Scaffolding – The Future of Software Development

As science and technology evolve, new features are compounded upon old features like building blocks. Most people agree that in this linear fashion you can’t get to point ‘C’ without starting at point ‘A’. But should you really have to start from point ‘A’ every single time?

Let’s talk math for a bit. Don’t worry, you don’t actually have to solve anything. Take this equation: ∫6x = 3×2 + c. Since we’re taking the integral of 6x, this is labelled as Integral Calculus. According to Kahn Academy, one of the leading sites for learning mathematics, before learning Integral Calculus, you should know Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Probability and Statistics, Pre-calculus and Differential Calculus (in roughly that order). It would be insane to do an exercise in all of those every single time you had to do an integration problem. But in software development, that’s exactly what we do.

If you’re a software developer, you’re probably thinking I’m crazy, but hear me out. One more hypothetical scenario: let’s look at what it would take to make an Android app. First, we need to design the login page. Well, that’s got to be easy, since all login pages look pretty much the same, except some mild theme rolling. So we put up fields for username and password, then buttons for submission, registration, and password retrieval. We’ll take care of login itself first, so we write a method to encrypt the password to SHA-256 before submitting it to our server. That’s when you find out that newer versions of Android can’t do network calls on the UI thread, and you scream out in frustration, “Why am I making something as mundane as a login screen? People have done this a thousand times, this is ridiculous!”

Think about how many applications haven’t been made because the tasks leading up to it were too complicated, took too long, or were just too boring. As software grows and requires more boilerplate code, the effort of a developer grows greatly – and this is just to ensure a sturdy foundation. Thankfully, there’s an answer – scaffolding.

Scaffolding, in the software development sense, is the technique of generating a generic application with features common to most modern applications already built-in. A decent scaffold would include, for instance: login and registration pages, server connections, routing, model templates, controllers, security mechanisms. By using a scaffold, you can cut days, if not weeks, off of your development time – and we’re just getting started.

So, how can you start scaffolding your next application? Well, luckily, Yeoman makes that part super easy. The downside – Yeoman is geared primarily toward web development with NodeJS. Why aren’t there really scaffolds for mobile or desktop applications? The only real answer is because nobody’s created it yet. Keep an eye out, though; the market is prime for a major scaffolding company any day now.

– Christopher Johnson