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Andy Brummer wrote: Ha, the app I work on has over 70 javascript files.
Sorry for your luck. 
Once you lose your pride the rest is easy.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes
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Super Lloyd wrote: I guess I am looking for a nice repartee to use in the conversation.
How about:
"You're welcome to explain to the CEO why your approach is 10 times more costly than my approach, and which is probably technically unachievable in the technology you're suggesting. You might be able to keep your job if you offer to the CEO a pay cut in order to cover for my additional time."
Marc
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Haha, nice one Marc! 
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Super Lloyd wrote: [Edit3] To give you an illustration, some people were confused when I started to use lambda expression... (or maybe generic?) (I think I started to get a bad rep for over engineering when I was using these strange things)
I feel for you. We had dork who learned to code 10 years before and that was the only technology he was comfortable with. He still wanted to use ODBC and hated stored procedures.
Needless to say we didn't get on very well.
Super Lloyd wrote: [EDIT2] I guess I am looking for a nice repartee to use in the conversation.
I once had a discussion (I use the term lightly) with this dork.
Him - Blah, blah, blah.
Me - I disagree because ...
Him - Blah. blah, blah.
Me - I disagree because ...
Him - Blah, blah, blah.
Me - I would agree with you about that but then we both would be wrong.
Him - Storming out of the room saying I strongly disagree.
Me and everyone in the room laughing.
Once you lose your pride the rest is easy.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes
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JimmyRopes wrote: once had a discussion (I use the term lightly) with this dork.
Him - Blah, blah, blah.
Me - I disagree because ...
Him - Blah. blah, blah.
Me - I disagree because ...
Him - Blah, blah, blah.
Me - I would agree with you about that but then we both would be wrong.
Him - Storming out of the room saying I strongly disagree.
Me and everyone in the room laughing.
Well, at least you got the move! 
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JimmyRopes wrote: Me - I would agree with you about that but then we both would be wrong.
 That's a keeper 
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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It stopped this guy in his tracks which was quite an accomplishment considering the size of his ego.
Once you lose your pride the rest is easy.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes
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Allow me to explain, THE PERCEPTION PROBLEM, which has to do with the SIZE OF A PROJECT.
Back around 2000 - 2001 I worked with 3 other programmers who were Visual Basic 4.x,5.x,6.x devs.
VB didn't support true OOP principles.
Well, along came ASP.NET and we had a project which required a navbar which would allow the user to nav back and forth through the numerous forms so a user could enter his/her data in a structured way. This nav bar would also have the ability to put the form into edit mode -- when the user first viewed it the page was in read-only mode.
Roots of the Perception Problem
At first the project was small and the user was only going to have to navigate about 4 pages.
So those VB Devs said, okay, we just generate some HTML which we copy/paste to the top of every page.
No big deal.
I said, "Terrible idea. it'll break and drive you crazy. ASP.Net lets you turn that navbar into a control so you can write the code one time.
"Uh, our way is easier," they said. "I mean, hey, we copy and then we paste."
I went ahead and implemented mhy navbar as a UserCtrl and placed it on the few pages I had to develop. It worked well and when there was a problem I went to the NavBar class files and fixed the code.
Scope Creep: The Monster
Meanwhile, the project grew -- major scope creep -- because the users wanted more forms.
Now those guys were copy/pasting to something like 30 pages.
The navigation had to know which page was next, so they had these hard-coded values which indicated the next page and if there was a next page and all that. So they are typing these values in to these pages.
The Deployment Explosion
They finally deployed the beta to the internal users and it blew up every time they clicked the navbar to set edit mode or go to the next page. It got lost in the form flow. Total failure and the internal users think our group is filled with idiots -- kind of was.
The Big Fix - One OOP Control
The Project Manager came back completely dejected. I said, "Hey, I can put my control on there and those pages will work in a couple of hours."
"Sure, right. Go ahead and try it," they said.
Ripped their confusing copy/paste navbar out, replaced it with the UserCtrl and tweaked a few things and it worked great.
Summary of Problem
They probably could've gotten away with copy/past development if it had only been three pages, but as soon as there were more pages it became expoenentially more difficult to fix their problems because they had to go to every aspx and edit the nav code on their page. Crazy. Insanity.
Mine took a bit more work up front, but then you could go to one place (UserCtrl) and enhance or fix it any time.
That is the power of true OOP. TRUE OOP with TRUE OOD.
The Difference Is In The Disciplines
It is interesting because those VB Devs learned to code by typing. Type, see if it works.
I believe in that method for learning, but for designing, it is a terrible way to create code. These guys were really just advanced scripters -- even though a couple of them had MS certs. Ugh!
I on the other hand, started out learning C++ and OOP. I always questioned what the point of OOP really is. Why OOP?
Why? Why would we do things that way? I can write 2 lines of code that do that thing. Why OOP? Why?
