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Being a Software Architect
- moron 14y agoHuh. Where I work, Software Architects are people who get paid lots of money to dick around with "new" technologies like RabbitMQ. Then after spending seemingly weeks implementing a trivial proof-of-concept app with the new thing, they present some slides and Visio diagrams at a brown bag nobody attends, and the rest of us ignore them so we can keep building things that actually provide value. Then they go on vacation to Aruba (probably).
- dr42 14y agoHow very cynical indeed. Speaking as a software architect, sometimes it's important to get people to lift their heads up from the day to day adding value and look at new technologies. Many times developers are so focused on the bug/feature du jour, that they aren't aware there are other ways to do things, possibly better. Having been a developer for a long time, the thing I have found is how much technology repeats itself, and how at its core, its all very much the same. The same algorithms I have used, like bloom filters or priority queues for example, have application in social networks and 3d rendering engines etc. Having done most software paradigms, an architect us supposed to know which ones work, and when they work. I haven't written slides or visio in years. Nor have I been to Aruba :)
- stephencanon 14y agoI would hesitate to hire a junior engineer who didn't understand basic subjects like bloom filters and priority queues and when to use them. I certainly wouldn't hire one who didn't know how to research alternative approaches on her own, without guidance from an "architect".
- dr42 14y agoIt's not about the ability to research alternative approaches, it's knowing when it might make sense to do so. an "architect" [sic]
- nathan_long 14y agoI'll bite. I consider myself a decent developer (but then, who doesn't?). I don't know what you mean by "bloom filters" or "priority queues" without Googling for them. I feel pretty confident that if they were the best solution to a problem I was having, I would find them through research. Why did you pick those as "basic subjects" for a "junior engineer"? Are they important to your particular area of work?
- stephencanon 14y agoI'm a micro-optimization and numerics guy by trade (mostly I write math libraries); they are almost completely irrelevant to my area of work. Priority queues should be covered in a competent introductory data structures course. Bloom filters are marginally more obscure, but I still expect a good candidate to have come across them at some point. They're so widely used that it's pretty hard to avoid learning about them if you've done any significant amount of work or just spend time reading HN (they come up in someone's blog every month or so). Note that I said "would hesitate to", not "wouldn't hire". If someone were otherwise a strong candidate, but happened to not be familiar with these, I would almost surely still hire them. I should clarify that a typical candidate for a junior position on my team is either coming from graduate school or has 3-5 years experience in industry. I have correspondingly higher expectations for their background knowledge.
- dr42 14y agoThis is just not true. Bloom filters are marginally more obscure, but I still expect a good candidate to have come across them at some point. Possibly in your area the candidates you get may have come across them, but then they wouldn't be junior engineers, by definition. If you're advertising for "strong algorithms" candidates then sure, but I bet half the people reading this have never used or come across any probabilistic data structure!
- ramchip 14y ago> then they wouldn't be junior engineers, by definition I don't think so. My impression is that junior/senior is defined by years of experience more than technical skills. Having been out of university for one year now, I know I sure as hell won't get a job as a "senior engineer" anywhere, even if I could easily implement both these structures.
- romaniv 14y agosometimes it's important to get people to lift their heads up from the day to day adding value and look at new technologies. Many times developers are so focused on the bug/feature du jour, that they aren't aware there are other ways to do things, possibly better. Why can't your developers lift their heads up? Are they just lazy and don't care, or are they overloaded and discouraged from trying new things by the development process and company structure?
- moron 14y ago> How very cynical indeed. I got a real kick out of this part, thanks. I'm imagining a scrawny, somewhat aged nerd-type but with a monocle flying off his face. Hilarious. Anyway, this is pretty much the same thing architects always say, but where I work the ideas for technologies they play with come from "normal" devs like me. Like, RabbitMQ wouldn't even be on their radar unless someone less experienced told them about it. I know how the "adding value" thing can come off like hard-nosed cowboy coder nonsense. But in truth, we lowly plebeian devs are capable of writing code and keeping apprised of new tech at the same time.
- usedtolurk 14y agoA good architect doesn't pretend to have a monopoly on ideas or trending technologies. Their job is to make sure that the really good ideas aren't ignored and get adopted more broadly.
- imechura 14y agoVery interesting perspective. I was a developer for over a decade before my path recently started moving towards architect. I find the opposite in my environment than what you are explaining. We have so many developers working on different projects that someone needs to suggest/enforce some consistency across implementations otherwise you will have 30 projects, each developed in the favorite technology of each team and face resource problems when it comes time for support and maintenance. To those with more negative leaning comments I would point out that not all development shops are the same. A software architect at my old 8 person startup would have been silly but I don't see how it would be possible to run development and operations of an airline or major finance company without people in this role. Some of the systems in large IT organizations are vast and span multiple departments and integrate in many ways with multiple other systems. The expectation that developers should perform their design/dev/test responsibilities while deciding/enforcing consistency across the organization as well as worrying about vendor contracts and negotiations while simultaneously acting as technology's face to the executive office is in my view an unrealistic expectation.
