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Worst-of-Breed

Stefan Tilkov,

Definition: Worst-of-breed |wərst əv brēd|; composite noun: a strategy mixing a set of approaches, technologies or solutions so that the disadvantages add up to a disastrous combination no single item would have been able to create.

Example: Java + XML configuration files, which combines the verbosity and pain of having to create lots of meaningless code typical for statically typed programming languages with the runtime error probability of dynamic languages due to small typos, sometimes adding up to a solution that looks like an obfuscated programming contest application.

On June 14, 2005 1:57 AM, Hendrik Schreiber said:

I agree, Java plus XML configuration files isn’t always pretty. But what’s the alternative? Properties files? They’re not really any better… And don’t you suggest SQL databases… ;-)

On June 14, 2005 10:35 AM, Stefan Tilkov said:

No, I would not consider property files or a SQL DB an alternative — rather, I think it’s inevitable that we’ll move to other programming languages in the long run.