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Ask HN: CS papers for software architecture and design?

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Re: Ask HN: CS papers for software architecture and design?

#61

Post by gobengo »

Maro wrote: post #44

I used to be very interested in Software Architecture, in fact I've read many of the papers cited here. When I did a startup many years ago, I committed the mistake of paying too much attention to the architecture of the software [1] I was writing, and not enough attention to the product/customer side of it. The last couple of years I've been de-emphasizing software architecture as an interest, and have been paying m…

> I think good software engineers are just as much product guys (and data guys) as they are software guys.

ya often times they are women too

Re: Ask HN: CS papers for software architecture and design?

#62

Post by wwosik »

gobengo wrote: post #61
Maro wrote: post #44

I used to be very interested in Software Architecture, in fact I've read many of the papers cited here. When I did a startup many years ago, I committed the mistake of paying too much attention to the architecture of the software [1] I was writing, and not enough attention to the product/customer side of it. The last couple of years I've been de-emphasizing software architecture as an interest, and have been paying m…

> I think good software engineers are just as much product guys (and data guys) as they are software guys. ya often times they are women too

pretty sure 'guy' in modern American English is gender- and age-less. As in two 70 old ladies could be addressed as "you guys" too. Surprised me a lot when I was there

Re: Ask HN: CS papers for software architecture and design?

#64

Post by lachenmayer »

Not sure it says a lot about 'architecture', but in terms of 'design', Daniel Jackson's "Rethinking Software Design" has been an absolute eye-opener: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNe6g0qczxE

The premise of the talk is that while software engineering goals & processes are well-defined and well-understood, the same does not apply for software design. He sets up a framework of 'purposes' and 'concepts', which in an ideal design should be a 1:1 mapping. He points out many examples of 'design smells', where this 1:1 mapping is violated, for whatever reason (engineering reasons, product management failures, etc.)

Definitely useful not just to developers, but anyone involved in writing software/affected by the process of writing software.

Re: Ask HN: CS papers for software architecture and design?

#66

Post by seanmcdirmid »

wwosik wrote: post #62
gobengo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think good software engineers are just as much product guys (and data guys) as they are software guys. ya often times they are women too

pretty sure 'guy' in modern American English is gender- and age-less. As in two 70 old ladies could be addressed as "you guys" too. Surprised me a lot when I was there

It depends on what region you are in. Guy in the UK I think means male as in Guy Fawkes. In the USA, Guy is often genderless except in the south where gal can be used without being very awkward. In general, you should just steer clear of the word, however, as opinions about it are diverse.

Re: Ask HN: CS papers for software architecture and design?

#67

Post by cpeterso »

Eric Evans' "Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software" book is long and pretty dry, but it's immediately practical and opened my mind to how object-oriented design is supposed to work.

https://amzn.com/0321125215

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design

Re: Ask HN: CS papers for software architecture and design?

#68

Post by westurner »

"The Architecture of Open Source Applications" Volumes I & II http://aosabook.org/en/

"Manifesto for Agile Software Development" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development#The...

"Catalog of Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture" https://martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/

Fowler > Publications ("Refactoring ",) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Fowler#Publications

"Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" (GoF book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns

.

UNIX Philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy

Plan 9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs

## Distributed Systems

CORBA > Problems and Criticism (monolithic standards, oversimplification,): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Object_Request_Broker_A...

Bulk Synchronous Parallel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulk_synchronous_parallel

Paxos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos_(computer_science)

Raft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_(computer_science) #Safety

CAP theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem

Re: Ask HN: CS papers for software architecture and design?

#69

Post by darethas »

cpeterso wrote: post #67

Eric Evans' "Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software" book is long and pretty dry, but it's immediately practical and opened my mind to how object-oriented design is supposed to work. https://amzn.com/0321125215 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design

Is there a world of software architecture that exists outside the "OOP" patterns we have seen in the last 2 decades? A quarter of the way through my career and I have already grown weary of OOP. It's promises are never realized. It is full of zealots who can argue with you for ages but don't deliver very much on real world, performant software.

Re: Ask HN: CS papers for software architecture and design?

#70

Post by quotemstr »

Maro wrote: post #54
thewarrior wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on the insights you gained ? At least on a high level . It would help a lot of people here .

I think most of the things people know, it's covered in books like Lean Startup, etc. It's a bit like eating well and working out. We all know we should do it, but most people don't actually eat well and work out. Then, when you see somebody who does it and looks great, you ask them, "What's your secret?". But it's not a secret, it's just that most people don't do it, because it's hard :) One story: When I was at FB,…

> When I was at FB, I happen to know that a team of size S conducted X experiments in 6 months (I can't disclose the number). As it happens, I have worked in similar size teams in other companies, and there the number was ~X/20, and sometimes 0. It don't matter how good your software architecture is, if you're trying out just 1 thing instead of 20 things... I call this velocity.

Exactly! FB has the most productivity per developer of any company I've seen, and this efficiency is a direct result of management systematically lowering barriers to writing code and investing in developer productivity tools. Other companies have elaborate rules and procedure and committees and style guides built around stopping code. Facebook encourages writing code.

(And before you say: no, the codebase doesn't take a quality hit. Turns out that this ceremony around writing code is just unnecessary, contrary to population opinion.)

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