Web Applications - Spaghetti Code for the 21st Century

Author(s):
Tommi Mikkonen and Antero Taivalsaari
Report Number:	Date Published:	Available Formats:
TR-2007-166	June 2007	Portable Document Format (PDF) Request Hard Copy
Abstract
The software industry is currently in the middle of a paradigm shift. Applications are increasingly written for the World Wide Web rather than for any specific type of an operating system, computer or device. Unfortunately, the technologies used for web application development today violate well-known software engineering principles. Furthermore, they have reintroduced problems that had already been eliminated years ago in the aftermath of the �spaghetti code wars� of the 1970s. In this paper, we investigate web application development from the viewpoint of established software engineering principles. We argue that current web technologies are inadequate in supporting many of these principles. However, we also argue that there is no fundamental reason for web applications to be any worse than conventional applications in any of these areas. Rather, the current inadequacies are just an accidental consequence of the poor conceptual and technological foundation of the web development technologies today.

Web Applications - Spaghetti Code for the 21st Century