7 ms·

Systems design explains the world (2020)

193 points by craigkerstiens 4y ago

karmakaze 4y ago
> Back in university, students used to tease the Systems Design Engineers, calling it "boxes and arrows" engineering. Not real engineering, you see, since it didn't touch anything tangible, like buildings, motors, hydrochloric acid, or, uh, electrons. Hey, I resemble that remark! Quite true though. The common paths I saw was adding a specialization or continuing on getting an MBA for others.
- anonporridge 4y ago
  Even the nerds have an internal hierarchy where they tease the deeper nerds.
  - p0pcult 4y ago
    ...and the shallower nerds.
    - kimburgess 4y ago
      When working on any system: people who built the abstraction layer you're working with - enlightened geniuses; anyone using the abstraction layer you create - literal monkeys. It's a recursive relation that applies across full stack.
yamrzou 4y ago
Previously on HN: Systems design explains the world - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25552267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25552267 - Dec 2020 (155 comments)
kilgnad 4y ago
Seems like systems design is just studying a potpourri of engineering disciplines and the job entails stringing it all together the best that you can. Is there a formal theory about systems? I don't think so, and if there is, there's definitely no way to quantify if one system is "better" than another. Since no formal theory about the field exists.. every conjecture is just opinion. So someone working in systems design won't necessarily come up with a better "design" then some other person who doesn't specifically work in the field given that there's a lack of a formal theory to prove it either way. In software these guys who do "designs" are the system architects and I think the ridicule is justified given that anyone can do it. Category theory is the closest thing I've seen to a fundamental theory of design and I'm positive it's not well known among "systems design" engineers. Honestly it's not even that useful either because the theory doesn't include any measurement to determine if one structure is "better" than another.
- sho_hn 4y ago
  > I think the ridicule is justified given that anyone can do it. Ouch, that hurts. I had to do 15 years of C++ programming and put working code on 10bn devices to have a shot at a "System Architect" position ... That said, I don't know much of the theory - I do know software and hardware from experience making and shipping it.
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    Maybe I shouldn't say "Anyone can do it." I mean more like you don't need any "design" training or specific "systems" training because no actual theory about this stuff actually exists. It's bullshit. You did 15 years of C++ so you have domain knowledge of C++ and whatever area you work in. You don't need any extra "design" training to get good at it. So a better way to say it is this: Anyone who is knowledgeable about whatever they're working on can do "design" you don't need to hire someone who's an expert in "design." Your title "Systems Architect" is more of a symbol of your rank and years of experience then it is your ability to design.
    - righttoolforjob 4y ago
      Even though there isn't a formal theory, there definitely is a big difference between a person capable of doing good system design and one who isn't. I don't think all people are capable of becoming a systems designer or architect. It is not always required for projects, but when it is necessary it can make a great difference, putting a project on the right track from the beginning and keeping it on track, making sure it all becomes something good in the end. I've done it enough to know that I couldn't do it while keeping my IC-type role as well. For me, personally, I approach systems design in a sort of breadth first search for a solution to the entire problem space, whilst deep-diving into particular areas where I am less certain. For other parts my experience lets me brush over details quite quickly. However, that is quite different from an IC-type role, where you'll typically run into a multitude of practical engineering issues that can be frustrating and take a lot of time. Tool issues, cloud issues, bug hunting, smoking out every little detail, write unit tests, review others code, etc. That would completely throw your mental cycles in the wrong bucket. I don't think you should do system design without having plenty of experience from IC-type roles though. You have to have understood so many different aspects; capabilities of the people at hand, the organization at large, tools, frameworks, technologies, etc, and be very, very willing to communicate the picture over and over again and take in feedback as the project progresses. It's technical leadership at one of the hardest levels. But realise at the same time that even software development itself doesn't have anything resembling a universal theory, common processes or frameworks. It's all changing, being reinvented, and rediscovered on a continuous basis. It is equally true that many things even in medicine or construction aren't based on any solid science.
vajrabum 4y ago
