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Comment by sadness2 | Hacker News Reader

For an opposing perspective, I cite this article, entitled Process first, not data first

https://scalablenotions.wordpress.com/2015/09/30/process-fir...

I can tell you process first thinking is hugely important in large business because there is usually already a process and it is incredibly costly in terms of political capital and job security to deviate from a long existing enterprise process.

In a large business, `process first thinking` is based on the credential(evidence). This credential is data.

Credentials (data) flow through the nodes in the process to form a dataflow.

Every node in the process is a pipe-function (pure function).

This is [The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow).

Thanks for sharing this classical perspective. When I'm kicking off a system for a complex organisation, I start by focusing on what processes/changes occur in the organisation. I find that users can intuitively reason about what they are trying to get done, which leads to clear pipe-functions, from which one can infer and discover correct inputs and outputs. If you begin with a focus on inputs/outputs/data structures, you tend to end up with a lot of disagreement and omissions. The idea is to get to a more suitable Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow sooner.

In large enterprises and legal societies, procedural justice pays more attention to the traces of procedures on data (auditable evidence)，So the input and output data is the most important.

Addition， I agree with the following view:

```

Even the simplest procedural logic is hard for humans to verify, but quite complex data structures are fairly easy to model and reason about. ... Data is more tractable than program logic. It follows that where you see a choice between complexity in data structures and complexity in code, choose the former. More: in evolving a design, you should actively seek ways to shift complexity from code to data.

   ---- Eric Steven Raymond, The Art of Unix Programming, Basics of the Unix Philosophy

Show me your flow charts and conceal your (data) tables and I shall continue to be mystified, show me your (data) tables and I won’t usually need your flow charts; they’ll be obvious.

    ---- an early edition of The Mythical Man-Month

```

Awesome article, thanks for sharing.

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