Presentation Patterns (part 1)

Tom Quinn — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:04:28 GMT

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Over the coming weeks I am going to be preparing a course covering presentation patterns for staff at iMeta. This started out known as a course for MVC and all its incarnations. I feel that presentation patterns is a better description for what this course is going to provide, after all that is what it will really be about.

MVC (model-view-controller) has become something of an umbrella term, used to 'define' a whole plethora of different presentation approaches. Some people refer to something being MVC when in fact it is MVP. I have known people refer to something as MVC when in fact it was a Front Controller. Sometimes something is referred to as MVC only for it be discovered as, well, frankly, who knows!

There are some important points which are worth making at this juncture:

As far as MVC goes there is a very well defined and understood definition of what MVC actually is and where it has come from.
The raison d`être for MVC (Separation of Concerns) is very much the same as for the majority of other presentation patterns, as always the devil is in the detail.

Now for some people Shakespeare was bang on the money when he penned the phrase at the top of this article. And sure as far as concrete things, for example a rose, are concerned he was dead right. What does the name matter, it is the substance of a thing that really counts.

However, referring to something as MVC when in fact what was meant is Supervising Controller is just plain bad. The minute the term is used a mental picture is formed that supplies a great deal of context for any conversation going forward. If you start out with the wrong mental picture, you are going to get in a mess real quickly!

So while the solution under discussion is meeting a need that can be approached with one of a multitude patterns, the subtlety of the approach taken can be lost. The incorrect use of terminology will add to your woes!

The course I am developing intends to highlight these subtleties and, thereby, ensure that attendees will be on sure ground when discussing presentation patterns.

Over the coming weeks, as the course develops, I shall continue this series with posts covering the content of the course.

Next time...... I will talk about the 'strict' definition of MVC and provide a little history.