Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated
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Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated
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Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated
#2This resonates very well with my experiences throughout my career.
The best design experiences from an at-the-time and with hindsight typically result in a collaborative document with a clear narrative structure explaining most importantly what and why as well as how (and as the article mentions, the trade offs involved) such that even junior engineers and potentially even non-technical contributors can understand what we're doing and why.
Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated
#3A programmer, engineer, creative and product developers job is to create simplicity from complexity.
The job is to tame complexity via simplicity, not make a complex beast that needs more taming.
Sometimes engineers take something simple and make it more complex which is against simplifying either due to bad abstractions or proprietary reasons or obfuscation for job security or to ego flex. Anyone can make something more complex, making something simple and standard takes lots of work and iterations.
Nature is built with simple iterative parts that look complex in whole, systems that work well mimic that. Math is built with simple parts that leads to amazingly complex and beautiful things. Art is built with simple marks to create something complex and beautiful. Humans as well, and they desire simplicity so they can do more and build on that.
Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated
#4A programmer, engineer, creative and product developers job is to create simplicity from complexity. The job is to tame complexity via simplicity, not make a complex beast that needs more taming. Sometimes engineers take something simple and make it more complex which is against simplifying either due to bad abstractions or proprietary reasons or obfuscation for job security or to ego flex. Anyone can make something…
I'd make a slight caveat with this. The our job is to make something that is as close as possible to the complexity of the problem. You don't want to make it more complex for obvious reasons. However, you also don't want to make it less complex, because then you are removing fidelity. Let me aim a slightly playful jab at the GNOME people for "simplifying" by removing features that I actually need. Only slightly playful as it's the reason I had to give up GNOME. ;-)
Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated
#5First 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 the idea. It got to a point coding now felt like a burden and I started getting allergic reaction to any projects that had more than 50 files.
Next 4-5 years, I made it a mission to only code in a pragmatic, minimalistic way. Best decision I ever made, this have been the most productive time of my career. I don’t look back and never going back again. A simple require and requireAll with basic OOP is all I need on most cases. Most of my project now have less than 10 “core” files minus the standard views/routes/etc. I enjoy just working on code now it makes me happy and also any devs who joins loves it too as they get it right away. I code almost exclusively in Sinatra now btw. Express is great too but I think the ecosystem isn’t there yet for developer happiness.
Keeping code simple is not easy. It takes a lot of trials and errors to know what works and what doesn’t. I realize I code a lot slower now than in the past and that I write much fewer lines of code. It’s both good and bad because sometimes I’d even spend hours just trying to properly name a variable. But I believe this pays off at the end.
You just can’t best simplicity.
Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated
#6Boils down to this:
"So what is the role of architecture patterns? I see them similarly in usefulness as coding design patterns. They can give you ideas on how to improve your code or architecture."
The whole idea of patterns is to identify often useful, and possibly non-obvious, ideas to be aware of when designing the solution. It's great to start simple, but tricky to make things both simple and robust/powerful - and that's what patterns are supposed to help with. This ends with:
"Software architecture best practices, enterprise architecture patterns, and formalized ways to describe systems are all tools that are useful to know of and might come in handy one day. But when designing systems, start simple and stay as simple as you can. Try to avoid the complexity that more complex architecture and formal tools inherently introduce."
What this misses that if you start simple and stay as simple as you can, you may undershoot and be stuck refactoring code down the line; a fine balance is needed, and patterns are definitely part of a toolset that a good engineer should be aware of when trying to nail that balance.
Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated
#7Uber 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 together, and the compliance team and auditors are going to throw a fit.
That's when all those architecture processes, repository tools and languages suddenly make a lot more sense. Uber deals with extremely sensitive personal information, and the move towards self-driving cars means they deal with highly safely sensitive systems. The dismissive attitude towards these tools in what should be a highly disciplined engineering organisation disturbs me, but I come from a highly regulated environment so perhaps I was just raised that way.
Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated
#8Sounds great for a tech company with highly skilled engineers. They can afford the type of talent who will be thinking thoughtfully and have the time to do so. Startups seem to attract similar talent, and when not, don't always have the same problems anyway.
But what about the companies that can't afford the best engineers and don't have the bottom up culture? What about the companies that hire overseas IT agencies who do exactly what they're told and no more (it's safer that way when communication and timezones are working against you)?
I've worked in companies both the former and the latter. I've seen the top down "architect" role work better in the latter.
The author even seems to admit this, although briefly:
> To be fair, these same companies often want to optimize for developers to be more as exchangeable resources, allowing them to re-allocate people to work on a different project, on short notice. It should be no surprise that different tools work better in different environments.
This best summarizes it. Different approaches work better in different scenarios. That's really what the title and article should be about.
Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated
#9First 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 (think mix of survey monkey/qualtrics) and that is probably over 100 files. But the codebase is straightforward and simple (no complicated inheritance, one tree data structure for pathing, lots of code reuse)...
Re: Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated
#10Boils down to this: "So what is the role of architecture patterns? I see them similarly in usefulness as coding design patterns. They can give you ideas on how to improve your code or architecture." The whole idea of patterns is to identify often useful, and possibly non-obvious, ideas to be aware of when designing the solution. It's great to start simple, but tricky to make things both simple and robust/powerful - a…
I really agree about undershooting. I like to try and overshoot by about 15%.
It's definitely a big mistake to overshoot by say 50 or 100 or 200%. But overshooting by just a little often leaves me feeling like "thank God I did that" more often than it does "hmm I guess I really didn't need that".
Balance is absolutely key.