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Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

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Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated

#21

Post by jacquesm »

vemv wrote: post #19
jacquesm wrote: post #16

Clear and simple design is optimal software architecture. Oversimplification and architecture madness are sub-optimal.

> Oversimplification and architecture madness are sub-optimal. Let me point out, you are essentially saying "bad things are bad" here.

That doesn't seem to stop people from building systems in exactly those two ways. Yes, bad things are bad. Now stop doing bad things, it would make my professional life a lot easier.

Cobbled together Filemaker pro software running major factories; a million lines of code and 40 people to solve a problem that would take 3 people and 10% of the LOC if properly architected, and so on.

Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated

#22

Post by dgellow »

jaequery wrote: post #5

First 1-3 years of coding, I just coded to get sht done. I got a lot of sht done. Next 4-8 years, I started getting cute with it and applied all kinds of design patterns, Factory, Abstractions, DI, Facade, Singleton you name it. It looked cute and felt good when it all worked but it was a juggling act. There was usually like 2-3 files to touch just to do one thing. UserFactory, UserService, UserModel, User, you get t…

What about tests? In my experience simple code without abstractions often becomes a pain to write tests for. For example that’s one of the main reason I see to use some form of Dependency Injection and other indirections, even if in practice you have only two implementation of each dependencies (once in your tests, once the real one).

Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated

#23

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

winrid wrote: post #9
jaequery wrote: post #5

First 1-3 years of coding, I just coded to get sht done. I got a lot of sht done. Next 4-8 years, I started getting cute with it and applied all kinds of design patterns, Factory, Abstractions, DI, Facade, Singleton you name it. It looked cute and felt good when it all worked but it was a juggling act. There was usually like 2-3 files to touch just to do one thing. UserFactory, UserService, UserModel, User, you get t…

You can break things up without overdesign right? I think you should do what is easiest most of the time. However, that is hard to measure. Easiest now, or when you need to finish this and move onto the next thing without spending two more sprints fixing bugs? I prefer small/reasonably sized components because I can easily cover them in unit tests and sleep easier at night. I built a survey builder at one company (th…

Breaking things up is, by definition, design. Having meaningfully enforced boundaries between subsystems, that collectively add up to forming one larger project, is applying the concept of design.

Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated

#24

Post by StreamBright »

jaequery wrote: post #5

First 1-3 years of coding, I just coded to get sht done. I got a lot of sht done. Next 4-8 years, I started getting cute with it and applied all kinds of design patterns, Factory, Abstractions, DI, Facade, Singleton you name it. It looked cute and felt good when it all worked but it was a juggling act. There was usually like 2-3 files to touch just to do one thing. UserFactory, UserService, UserModel, User, you get t…

Exactly. I never got into OOP design patterns and my co-workers could not convince me this is a good idea. I thought for a while that I am crazy but then I got to know Erlang and Clojure. Joe and Rich set me straight on software design.

>> Keeping code simple is not easy. It takes a lot of trials and errors to know what works and what doesn’t.

Refactoring helps. I usually achieve 20-40% reduction with the first refactoring.

Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated

#25

Post by tarsinge »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #18
jaequery wrote: post #5

First 1-3 years of coding, I just coded to get sht done. I got a lot of sht done. Next 4-8 years, I started getting cute with it and applied all kinds of design patterns, Factory, Abstractions, DI, Facade, Singleton you name it. It looked cute and felt good when it all worked but it was a juggling act. There was usually like 2-3 files to touch just to do one thing. UserFactory, UserService, UserModel, User, you get t…

Over my career, I've worked with engineers that like to over-engineer and under-engineer. The over-engineered code looked like russian dolls: had many layers to it, and some of the abstractions offered no value. That can make onboarding to such code unnecessarily complex. On the other hand, under-engineered code made very little of use of even simple data structures or algorithms. I like to call it "chicken scratch"…

I think you can under engineer and still use a pragmatic functional style.

Also yes when it’s under engineered you usually have to touch multiple parts to make a change, but in the end it usually take less time (testing for bugs included since the code is simpler).

Edit: I don’t say under engineering is perfect, but compared to an over engineered code base I prefer the first for maintainability.

Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated

#26

Post by vemv »

> No mentions of microservices, serverless architecture, application boundaries, event-driven architecture, and the lot.

I see why one would want to escape the mindless name-dropping that can be prevalent elsewhere, but at the same time, things have a name/fame for a reason.

There is pragmatic value in studying patterns (especially from good sources), and citing them in your internal documents so everyone is on the same page.

Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated

#27

Post by perlgeek »

Despite the provocative title, the author argues for software architecture, just doing it in a manner that suits the organizational culture.

He somewhat decries traditional software architecture material, which I find off-putting. IMHO the best approach is to be aware of the techniques/patterns/references architectures, and use just the parts that make sense.

Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated

#28

Post by jacquesm »

StreamBright wrote: post #24
jaequery wrote: post #5

First 1-3 years of coding, I just coded to get sht done. I got a lot of sht done. Next 4-8 years, I started getting cute with it and applied all kinds of design patterns, Factory, Abstractions, DI, Facade, Singleton you name it. It looked cute and felt good when it all worked but it was a juggling act. There was usually like 2-3 files to touch just to do one thing. UserFactory, UserService, UserModel, User, you get t…

Exactly. I never got into OOP design patterns and my co-workers could not convince me this is a good idea. I thought for a while that I am crazy but then I got to know Erlang and Clojure. Joe and Rich set me straight on software design. >> Keeping code simple is not easy. It takes a lot of trials and errors to know what works and what doesn’t. Refactoring helps. I usually achieve 20-40% reduction with the first refac…

Even OOP has its place. I once wrote a simulation of a physical system with a lot of moving parts and OOP made the problem tractable and the code readable and maintainable. I don't think any other style of coding would have had such an enlightening effect on that particular problem.

Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated

#29

Post by lmm »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #23
winrid wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can break things up without overdesign right? I think you should do what is easiest most of the time. However, that is hard to measure. Easiest now, or when you need to finish this and move onto the next thing without spending two more sprints fixing bugs? I prefer small/reasonably sized components because I can easily cover them in unit tests and sleep easier at night. I built a survey builder at one company (th…

Breaking things up is, by definition, design. Having meaningfully enforced boundaries between subsystems, that collectively add up to forming one larger project, is applying the concept of design.

You can define it that way, but in that case my position would be: devoting time and effort to design leads to worse design than not doing so.

Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated

#30

Post by hdfbdtbcdg »

_pmf_ wrote: post #11
ryanjshaw wrote: post #7

Uber is barely 10 years old. They can get away with this. Wait until it's 2 or 3 times that age, and its (present or future) regulators sign new laws into place that require massive changes or reporting feeds across multiple systems engineered and documented in this unprincipled fashion. Probably after a couple more privacy breaches or self-murdering car incidents. Nobody will be able to figure out how it all fits to…

> the compliance team and auditors are going to throw a fit. I've never seen an auditor give a shit either way. They're just box ticking robots.

And if they can't tick the box? You fail the audit...
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