Concepts & inspiration

Design notes

• Vieux is inspired by the life itself.
• We believe the terminology used in current UI solutions are bloated, confusing and ambiguous.
• We don't want to be regarded as aliens from outer space when we're talking about code.
• Developers matter. User experience of developers are extremely important; we're dealing with unfamiliar concepts (such as Models and ViewModels) for the most part of our daily lives.
• Wouldn't it be nice if you could tell your friends what you are actually doing, and they would actually understand?

Concepts

Bureaucracy

We use the term Bureaucracy instead of Architecture. In today's world, the name bureaucracy has a nasty connotation to it. It's regarded as something to be dreadful. In fact, it's just the people who get and employ bureaucracy wrong. Bureaucracy regulates the way different organizations in a state communicate and collaborate with each other. It's the malpractice that turns our lives into hell. Bureaucracy should actually be associated with "order", not "drudgery".

Think about it. State officials are malpractitioners when it comes to state bureaucracy and the state soon becomes an unmaintainable mess. Some software architects are malpractitioners when it comes to software architecture and the software soon becomes an unmaintainable mess.

Half-duplex information flow

Keeping complexity under control is the main challenge in solving problems of huge applications. Various architecture patterns try to solve this problem in differing ways. Most of the solutions, though, lack brevity. Usually, a given set of constructs communicate with each other in a complex maze, that results in an entangled web of relationships. "Who is listening to this event?" is a common problem that usually ends up with a Cmd+F search.

In Vieux, Bureaucracy is at your service.

In strict bureaucracies, every role is clearly defined, along with the communication channels and methodologies. This is what inspires Vieux. All the roles defined in Vieux have a single correspondent in their communication. This significantly simplifies thinking in terms of communication of elements.

Half-duplex means, there is only one-way communication at any given time. Think about the walkie-talkies. One party presses the button, talks, and releases the button. Only then the second party can do the same. This scheme is called half-duplex, i.e., only one party is active at any given time.

Have a look at the following diagram:

You can't just tiptoe around a role in this diagram. Bureaucracy doesn't allow you to do that. A Culture can only talk with its Representative. It can't go directly to the Regime, because, hey, there are no formal communication channels in between.