26 September 2009 - 11:34When knowledge is a liability and not an asset

Typically knowledge is considered to be an asset, some going as far as saying that knowledge is power. Well, when you design interactions between systems is better to avoid systems know to much about each other. Having deep knowledge about a system with which you are integrating is both a moral hazard (it gives you the opportunity to hack your way out of problems) and creates high transaction/interaction costs (typically the costs of transferring this deep knowledge to someone else).
The same reasoning goes for interaction between modules in a single system, please check out this article

P.S. I was shocked to see the date on that article: 1971. The fact that we are still struggling with these problems shows a pretty big problem with computer science. Most people equate computer science with exotic algorithms, it would be about time to add to this equation software modelling. It is pathetic when useful concepts for writing software developed 30 years ago are still unknown to the typical developer.
Software development has a pretty big educational problem (most developers educate themselves on their own and learn on the job), it would not be a bad idea to address it.