This is fun from the article: "Normally we think of the CAP theorem as applying to databases, but it applies to all distributed systems. Centralized databases do well at consistency and availability, but suck at partition tolerance; so do authoritarian government structures."
woopwoop 4y ago
In this context does the word "system" have a different meaning than "thing"?
- kqr 4y ago
  Yes, it means "at least two things that interact".
zmgsabst 4y ago
“Systems thinking” is why Seattle turned into a mess: People patted themselves on the back for their “deep understanding”, failed to include all the voices, didn’t actually understand the complex dynamics, and drove straight into a wall. Empirically, they’re not good at what they do — if a government paying for their advice ends up with a disaster. We don’t call civil engineers who collapse skyscrapers successful.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  Just because the world is a system doesn’t mean a bunch of people high on morality actually understand that system.
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    Yes — that’s my point. The people who call themselves “systems thinkers” can’t produce results, when governments hire them for projects.
- shaunkoh 4y ago
  Not familiar with what happened in Seattle. Are you referring to this? https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/07/09/dawn-lehman-on-the-collapse-of-the-champlain-towers-south/ https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/07/09/dawn-lehman-on-th...
dgs_sgd 4y ago
Funny anecdote from my time at the University of Waterloo: The systems design engineering major was abbreviated to SYDE. It was a popular joke to ask friends in that major “so what is systems design engineering?” They had a self deprecating chant in response: “S Y D E what is systems? Don’t ask me!”
nerpderp82 4y ago
Great article. I find systems design and complex adaptive systems fascinating. I really recommend the book, "Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity" by John H Holland. It is technical but aimed at the educated, non-technical reader, with enough description that you could code along to his models. I really wish he had written more books. RIP. Another good source of systems thinking are the books by Jane Jacobs on urban planning. I think anyone wanting to study this area rigorously would need to spend time doing detailed discrete event simulations, understand probability theory, time series analysis, phase space analysis, experimental design, graph theory and queueing theory. Like databases or operating systems, complex systems embody many fields of study simultaneously. One of the funnest parts is that they can be modeled at so many different levels. Complex Adaptive Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Holland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Holland Urban Design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs Ants https://theconversation.com/e-o-wilsons-lifelong-passion-for-ants-helped-him-teach-humans-about-how-to-live-sustainably-with-nature-150045 https://theconversation.com/e-o-wilsons-lifelong-passion-for...
- robbintt 4y ago
  I've had hidden order since I was a kid but never read it. Not enough hours in a day. I should really do that one.
mjb 4y ago
I find it frustrating that this article doesn't explore the tension between the "never rewrite" and ARM anecdotes. Iterating is good, but iterating to a whole new place is often impossible, and the biggest disruptions come from being in a different place. It's a core tension in systems design, and one that this (otherwise good) article doesn't acknowledge. Do read "The Tyranny of Structurelessness", though. Great read. I enjoyed the analogies to distributed systems here, too.
- short_throw 4y ago
  Well I think if Intel had decided to start from scratch to make "x86 only more power efficient, it'll only take one product cycle" they would have failed miserably, but if they said "let's make a phone cpu, that's our new top priority" that program could have grown into making great laptop cpus a decade later. Making a new product that fills a new niche in a short timespan is viable. Making a product to directly replace what the old system does after decades of iteration is usually a delusion.
- nerpderp82 4y ago
  > Intel could never create a product like ARM Intel's StrongARM (originally DEC) chip had the highest perf/watt of any cpu in the industry. They later sold StrongARM to Marvell for 600M. Not only couldn't they create it, they couldn't continue to sell it even though it was widely successful. The "tyranny essay" is wonderful on many levels. It is mostly about human social-political structures, if one wanted to be true to "structurelessness" you would have to have a constructed double-blind system to enforce it. Otherwise you get fascist overlay that breaks along existing personal power dynamics. The in-group, central cadre and then everyone else on the periphery. Structureless movements can be extremely effect at scaling an organization, but at some point you need to collapse that chaos into something cohesive. https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne... > This lack of structure, Freeman writes, disguised an informal, unacknowledged, and unaccountable leadership, and in this way ensured its malefaction by denying its existence.[3] As a solution, Freeman suggests formalizing the existing hierarchies in the group and subjecting them to democratic control. Due to the writing style, I found it really effective for my understanding was to have chatgpt summarize and explain passages, and then have it explain it again.
