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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

#31

Post by StreamBright »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #17
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…

Out of curiosity what kind of projects are that small? I guess I have hobby projects that are that small, but all my professional work is large, enterprise systems that wouldn't fit in 10 files if they tried. Makes sense when things are so small to only use what you need. Sounds like you made a reasonable decision for the kinds of things you work on. But when you get past a certain size actual architecture becomes ve…

Not OP but couldn't you split up you project to smaller projects?

>> But when you get past a certain size actual architecture becomes very beneficial.

This article and only rejects the convoluted architecture approach with design patterns and suggests that you can come up with your own design without using these. It is not arguing that there is no need for architecture at all.

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

#32

Post by moksly »

The value of Enterprise Architecture doesn’t come in to play until you’re an actual Enterprise.

We operate more than 300 IT systems, from a myriad of different and switching (courtesy of procurement) suppliers. These systems are operated by 5000-7000 employees, and range from making sure employees get paid and patients get the right medicine to simple time booking apps. Most of these systems need to work together, and almost all of them need access to things like employee data.

Before we had a national strategy for enterprise architecture, which defines a standard model for organisation data, all of those 300 IT systems did it their own way and most of them actually thought we liked that so they came with no APIs. Imagine having to manually handle 5000-7000 users in 300 different IT systems...

That’s the world without Enterprise Architecture, and we’re still paying billions in taxpayer money to try and amend it. Because you don’t move 300 IT systems, some of them running on COBOL on mainframes, over night. And that’s just our municipality, there are 97 others with the exact same problems.

Don’t get me wrong, I get the sentiment of the article and I actually agree with most of it. The thing is though, developers have very different opinions about what “simple design” is, I know, because I’ve build a lot of the gaffa-tape that integrates our 300 IT systems and not a single system has had remotely similar APIs.

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

#33

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

tarsinge wrote: post #25
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In theory, I agree with you, but in practice, I rarely see under-engineered code that is functional in style. My conjecture is that people under-engineering aren't even aware of the concepts of imperative vs. functional style.

The more we can think of code as existing in a sandbox that knows nothing about the surrounding system it's in, the better. Because when you need to change that code, you don't need to juggle comprehension of the rest of the system as you edit that code. It makes reasoning about the code much simpler. This is why I agree -- code can be pragmatic and functional.

But if you tend to practice having code existing in little sandboxes, you are essentially practicing design. This might be semantics, but now you have sub-systems with well-defined borders that interact with other sub-systems in proscribed, expected ways. I would consider that, to some degree, the application of design patterns and architectural concepts -- even if it's only the inevitable consequence of writing pragmatic, functional code.

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

#34

Post by hdfbdtbcdg »

rumanator wrote: post #15

I have a hard time understanding the author's point of not using UML but somehow boasting that they used "plain old boxes and arrows" to create "plenty of diagrams". UML is nothing more than a bunch of "plain old boxes and diagrams", but which have concrete, objective meaning that has been specified and thus help share ideas as objectively as possible. UML is a language, and languages are tools to communicate and sha…

This reminds me of the framework va libraries argument or ORM vs raw SQL. Yes frameworks and ORMs can be constraining and limit clever solutions. But when you need to add complex features to a complex project you are always glad that every other programmer that came before you was constrained and that things use a familiar pattern.

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

#35

Post by StreamBright »

jacquesm wrote: post #28
StreamBright wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Totally. For me just AbstractUserGeneratorFactory does not make sense.

You can have a look here to get examples:

https://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/3.0.x/javadoc-api/allclas...

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

#36

Post by galaxyLogic »

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…

>started getting cute with it and applied all kinds of design patterns

Even though there are books about design patterns, taking such a book and trying to "apply" its patterns is a bit backwards I think. The idea of patterns is they describe commonly useful solutions, not designs you "should" use.

Once you started to code in "pragmatic, minimalistic way" I assume you found you could apply the same solutions you had found earlier in new contexts. Those are your own design patterns. That is how design patterns work, some patterns of design "emerge", because they are the optimal solutions.

A Design Pattern should be minimalistic, it should only do what is needed, not anything more. It should only solve its problem in optimal, minimal way. But if the problem it is solving is not your problem, you should not use it.

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

#37

Post by enriquto »

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…

> 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.

What's cute about this madness? There's nothing uglier than that! Simple code is cute. The simpler, the cuter.

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

#38

Post by vemv »

jacquesm wrote: post #21
vemv wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Probably I agree with you.

I was mostly pointing out the weak writing: over and madness are always sub-optimal, for all values of x and y.

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

#39

Post by blub »

Interesting that this mentions Uber.

The way I understand it, in automotive companies have to prove that they carefully designed their systems based on the appropriate standards and they have to have the documentation to prove it in case there's a complaint from customers. A simple document won't cut it.

Then there's Uber, which is mentioned by the author and which killed a person through their gross negligence and then got away with it scot-free. I wonder how good their payment systems really are.

Can anyone from Uber comment whether sometimes they get a little bit less money or duplicate payments? Do transfers still work in conditions of poor visibility?

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

#40

Post by a_imho »

Engineers at higher levels, like staff engineers, are expected to still regularly code.

As they should. The non coding software developer is one of my pet peeves, call it architect if you want. I can appreciate the idea of collecting a paycheck producing wiki entries, drawing diagrams and making slideshows, but they are no substitute for leading by example. In fact, my empirical finding is that the tendency to describe software in prose is usually inversely correlated with the technical ability to create the executable.

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