Large Projects
Because for larger projects things need to be organized and OOD/OOP are really a way of organizing things so that when they get so complex that you can still manage them.
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newton.saber wrote: So those VB Devs said
Therein lies the problem.
Once you lose your pride the rest is easy.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes
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Yep, you know them (vb devs)... 
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Great example; thanks for sharing!
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I like kissing, but I digress.
 (with the tongue!!! OH_WAIT not KSS)
I'd rather be phishing!
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"KISS" is in the eye of the beholder.
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
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KISS is not a bad concept in itself, at all.
Problem is that morons often erect it to a dogma to hide their own limits.
Don't bother about them; anyway you have your boss' approval.
Courage!
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who separate humankind in two distinct categories, and those who don't.
"I have two hobbies: breasts." DSK
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Having been on both sides of this coin, I can sympathise with both parties.
I've introduced things like knockout and been met with resentment, but I've also been in the situation where devs have introduced stuff for no better reason than 'its new and interesting' or 'I've always done it like that'.
My advice, FWIW, is to follow these steps:
0. Be prepared to admit that you are wrong and they are right. Of course, it's not the case, but be prepared.
1. Put aside some time for you to train them in the things you want to use - with the caveat that this may be wasted time if you all decide not to use it.
2. Out aside some time for them to train you in their alternate techniques - with the same caveat.
3. All sit together and prepare a list of pros and cons for each.
4. Decide which has the better score in the pros vs cons lists
5. All agree on the outcome, be happy, and get on with it.
It helps if you have a relatively non-technical person involved in the process, as they can ask the dumb questions and make an independent assessment.
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Ho, I can see you are experienced with that kind of situation!
Well, I will certainly keep that in mind for next time!
At this time it is too late, there was no sensible discussion possible with the other party!
The most agreeing exchange I had was: ME: "let's refactor it together the way you like", them: "I have no time for that"...
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What I find more troubling is that you have a maintenance team and a new development team. Also, you aren't coordinating. Knockout is a big change. What kind of training have you done to make sure the entire team is up to speed with it?
When I made the choice to use angular, I went over all current major frameworks at the time and we debated the pros and cons before we all thought angular was a good choice. Then we built some prototypes with it just to make sure.
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Maybe I was cavalier indeed. I didn't like web development at all, kind of sad doing it. Then I discovered knockout and that I could make quite advanced web app with little effort. Then the customer wanted a new application and we had time to build a prototype. The customer loved my prototype a lot and were quite impressed with it!
But some developer hate the technology choice I made. Or the one I didn't make. As far as I can see I can only humanely do these kind of application with knockout or angular (or my own big library). But they hate either choices. And the customer really like my prototype!
So my choices was:
1. continue doing spaghetti giant jQeury even handling and DOM manipulation with primitive table CRUD operation
2. sell a (more pleasant to me and more user pleasing) new concept, which displease some other developer
I choose 2, maybe I should accept the consequences... but I am ... frustrated...
Isn't it part of developer job to keep with the time? Isn't that so much easier when handled a working code base on a platter (as opposed to have to implement it on your own)?!
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The problem isn't with the technology. Knockout is much better than hand rolled jQuery all over the place. It's with the communication and management of the team.
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So offer to do a training session, where you can show people how to use ko statements, and show them how much easier their lives will be with them.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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The PM suggested that... I dunno what kind of communication took place between the PM and them. Dunno what they make of this idea... 
I don't think that's going to be any relevant for them for a few more months.. (until we give them the application, which is not quite ready now, by a long shot...)
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I love the KISS (Keep it Stupid Simple) approach. I find that for each hour of new development, in the two years after that, it will generate at least another 8 hours of maintenance: changes, additions, optimization, troubleshooting and bug fixes.
Of course I don't know your case specific scenario, and replacing 20 lines with one line that can be much better and easier to maintain than the 20 lines.
But if you can fall on many aspects:
- Is it easy to understand for someone else than the author? (or even for yourself 3 months later?)
- does it require - yet another technology - that may disappear or get replaced by something better in 6 months? You don't want to get to a project that before someone can start to work on it they have to understand seven different components, techniques, conventions or technologies.
But then again, kiss is subjective.
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The thing is "simple" is relative. Depending on your skill level anything can be simple. Try and explain why it is more efficient and make sure that it is clear through the code what it actually does. The code has to be maintainable and work. That's it.
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I would suggest that you inform your maintenance team about the subtle but crucial difference between "simple" and "simplistic"
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There are no 20 lines of code that are simpler than 1 line of code (assume that it fits in 80 characters margin), unless 15 of those lines are comment. The idea of dynamic languages is the model, not the structure. If you want a structure, you can stick with java - there zero lines of actual code require at least 20 lines. In dynamic languages the complexity of the task/model (which should be understood if you try to understand the code) is directly related to how much lines you use - less lines = much simpler (but that does not apply to unformatted code).
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