kerblang 4y ago
On this second-systems effect: Okay, what if the initial system has reached a point of being unmaintainable and a new system is needed, and there just is no way to get it to where it needs to go incrementally, because the pathways just aren't there; it's a from-scratch do-over. Now what? Abandon hope? I don't get that. I work at an organization where the second-system is being attempted and jealousy, sabotage, resistance to change and more come into play (why do they get to build it? we should build it! let's tell everybody how much it's going to suck because those guys are stupid! etc) but the danged thing is badly needed.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  The second system effect is basically death by 1,000 cuts. You avoid it by designing a new system that you need rather than designing a new system you think you might need in the future. It becomes a problem because you think "we're doing this whole new system, lets add two dozen bells and whistles we don't have or need yet, surely it won't affect time to delivery!" Bzzzt, wrong.
- bklaasen 4y ago
  That's part of the system. Management is failing if it's not acknowledging and tackling this part of the system that's prepared to destroy the whole to preserve itself.
- kqr 4y ago
  Every time someone has told me that "it sounds nice to do it incrementally but that just won't work for us" it's because either they (a) lack expertise they would need, or (b) haven't really tried for political reasons. Maybe it's actually true in your specific case, and I'm curious what makes your case different, if you're at liberty to share!
  - kerblang 4y ago
    Sorry for the extraordinarily late reply, but: I'm only peripherally involved in this application, but I think it's in part because of hideously bad architecture from the ground up. I know it was written in Cold Fusion, for one thing, which has graduated to the ever-popular Tremendously Expensive Licensing Era, and has major performance and database problems. But yes, politically: There is no desire to make it a "migration" type of problem; transitioning users isn't important from the business perspective. That might be hard to believe, but I think the argument is that dragging the old product through its own muck is a lot slower than building a new product that brings in new business. So, who am I to argue with that? Are we saying, no, no, if you have an old product you must migrate even when the business says you don't need to?
_glass 4y ago
In the social sciences you have Talcott Parsons, and Niklas Luhmann, that see society as a social system. To some extend the author does explain social systems, with taking the system theory from technical systems, which is kind of the origin of those theories. It is a very useful theory, but lacking in a lot of ways. For example social systems theory doesn't account for the dynamism of society. It more or less shows a static picture of what we know. But societal structures have a history and a movement in the future. Also human agency is absent, that we are not determined by some laws like machines, but have agency. Lastly what can be critisized is the inherent functionalism. In a system everything is assigned a function, and mostly exists because of its function. This doesn't need to be true in reality.
dang 4y ago
Discussed at the time: Systems design explains the world: volume 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25552267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25552267 - Dec 2020 (152 comments)
Jupe 4y ago
Worth a read if only for the CADT reference (https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html) But, so much more as well!
- Jtsummers 4y ago
  Remember folks, copy/paste jwz links if you see it on HN.
lincpa 4y ago
[dead]
moring 4y ago
Does anyone have good pointers on if/how systems design can be applied on a smaller scale in software engineering and API design? Granted, that would by definition exclude some very important factors on company level, but then, they are out of reach for me anyway. EDIT: I realized that the above sounds like using SD to solve technical issues, but I meant to ask specifically about using SD to guide things like evolution and usage of a software architecture or API.
- TuringTest 4y ago
  I think the core tenet would be "design every process(*) with feedback loops, so that you can detect when it needs to be updated". This can be as simple as having good tests that align with the business cases the API needs to support, to logging every data that goes through it and performing heavy data analysis on it. (*) (Not just the processes in the program, but also processes in the company needed to find out what to do and how to do it). This leads to organic growth, which can overcome problems caused by an upfront design that goes bad, because it couldn't have planned in advance every problem it will face in the future. Systems Design is all about adapting the system to changes in its environment. Learn about the Viable Systems Model for a mental framework on what to look for. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model

