few posts on living without a controller. I’ll start far away from UI, to avoid rocking the boat. I’ll move closer in some future post.