5 ms·
As soon as you've got a few hundred small pieces interoperating, you're not talking about something small any more.
by jameshart 11y ago
As soon as you've got a few hundred small pieces interoperating, you're not talking about something small any more.
- jacquesm 11y agoThat's true, but if you architect it well you should still be able to have an overview with every program as a functional block and inside the programs the scope should be limited enough that they are easy to understand. It's all a matter of balance. Good examples of such systems: message switches, telephone installations, routers, large scale web applications and so on. These are all very suitable to such decomposition into communicating processes.
- pron 11y ago> These are all very suitable to such decomposition into communicating processes. That doesn't make them cheap to build; only possible.
- jacquesm 11y agoBetter expensive than not for sale.
- pron 11y agoSure, but I think the author's point about "diseconomy" of scale still stands even when the large system is composed of small parts (and pretty much all large software systems in at least the last 20 years have been composed of small parts).
- jacquesm 11y agoYou could make the exact same claim about any bespoke piece of technology. What does it cost to make one new car? one aircraft? one piece of electronics? one moon rocket? one satellite? It's all economies of scale that come into play as soon as you can ramp up the volume. And that's where software wins hands down, in spite of all the up-front costs.
- pron 11y agoI think that all the author was trying to say is that the cost of a single software system grows super-linearly with its size.