> Back in university, students used to tease the Systems Design Engineers, calling it "boxes and arrows" engineering. Not real engineering, you see, since it didn't touch anything tangible, like buildings, motors, hydrochloric acid, or, uh, electrons. Hey, I resemble that remark! Quite true though. The common paths I saw was adding a specialization or continuing on getting an MBA for others.

anonporridge 4y ago
Even the nerds have an internal hierarchy where they tease the deeper nerds.
- p0pcult 4y ago
  ...and the shallower nerds.
  - kimburgess 4y ago
    When working on any system: people who built the abstraction layer you're working with - enlightened geniuses; anyone using the abstraction layer you create - literal monkeys. It's a recursive relation that applies across full stack.

yamrzou 4y ago

Previously on HN: Systems design explains the world - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25552267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25552267 - Dec 2020 (155 comments)

kilgnad 4y ago

Seems like systems design is just studying a potpourri of engineering disciplines and the job entails stringing it all together the best that you can. Is there a formal theory about systems? I don't think so, and if there is, there's definitely no way to quantify if one system is "better" than another. Since no formal theory about the field exists.. every conjecture is just opinion. So someone working in systems design won't necessarily come up with a better "design" then some other person who doesn't specifically work in the field given that there's a lack of a formal theory to prove it either way. In software these guys who do "designs" are the system architects and I think the ridicule is justified given that anyone can do it. Category theory is the closest thing I've seen to a fundamental theory of design and I'm positive it's not well known among "systems design" engineers. Honestly it's not even that useful either because the theory doesn't include any measurement to determine if one structure is "better" than another.

sho_hn 4y ago
> I think the ridicule is justified given that anyone can do it. Ouch, that hurts. I had to do 15 years of C++ programming and put working code on 10bn devices to have a shot at a "System Architect" position ... That said, I don't know much of the theory - I do know software and hardware from experience making and shipping it.
- kilgnad 4y ago
  Maybe I shouldn't say "Anyone can do it." I mean more like you don't need any "design" training or specific "systems" training because no actual theory about this stuff actually exists. It's bullshit. You did 15 years of C++ so you have domain knowledge of C++ and whatever area you work in. You don't need any extra "design" training to get good at it. So a better way to say it is this: Anyone who is knowledgeable about whatever they're working on can do "design" you don't need to hire someone who's an expert in "design." Your title "Systems Architect" is more of a symbol of your rank and years of experience then it is your ability to design.
  - righttoolforjob 4y ago
    Even though there isn't a formal theory, there definitely is a big difference between a person capable of doing good system design and one who isn't. I don't think all people are capable of becoming a systems designer or architect. It is not always required for projects, but when it is necessary it can make a great difference, putting a project on the right track from the beginning and keeping it on track, making sure it all becomes something good in the end. I've done it enough to know that I couldn't do it while keeping my IC-type role as well. For me, personally, I approach systems design in a sort of breadth first search for a solution to the entire problem space, whilst deep-diving into particular areas where I am less certain. For other parts my experience lets me brush over details quite quickly. However, that is quite different from an IC-type role, where you'll typically run into a multitude of practical engineering issues that can be frustrating and take a lot of time. Tool issues, cloud issues, bug hunting, smoking out every little detail, write unit tests, review others code, etc. That would completely throw your mental cycles in the wrong bucket. I don't think you should do system design without having plenty of experience from IC-type roles though. You have to have understood so many different aspects; capabilities of the people at hand, the organization at large, tools, frameworks, technologies, etc, and be very, very willing to communicate the picture over and over again and take in feedback as the project progresses. It's technical leadership at one of the hardest levels. But realise at the same time that even software development itself doesn't have anything resembling a universal theory, common processes or frameworks. It's all changing, being reinvented, and rediscovered on a continuous basis. It is equally true that many things even in medicine or construction aren't based on any solid science.

vajrabum 4y ago

This is fun from the article: "Normally we think of the CAP theorem as applying to databases, but it applies to all distributed systems. Centralized databases do well at consistency and availability, but suck at partition tolerance; so do authoritarian government structures."