- bitdiffusion 14y agoOuch - this hits a little too close to home being from the architect camp myself (hell - I even spent the last week dicking around with rabbitmq! - talk about coincidence!) Anyway - as I'm sure other comments will allude to, one of our jobs is to take the time-out from frantically delivering features to investigate new technologies/techniques and distil them in a 5-minutes-or-less style format to the rest of the team. Ideally, organisations should allow all members of the software team to participate in this activity, but it seems that when push comes to shove and clients are waiting for stuff to "get done" this kind of activity is one of the first to fall by the wayside.
- columbo 14y agoAre you currently hiring?
- alttab 14y agoI left IBM when I had the chance. You should too. Don't worry, the immediate pay cut is worth it.
- moron 14y agoNo, my company is awesome. They treat us very well. There's just one or two posers who are institutionalized enough to have this job, that's all. They are harmless, really. Hell, I'm probably just speaking out of envy since I'd totally take the $150k they're (probably) making to dick around with NodeJS or whatever.
- alttab 14y agoI wasn't trying to suggest that IBM is a terrible company. I worked there long enough, and in multiple offices in vastly different parts of the country to know that unless you are over 40 years old and have established your career to the extent you are happy with, finding another company that will give you a better overall experience is more important than waiting around simply because you're comfortable (I was definitely comfortable).
- moron 14y agoUh, I was trying to say I work for someone way smaller than IBM and way cooler and who treats their employees way better. The architects aren't really representative of the workplace culture in general.
- alttab 14y agoSorry - didn't know of many companies that played around with enterprise message queues and had "brown bags"
- dabent 14y agoI've seen the Software Architect role defined in many different ways. Some are the ones you've described, some are "paper only" architects who never code, but theorize to some unknown end. The ones I've see that are most productive are the ones who more closely match the description in the article. They aren't above anyone, but they are supposed to be some of the most technically knowledgable people in the organization. Too that end, they have some of the most demanding jobs in the group and have to do more and understand more than a Senior Developer, who may only be well versed in one language or have the depth of understanding at all levels of the stack that an architect should. Architects at my current employer will be called on to write production level code in more than one language, have the charge to watch over the commits and have the responsibly and authority to fix problems they see. They also end up being the janitor sometimes, pulling wires in the server room when the network engineers are short handed. It's a system that works pretty well.
- Ingaz 14y agoI'm main Architect in my current company now. And I hate this title - I've seen too many so-called architects who can't distinguish SOAP-call and MQ-message. Q: You have WebSphere Process Server - do you use BPEL for your scoring workflows? A: What is BPEL??
- aik 14y agoI don't think this is for your point, but here's a counter-example: A large company uses 100 widely different technologies, and obviously no one can be an expert or even slightly knowledgeable about all of them. However when you're a SOFTWARE ARCHITECT [oooh!] it seems like there's an expectation that you should be an expert at everything. As soon as you're not (e.g. your example), you're seen as incompetent. In this case there's an unfair expectation.
- Ingaz 14y agoOf course. But 100 really widely different technologies is A LOT. My specialization - telecom industry. I'm dealing with families of technologies and they are not so plentiful. Messaging is messaging, DB is DB, application servers are application servers. Backoffice-frontoffice-mediation-billing remains the same in essence even if you change every component. I think that I can become good (after 2-3 years) in banking software or manufacturing. I think it almost impossible for me to become proficient in something like game production, high performance computing, many others
- klawed 14y agoIf someone finds an employer willing to pay them a SA salary for the above job description, there's no way I'd fault them for taking that job and working it for the rest of their careers.
- jaaron 14y agoWhich is why they're worthless if that's what you have them doing. I was chief architect for a startup and my job was basically filling in for everyone else wherever I could. I did all the documenting no one had time to do. I took every task I could off of the senior engineers so they could focus on shipping code. I tried to be that guy that had the whole system in my head, meaning I had to watch all the commits, regularly build, run, test and debug the system. The most typical software architecture work I did was prototyping, but in this case, it was generally evaluating a set of clearly practical options so that we wouldn't waste everyone's time trying to make a decision. Again, this was so that the engineering team could actually get sh!t done instead of arguing about useless technical bikesheds. Any prototype had to be the sort that the developers could directly use as a seed for building the next feature on the backlog. To me, that's what an architect is about. It's the job that any good senior engineer should be able to do and should absorb, as much as possible, all the crap that keeps those senior engineers from being as productive as possible.
- stickhandle 14y agobingo
- roguecoder 14y agoThe "writes code" part is key to actually using software architects productively. The times I have seen architects be productive additions it was essentially a job title for "a super-senior-developer who interacts with everyone." The times I have seen an architect be unproductive or a hinderance it was a job title for "someone who spends all their time telling other people how to code." I've even seen architects who were never coders: since I believe high-level design decisions are intimately linked to low-level design decisions the idea baffles me.
- jonstjohn 14y agoI agree. Reading through the comments I see that many people say that every develop should be an architect. Although I agree that developers should be able to think in terms of the larger picture, in my experience, certain developers either have more experience or are more capable of seeing how things fit together. Some developers are better at the micro, others at the macro, and ideally you'll have one or two that can do both well. Personally I think it is good to have somebody who can work across teams and software areas to keep track of the bigger picture.
