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


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