Welcome to the fortieth issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, dedicated to the subject of Skeuomorphism. In this edition, Adrian calls for no more flat user interfaces, Graham argues that skeuomorphism is a necessity, and in the Library section, Adrian reviews "Designing Interfaces" by Jenifer Tidwell.
-
-
We Cannot Afford To Live Without It
Skeuomorph is a word with two Greek bits in. “Morph” we see all the time, and it means “shape”. “Skeuo” means “tool”. So the word means “tool-shape”, but tools are not themselves considered skeuomorphic. An object is skeuomorphic, or has skeuomorphic features, if it has stylistic or design components reminiscent of an earlier necessity.
-
Methodologies: The Next Two Decades
Let me start by getting something off my chest that has been annoying me this whole millennium. Methodology is the study of method. The process you use to develop software, and the practices embedded in that process, constitute a method. The understanding of how that process results in working software, in customer value, in arguments between business analysts and QAs, and in the modification of that process to yield different outcomes, that is a methodology.
-
The Three Amigos, Among Others
This month, the methodology issue, is a good opportunity to take a look across a whole swathe of my bookshelf and deal with it all at once. The important point to bear in mind is that methodology is about the approach you take to building software. That means how you decide what to build, plan it out, design it, implement it, test it, deploy it, document it, and manage (and even pay for) all of that. The 1990s was the decade when object-oriented techniques hit the mainstream: it was also the time of the methodology wars.
