His employer, AboutWeb, has just released the second in a series of podcasts. This second one talks about SAM, Simon's "Sensible Assembly Methodology". I'm looking forward to listening to it (as soon as I get caught up on my podcast backlog!).

He also said on blog today (July 7, 2006) that "I plan to have the first round of SAM documentation done and available within the next several weeks - probably before the end of the month".

For a bit of fun, I thought I'd search his blog for mentions of his methodology and see just how long he's been promising us the SAM documentation. So here, for some Friday fluff entertainment, are quotes from Simon's blog over the last year:

January 13, 2006: "The methodology I use, which I promise you'll all be able to read very soon".

December 24, 2005: "I have begun documenting the methodology that I use for developing applications and do promise to make that available very soon".

November 1, 2005: "I will begin the documentation of my methodology sometime in the next couple of days".

October 20, 2005: "I will begin documenting the methodology I use for planning and developing software with CF".

October 1, 2005: "I will officially be releasing my methodology, most likely I'll make the files and documentation available off of horwith.com, possibly on aboutweb.com as well".

September 26, 2005: "the book I've mentioned from time to time over the past year, which is still in the works, will be a definitive guide to my methodology".

September 21, 2005: "So far I still feel this way and I plan to do just that (document and release my methodology) sometime after MAX".

August 12, 2005: "I will document and develop a better alternative! I already have a methodology I use and it does include certain files I've written".

Treating each app as its own beast seems really inefficient. For the most part, MVC web apps are pretty cookie cutter, once you have your domain model in place.

The tag-as-a-controller seems a bit out dated and it seems that the model isn't portable to other frameworks or presentation technologies. I suspect his models may even suffer from a high degree of coupling because of this. Even if Simon is reluctant to call his approach a framework, it sounds like patterns are being mimicked or loosely applied.

Granted, this is just an opinion I have after listening to Simon talk about SAM, but at this point I don't find this approach very attractive and I would be very reluctant to use it.

And that's just it. Removing the opinions surrounding this is a crucial step to our understanding it. I guess once it is released, or if he has a sample app up, it would be a pretty straightforward analysis to see where patterns are being implemented and actually audit the domain model for low coupling and high cohesiveness. Whether this is a sound design approach or not will be clear.

:)

Will

1. I never intended this to be something I documented and released, so I'm trying to make sure that what I release is useful and not too vague (it is a methodology, after all)

2. I've been busy doing.... ummm, what's the word? Oh yeah - making money and stuff ;)

You're right, I do make it easy - and if somebody has got to be the target, I'm glad I can serve some use. Releasing documentation will only make it that much easier, I'm sure....