Benefits of the “Convention over Configuration” paradigm

Question

What are the benefits of the "Convention over Configuration" paradigm in web development? And are there cases where sticking with it don't make sense?

Thanks

Answer 1

Convention states that 90% of the time it will be a certain way. When you deviate from that convention then you can make changes...versus forcing each and every user to understand each and every configuration parameter. The idea is that if you need it to differ you will search it out at that point in time versus trying to wrap your head around all the configuration parameters when it often times has no real value.

IMHO it always makes sense. Making convention the priority over explicit configuration is ideal. Again if someone has a concern, they will force themselves to investigate the need.

Answer 2

I think the benefit is simple: No configuration necessary. You don't need to define locations for this-or-that type of resource, for example, for the app/framework to find them itself.

As for cases where it does not make sense: any situation where it will be fairly frequent that alternative configurations would be required, or where it makes sense that a developer/admin would need to 'opt-in' to some behavior explicitly (for example, to prevent unintended and unexpected side-effects that could have security implications).

Answer 3

The benefit of convention over configuration paradigm in web development the productivity since you won't be required to configured to set all the rules and there are less decision that a programmer has to make. This is evident when using the .NET Framework.

Answer 4

The most obvious benefit is that you will have to write lesser code. Let's take case of Java Persistence API. When you define a POJO having attributes and corresponding setters/getters, it's a simple class. But the moment you annotate it with @javax.persistence.Entity it becomes an entity object (table) which can get persisted in DB. Now this was achieved by just a simple annotation, no other config file.

Another plus point is, all your logic is at one place and in one language (i.e. you get rid of separate xml).

Answer 5

I think this wikipedia article has explained it very well:

Convention over configuration (also known as coding by convention) is a software design paradigm used by software frameworks that attempts to decrease the number of decisions that a developer using the framework is required to make without necessarily losing flexibility. The concept was introduced by David Heinemeier Hansson to describe the philosophy of the Ruby on Rails web framework, but is related to earlier ideas like the concept of "sensible defaults" and the principle of least astonishment in user interface design.

The phrase essentially means a developer only needs to specify unconventional aspects of the application. For example, if there is a class Sales in the model, the corresponding table in the database is called "sales" by default. It is only if one deviates from this convention, such as the table "product sales", that one needs to write code regarding these names.

When the convention implemented by the tool matches the desired behavior, it behaves as expected without having to write configuration files. Only when the desired behavior deviates from the implemented convention is explicit configuration required.