[openspending-dev] Modularisation

[Lucy Chambers]

Hi guys, My 2cts here:

We're not going to put effort into supporting deployments over the other
important work that we need to get done. Our priority at OpenSpending has
always been that a core database is the most powerful thing that
OpenSpending has to offer, we'd like to encourage people to put their data
into the main database. At the same time - people want something that looks
like they want it to, that they can customize etc, that is why satellite
sites are important.

Lisa and I sat down last week and drew up a list of questions that it is
possible to answer with Spending Data. The answers to these questions are
cool, but there aren't that many questions, so if we can expose a nice UI
to make them easier to answer, I think that is a huge win.

My belief (I am informed) that all of these are possible to answer with the
infrastructure that we have using the API - if we get to a stage where we
are needing to do cross-dataset analysis beyond the basic search function
(e.g. 25k and £500 spend) then we may need to reconsider, but I need
someone to come to me first with a concrete question that they would like
to try and answer and I'll be very willing to listen!

To be clear, I think OpenSpending's priorities right now are:

* Getting Spending Stories features shipped
* Getting a clear UX to reflect our priority that satellite sites are the
way to go
* Making the satellite sites as easy to create as possible - push and
encourage deployments of those. Building out the toolkit for these.

When Spending Stories is over in November. We can sit down and take another
look at this, I recognise that there are definitely plusses in this model,
but from what I understand, this refactor could take 2-3 months, and I'm
not sure we have that much time now!

Brutal and honest,

Lucy


On 11 March 2013 10:26, Tryggvi Björgvinsson
<tryggvi.bjorgvinsson at okfn.org>wrote:

> Þann sun 10.mar 2013 20:42, skrifaði Friedrich Lindenberg:
> > On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 8:47 PM, Martin Keegan <martin.keegan at okfn.org
> >wrote:
> >> The value of specialisation, and the interchangeability of parts, has
> >> > been understood since the writing of Adam Smith in the 18th century.
> >> >
> > I think we need to build on this link! Let's have a panel session with
> > Margaret Thatcher and Wolfgang Schäuble to discuss the applicability of
> the
> > CAP theorem to the European single market!
>
> Now that's not fair. Martin claimed that the understanding of this value
> has been understood since then and you respond with something like this.
>
> If you want something more relevant and recent I propose you look into
> the works of David Parnas, Alan Kay and Larry Constantine (to name a
> few). I wouldn't say their findings are detrimental to software
> development. I'd actually say that their findings improved software
> development.
>
> > All I'm saying is: are we doing this because we actually have some
> concrete
> > architectural issue that gets solved or because it turns on our inner
> geek?
>
> From my perspective the reason I want to look into this is because we
> have to maintain the code base.
>
> I understand that you don't want the software to have a good design
> because then we focus too much on design instead of doing. There is
> nobody proposing that we should halt all development until we've
> redesigned everything. I want to look into this as a long-term goal for
> the project, where developers keep an eye out for what can be made more
> modular.
>
> I would actually like to hear more from the community, especially those
> who actively develop (or want to help develop) OpenSpending.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> /Tryggvi
>
>
>
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