Recycled Bullsh-IT

One thing I love about the IT industry is the endless ways in which we chase the next big thing, hype it up, and then dump it unceremoniously when something shinier and newer comes along. Well, it’s kept me in beer tokens for over 30 years so I shouldn’t complain.  But I will poke fun at the more absurd manifestations of this craze.

Complicated

Let’s pick one of the current trendoids – composable. This is described as: “providing components that can be selected and assembled in various combinations to satisfy specific user requirements”. Sounds useful. Wouldn’t it be good if we could build new IT systems by mixing and matching existing parts? And then when we’ve finished with that system, break it down and reuse it for even more future apps. What a great idea!

Call Me

Of course, it was also a great idea when subroutines were invented in the 1940s to reuse code that was frequently needed for repeated operation. And when code libraries were first used in the 1960s to put frequently used standard code in a shared library that many programs could use. Oh, also when Object-Oriented Programming kicked off in the 1970s. Then .DLLS in the 1980s on Windows.

So(A) You Win Again

We come to the early 2000s, and Service Oriented Architecture. Other than OO (which has been blowing hot and cold ever since), SOA was probably the first majorly hysterical reuse religion declaring itself to be the unquestionable future saviour of IT. Having been a high priest in the SOA sect at the time, the messages we had will ring true to the current composable cultists.

Here’s a typical definition of the services in SOA:

• It logically represents a repeatable business activity with a specified outcome
• It is self-contained
• It is a black box for its consumers, meaning the consumer does not have to be aware of the service’s inner workings
• It may be composed of other services

Look familiar to those of you grappling with Web 2.0/3.0, Internet of Things, Micro-services, containers, XaaS, etc? What a surprise.

Losing My Religion

I reckon all the SOA spiritualists have taken their sacred SOA scriptures and reinvented themselves as Composable clerics having changed “SOA” to “Composable” using Find/Replace in their consecrated codexes.

Like before, the new religion of Composable doesn’t limit itself to code; it has designs on Infrastructure, Enterprises, Commerce, etc., too. I suspect that, like their well-meaning but ultimately unsuccessful SOA ancestors, they will repeat all the same mistakes, over-reach the effective use of the concept, and be traded in for a renamed replacement in ten years or so.  Also, we still need interoperability…

As another example of reuse, I first copied the tree swing cartoon at the top of this article onto an acetate for an OHP presentation on the benefits of agile in 1984. It is still being used, slightly tarted up, to illustrate articles on composable systems.

Who said reuse was dead?

John ‘Strike A (com)Pose” Moe