Ex Plication

Pattern name

Explication(see the alternative, Abstraction).

Problem

How do we deal with a situation or object which has too much detail to comprehend or be useful?

Solution

Make all the detail visible at once. Get a big table or a blank wall and put everything you know up there at once. Use PostIts? (or IndexCards with spray adhesive). Write one detail on each card. Spatially sort the details every which way you can think of (what are some of the sorts?)

Comment

When the problem is that everybody sees the trees but not the forest, AbStraction is a good solution. Programmers jump to abstraction because it is the most powerful tool in our thinking toolkit. Often, though, AbStraction obscures the real problem, because not enough is yet known.

I wonder. "We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world." ZenAndTheArtOfMotorcycleMaintenance --- MartineDevos