30 Years of Interfaces – Why We Keep Making the Same Mistakes
by Thilo Frotscher
They say that everything comes back in fashion. Perhaps this is because there are only a limited number of different solutions for certain creative tasks. Trousers are either tight or wide. Or something in between.
What does that have to do with interfaces? It’s very similar there! There are always supposedly new technological trends: CORBA, SOAP, REST, APIs… But if you’ve been around for a while, you quickly realise that these approaches are not so fundamentally different. The challenges of system integration remain the same – and we keep falling into the same traps.
Why do we always seem to stumble across the same problems despite decades of technical experience? Do we not learn from the past? Instead of being dazzled by new terms, we should understand and apply the basic principles.
Will we be able to draw the right conclusions from this knowledge for future tasks – or will it all just be a fashionable déjà vu?