Module Dependencies

I was reminded recently of a domain model I used to work with that did not separate interfaces from their implementations. They never considered dependencies to be an issue because javac could compile the entire source tree at once.

When I came on board, their product was nearing it's first release and their domain model's class dependency chart looked like a bowl of spaghetti. Eventually the lack of dependency management become apparent: each team was developing at a different pace, but everyone was forced into monolithic releases.

Much of the circular dependencies were addressed by introducing interfaces or abstract classes. However, the process was slow and full of challenges. Hibernate only supports a single inheritance model, but with so many different perspectives such a restriction proved very limiting.

Many of these problems could have been avoided had more thought gone into the the conceptual class hierarchy earlier and distinct modules been created to force developers into observing and thinking about class dependencies early in the development cycle.