At QCon San Francisco 2008, I went to a session with Eric Evans about working in the Core Domain. It was one of the best software talks I have ever heard, and I am looking forward to InfoQ posting the video so I can share it with a number of friends in the industry.
He basically said to be sure and contribute where it matters, don’t spend your career cleaning up after hackers, allow consequences to happen, the core domain is where the value is, and rewriting legacy systems is generally not a good thing (unless they are just too expensive to operate).
Another interesting thing he pointed out is that his writing on ubiquitous language is about a team, not about an entire organization. He stated that single monolithic models do not work and differences are ok. Groups just have to agree on how to translate things that are shared…
The most interesting point to me is the idea of allowing consequences to happen. I find that most software developers are passionate (including myself). It is hard for us to allow bad things to happen when we can see them coming a long way off, but I think Mr. Evans’ advice is dead on here. We have to do our best to make recommendations in hopes that our organizations will avoid costly mistakes, but as my boss tells me often ‘we cannot save them from themselves.’
So, here is to focusing on the core domain, and making ourselves as valuable as possible…
