Re: It might be time for a refactor when...

Von meinem iPhone gesendet

Am 24.07.2024 um 03:39 schrieb Raul Alberto Jager Weiler <raul.jager@xxxxxxxxx>:

It is not directly related, but when you go to a stateless interface you
also split the programs, for example, a CUD will have one program to
create, another to update, one for delete, and usually a search program.
Each program small, fast, easy to maintain.
A web form can hold a lot of data, so you do not need more than one screen
for each transaction.

I really don't want to go further down that rabbit hole, but this is by far the least "transactional process" I can imagine.

I know of some transactions (real DB transactions) that spread over several views (forms) and even include several service programs (providing the "heavy lifting business logic") until a last confirmation does the commit.

And of course - you can handle this all in a stateless / web interface - but at which "cost"?

One have to store a lot of information, which might be sensitive (like payroll), in a browser without a chance of securing it. Or you have to build server side caches which hold that information over a period of time, with all that clean up overhead.

One has also to do data validation in a toy-like language, which is quite famous not always handling data types in a meaningful manner (JavaScript has its own "1 + 1 = 11" memes).

And at last - after you collected and stored your information, and validated it, you have to do the transaction in a single step - means, that you have to re-validate everything again - every value, and every state of information that you displayed - and if one step fails, you can't do your transaction.

The problem with web interfaces is that a lot of programmers don't know anything else. And if the only tool you have is a hammer - every problem looks just like a nail. Yeah - it can be done - but that doesn't mean, that it's always done in the most efficient way.

Thanks for that discussion - is hasn't a lot to do with refactoring, but it was fun.

Kind regards,
Daniel