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BOTTOMSUP

                                                         Early 90s
                                                    Add: August 10, 2010

So I guess I'm arguing
for Bottom Up approaches       NELSON
to life here.

The arguments against
this are legion among        Or they were, back in the
computer science types.      "structured programming" days...

They pay lip service to
Nelson's idea of software
design: have one person      But this method has met with
figure it all out, and       limited sucess for Nelson, if
let some team of flunky      only because the flunkies have    And there's a
programmers code it up.      a habit of losing interest, or    newer school of
                             missing the point.                thought about
But more than this:                                            "agile" dev
you can get lost in                                            practices that
abstractions this                                              argues being
way.  And waste a                                              quite this
lot of time                                                    rigid.
thinking about
things that can't         (I doubt that this is                AGILE
really be done            Nelson's problem.)
practically.

Working bottom up makes it
more likely your
intermediate results will
be worth something.
Possibly you can sell them,
or use them as demos, and
finance the whole project
this way.  Or if you're
interrupted, maybe you'll       (This may very well be one
have a partial solution to      of Ted Nelson's problems.)
your problems that you can
live with.

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