Design

[larry@VLSI.JPL.NASA.GOV]

--
A discussion of whether top-down or bottom-up design is better is ridiculous. 
It's like arguing over whether hands or feet are better.  Each have different
but complementary uses.  The person who can (or chooses) to use only one of
them is handicapped. 

It's equally ridiculous to effuse over how wonderful object-oriented design is,
or rail against it.  Like every other tool, OOD is has uses and drawbacks.

Similarly, CoBOL is an excellent language for the limited domain it was
designed for: complex I/O formats, simple numeric processing, and simple
programming logic.  For many years 95% of all business problems could be
handled well with CoBOL.  The problems came when CoBOL (or ForTran, or
whatever) programmers began to attempt to use their tools for problems outside
their useful domain.  Hammers are poor tools for digging ditches.

The common theme in each of the three above areas is that the participants show
no idea of what trade-offs are and how to use them.  "Trading off" is a core
concept in engineering, one that should be alloyed with every idea and
technique the SW professional possesses.  If not, they aren't engineers but
only technicians. 
                              Larry @ vlsi.jpl.nasa.gov