Comments on: The usual result of Poor Man’s Dependency Injection

By: Chris Hance

Chris Hance — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:26:37 +0000

As has been mentioned elsewhere, legacy code. In my case, VB6 legacy code. Constructors? In my (to)day, we had to walk uphill both ways, and then set everything in properties. Class_Initialize is a decent enough place for the “default” behavior. Yes, I want to use anything else. We’re working on it. But we’re still adding features to a VB6 app in the meantime, and I don’t particularly like Forms Over Data. My early… well, earlier attempts became Big Ball of Mud.

By: jasonvanbrackel

jasonvanbrackel — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:37:06 +0000

IoC/DI are not that hard. In my previous job I was mentoring college interns in CS and BIS to do IoC with Windsor, and TDD with RhinoMocks. It’s not the difficulty of the technology, but the quality of your hires. There is a learning curve, but a properly motivated and incentivized junior workforce will climb that curve quickly.

By: chadmyers

chadmyers — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:47:48 +0000

@cbp:

So you’re content to allow low-end developers wallow in their ignorance? You admit IoC/DI is better, yet you say it’s too hard for the common developer.

Why not be part of the solution and help raise the bar? Of course it’ll be hard and trying, but that’s the price of advancement.

By: cbp

cbp — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 01:41:09 +0000

I have to respectfully disagree that it is easy to learn how to use StructureMap. I’m not certain what type of organisations you have experience with, but certainly the places that I have worked at would really struggle if a couple of developers were using StructureMap.

You must remember that the use of IoC containers generally comes at the end of a long line of OO concepts, many of which take years to learn, have only recently been popularised and are not taught in many undergraduate CS courses.

Whilst careful use of PMDI is not too scary, the use of IoC containers so drastically changes the way your code looks and feels, that it would be suicide for a senior developer to start using StructureMap when the rest of the developers on the team are still years behind.

Think about the progression of a dedicated Joe Developer working for a smallish company, in a small state capital in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, without the structured environment sometimes found in big American companies: 3 years CS course after which he can program in some basic fashion. 2 years in which he gains initial competence in a particular programming environment. 2 year to realise he is doing everything wrong and to start improving his unit testing, OO pattern chops, etc.. 1 year to realise he is still doing it all wrong. So at the bare minimum, we are seeing at least 5 years of quite dedicated post-college experience before someone can begin to handle something like StructureMap.

There are zillions of development teams around the world that have at most –one– developer on board who has been through this full progression. These teams are literally years away from being able to comfortably utilise a technology like StructureMap.

By: Eric Swann

Eric Swann — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:55:53 +0000

I’m with you on this one dude. Probably step 2 or 3 after creating a project for me now is to drop in a reference to one of the various IOC containers. I don’t even see the point of waiting. “Just do it”. There’s so many DI choices out there that make this so darn easy now.

By: Fabio Maulo

Fabio Maulo — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 04:59:48 +0000

Amen!!
Too many people are scared by “IoC” and “DI” words, without study what really are.
I can’t think in a modern application without, first, choose an IoC framework.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:13:09 +0000

” It’s just not that hard to get started with StructureMap.”

Its also just not that hard to move from PMDI to StructureMap.

Iv moved from PMDI to IoC before, I didn’t experience all that pain your talking about.

By: Justice~!

Justice~! — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:30:27 +0000

OH MY GOODNESS, I TOTALLY AGREE WITH CHAD MYERS.

Seriously I can’t tell you how much pain it saves me using DI/IOC like a real man rather than this wussy ass constructor based stuff. Often something I have to remind my team about.

By: chadmyers

chadmyers — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:10:25 +0000

@Kelly:

I just don’t buy the argument that PMDI is a lot easier. It’s just not that hard to get started with StructureMap, for example.

And the pain that you’ll inevitably experience with PMDI makes it not even worth doing in the beginning.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:58:02 +0000

@bogardj: Because its quick and easy. And yes thats what I said, its a great learning step.

@chadmyers: So now your saying “eventually you’re going to get to a point…”

Isn’t that exactly the point I was trying to make? like I said before, its a good starting point for beginners. PMDI buys you a lot (great for testability and sets the stage for IoC), and in the beginning, its very easy .

“At this point, PMDI breaks horribly and you start descending into the madness I describe in the post above.”

At that point you can choose to move over to an IoC. Iv done this, its not messy or difficult at all.

All I’m trying to say is that PMDI is a great way for people to get into DI and discover what it can do for you.