woopwoop 4y ago

In this context does the word "system" have a different meaning than "thing"?

kqr 4y ago
Yes, it means "at least two things that interact".

zmgsabst 4y ago

“Systems thinking” is why Seattle turned into a mess: People patted themselves on the back for their “deep understanding”, failed to include all the voices, didn’t actually understand the complex dynamics, and drove straight into a wall. Empirically, they’re not good at what they do — if a government paying for their advice ends up with a disaster. We don’t call civil engineers who collapse skyscrapers successful.

edgyquant 4y ago
Just because the world is a system doesn’t mean a bunch of people high on morality actually understand that system.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  Yes — that’s my point. The people who call themselves “systems thinkers” can’t produce results, when governments hire them for projects.
shaunkoh 4y ago
Not familiar with what happened in Seattle. Are you referring to this? https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/07/09/dawn-lehman-on-the-collapse-of-the-champlain-towers-south/ https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/07/09/dawn-lehman-on-th...

dgs_sgd 4y ago

Funny anecdote from my time at the University of Waterloo: The systems design engineering major was abbreviated to SYDE. It was a popular joke to ask friends in that major “so what is systems design engineering?” They had a self deprecating chant in response: “S Y D E what is systems? Don’t ask me!”

nerpderp82 4y ago

Great article. I find systems design and complex adaptive systems fascinating. I really recommend the book, "Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity" by John H Holland. It is technical but aimed at the educated, non-technical reader, with enough description that you could code along to his models. I really wish he had written more books. RIP. Another good source of systems thinking are the books by Jane Jacobs on urban planning. I think anyone wanting to study this area rigorously would need to spend time doing detailed discrete event simulations, understand probability theory, time series analysis, phase space analysis, experimental design, graph theory and queueing theory. Like databases or operating systems, complex systems embody many fields of study simultaneously. One of the funnest parts is that they can be modeled at so many different levels. Complex Adaptive Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Holland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Holland Urban Design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs Ants https://theconversation.com/e-o-wilsons-lifelong-passion-for-ants-helped-him-teach-humans-about-how-to-live-sustainably-with-nature-150045 https://theconversation.com/e-o-wilsons-lifelong-passion-for...

robbintt 4y ago
I've had hidden order since I was a kid but never read it. Not enough hours in a day. I should really do that one.

mjb 4y ago

I find it frustrating that this article doesn't explore the tension between the "never rewrite" and ARM anecdotes. Iterating is good, but iterating to a whole new place is often impossible, and the biggest disruptions come from being in a different place. It's a core tension in systems design, and one that this (otherwise good) article doesn't acknowledge. Do read "The Tyranny of Structurelessness", though. Great read. I enjoyed the analogies to distributed systems here, too.

short_throw 4y ago
Well I think if Intel had decided to start from scratch to make "x86 only more power efficient, it'll only take one product cycle" they would have failed miserably, but if they said "let's make a phone cpu, that's our new top priority" that program could have grown into making great laptop cpus a decade later. Making a new product that fills a new niche in a short timespan is viable. Making a product to directly replace what the old system does after decades of iteration is usually a delusion.
nerpderp82 4y ago
> Intel could never create a product like ARM Intel's StrongARM (originally DEC) chip had the highest perf/watt of any cpu in the industry. They later sold StrongARM to Marvell for 600M. Not only couldn't they create it, they couldn't continue to sell it even though it was widely successful. The "tyranny essay" is wonderful on many levels. It is mostly about human social-political structures, if one wanted to be true to "structurelessness" you would have to have a constructed double-blind system to enforce it. Otherwise you get fascist overlay that breaks along existing personal power dynamics. The in-group, central cadre and then everyone else on the periphery. Structureless movements can be extremely effect at scaling an organization, but at some point you need to collapse that chaos into something cohesive. https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne... > This lack of structure, Freeman writes, disguised an informal, unacknowledged, and unaccountable leadership, and in this way ensured its malefaction by denying its existence.[3] As a solution, Freeman suggests formalizing the existing hierarchies in the group and subjecting them to democratic control. Due to the writing style, I found it really effective for my understanding was to have chatgpt summarize and explain passages, and then have it explain it again.

kerblang 4y ago

On this second-systems effect: Okay, what if the initial system has reached a point of being unmaintainable and a new system is needed, and there just is no way to get it to where it needs to go incrementally, because the pathways just aren't there; it's a from-scratch do-over. Now what? Abandon hope? I don't get that. I work at an organization where the second-system is being attempted and jealousy, sabotage, resistance to change and more come into play (why do they get to build it? we should build it! let's tell everybody how much it's going to suck because those guys are stupid! etc) but the danged thing is badly needed.

bcrosby95 4y ago
The second system effect is basically death by 1,000 cuts. You avoid it by designing a new system that you need rather than designing a new system you think you might need in the future. It becomes a problem because you think "we're doing this whole new system, lets add two dozen bells and whistles we don't have or need yet, surely it won't affect time to delivery!" Bzzzt, wrong.
bklaasen 4y ago
That's part of the system. Management is failing if it's not acknowledging and tackling this part of the system that's prepared to destroy the whole to preserve itself.
kqr 4y ago
Every time someone has told me that "it sounds nice to do it incrementally but that just won't work for us" it's because either they (a) lack expertise they would need, or (b) haven't really tried for political reasons. Maybe it's actually true in your specific case, and I'm curious what makes your case different, if you're at liberty to share!
- kerblang 4y ago
  Sorry for the extraordinarily late reply, but: I'm only peripherally involved in this application, but I think it's in part because of hideously bad architecture from the ground up. I know it was written in Cold Fusion, for one thing, which has graduated to the ever-popular Tremendously Expensive Licensing Era, and has major performance and database problems. But yes, politically: There is no desire to make it a "migration" type of problem; transitioning users isn't important from the business perspective. That might be hard to believe, but I think the argument is that dragging the old product through its own muck is a lot slower than building a new product that brings in new business. So, who am I to argue with that? Are we saying, no, no, if you have an old product you must migrate even when the business says you don't need to?

_glass 4y ago

In the social sciences you have Talcott Parsons, and Niklas Luhmann, that see society as a social system. To some extend the author does explain social systems, with taking the system theory from technical systems, which is kind of the origin of those theories. It is a very useful theory, but lacking in a lot of ways. For example social systems theory doesn't account for the dynamism of society. It more or less shows a static picture of what we know. But societal structures have a history and a movement in the future. Also human agency is absent, that we are not determined by some laws like machines, but have agency. Lastly what can be critisized is the inherent functionalism. In a system everything is assigned a function, and mostly exists because of its function. This doesn't need to be true in reality.

dang 4y ago

Discussed at the time: Systems design explains the world: volume 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25552267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25552267 - Dec 2020 (152 comments)

Jupe 4y ago

Worth a read if only for the CADT reference (https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html) But, so much more as well!

Jtsummers 4y ago
Remember folks, copy/paste jwz links if you see it on HN.

lincpa 4y ago

[dead]

moring 4y ago

Does anyone have good pointers on if/how systems design can be applied on a smaller scale in software engineering and API design? Granted, that would by definition exclude some very important factors on company level, but then, they are out of reach for me anyway. EDIT: I realized that the above sounds like using SD to solve technical issues, but I meant to ask specifically about using SD to guide things like evolution and usage of a software architecture or API.

TuringTest 4y ago
I think the core tenet would be "design every process(*) with feedback loops, so that you can detect when it needs to be updated". This can be as simple as having good tests that align with the business cases the API needs to support, to logging every data that goes through it and performing heavy data analysis on it. (*) (Not just the processes in the program, but also processes in the company needed to find out what to do and how to do it). This leads to organic growth, which can overcome problems caused by an upfront design that goes bad, because it couldn't have planned in advance every problem it will face in the future. Systems Design is all about adapting the system to changes in its environment. Learn about the Viable Systems Model for a mental framework on what to look for. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model