- wormphlegm 14y agoThis sums it up nicely: http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/00000/1000/800/1890/1890.strip.gif http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/...
- Spearchucker 14y agoThis sums it up nicely too: http://bredemeyer.com/ http://bredemeyer.com/
- modarts 14y agoFrom the site: "Meta-architecture: the architectural vision, style, principles, key communication and control mechanisms, and concepts that guide the team of architects in the creation of the architecture" I think poe's law applies here; I honestly can't tell if this site is a parody of the "software architecture" discipline.
- btipling 14y agoIs it really bad to gloat when right? When people are right, let them gloat. Why does that matter? As long as they aren't trying to make the people who were wrong feel bad about it.
- SatvikBeri 14y agoGloating has the connotation of making others feel bad. "Bragging" is more in line with emphasizing your successes without disparaging others.
- alttab 14y agoFor the arrogant detractors, sometimes a well placed "I fucking told you so" wakes them up like a fresh pot of coffee.
- scott_s 14y agoAs long as they aren't trying to make the people who were wrong feel bad about it. But that's precisely what gloating implies.
- shortlived 14y agobtipling raises a valid question, stop down voting and instead post a reply.
- nzonbi 14y agoThe definition of a software architect varies. In general, mainly refers to those that are responsible for the higher level design of systems. In my opinion, a great system architect is a great developer, who also have an artistic flair. Those people that, when facing difficult design problems, can often come up with brilliant abstractions. That are so clever, that feel like art. Not only in development, but also in related aspects, like UI. Those great abstractions will increase the productivity of everyone using the system, and in the end can accumulate to very high amounts of value.
- stephencanon 14y agoYou have described a skilled engineer. Why do we need to call her a silly name?
- dack 14y agoWhy is "skilled engineer" better than "architect"? They are all just names - and it seems that the main reason people avoid the word "architect" is just because it has been abused in the past (and for some companies, the present). Maybe that's valid, because using the term may inadvertently make someone think that you're bought into the "no coding, but telling other people how to code" mindset. However, I don't think "architect" is a silly name on it's own - it's just another piece of vocabulary we use to describe a certain role. It's no different to me than "VP" or "Janitor" or "Test automation engineer".
- codeonfire 14y agoArchitect, chief engineer, principal, fellow. These all mean 'put out to pasture'. These are supposed to be positions of leadership, but with no direct reports there is no one forced to follow. Developers who already have to deal with the business bureaucracy are not going to listen to someone because of a fancy title that does more politicking than development. Plus architect gives the image of a scarf wearing drama queen who throws tantrums.
- 14y ago
- kylek 14y agoTerrifying and silly to think that anyone cares this much about titles
- cranklin 14y agoTrue. But regardless of the official title, somebody still plays the SA role.
- MattRogish 14y agoI don't like Software Architects. What is implicit in the SA role is that the rest of the dev team is full of dummies that can't think strategically or architect big parts of the system. This naturally leads to the SA producing ever higher and more complicated abstractions that the simian developer tries to implement, poorly, and the SA becomes an irreplaceable high priest -- inflating their salaries and prominence and depressing the salaries of the rest of the team. Where I work, every developer is expected to be "architect-quality". Sure, more junior folks don't have the experience, but they're expected to have the capacity for strategic, high-level thinking. As they mature, they take on more and more architectural decisions. If they can't do that, then we've hired the wrong person. Ultimately, that's the only way I know how to scale dev teams and produce amazing software. The SA/Dev stratification is an anti-pattern.
- alttab 14y agoI agree with this. Not everyone is a software architect. It should be the goal of the development team to turn every developer into one. In my mind, the role of a SA is to make the right decisions until everyone else can do it on their own, but enable and teach along the way. * spelling
- dack 14y agoAlthough I agree with your strategy of hiring, it sounds like what you are saying is "hiring non architect-quality people is an antipattern". Okay, well obviously bad developers make a bad team. Even on a good team, there are more and less experienced developers. I don't see what's wrong with calling the most experienced ones "architects" if that's what they want to be called, as long as it's clear that it isn't an excuse for the other developers to ignore higher level goals and design.
- chriseppstein 14y agoDid you actually read the link before commenting? Honest question.
- jfoutz 14y agoIt's a clever list of aphorisms. None of the qualities you desire are actually defining features of the SA, though. Who on your team is not a student? who is not a mentor? who should gloat when they are right? who does not understand the most precious parts of the system? I think your list is less about A Software Architect and more about people who take pride in their work.
- andrewcooke 14y agothis smacks of noblesse oblige. ("how to live safely in a science fiction universe", apart from being a pretty good book in its own right, really takes this apart)
- swalsh 14y agoI think of the role of Software Architect as almost a code accountant, keeping technical debt in check.
- chriseppstein 14y agoI like that.
- ctdonath 14y agoGood. AND the SA holds an overall vision of what that accounting entails. An "obvious" change in module A may have severe repercussions in module B, which neither developers for A nor B may see in a timely manner. Without "code accounting" with a vision - and an informed experienced one at that - 'tis too easy for over-confident short-sighted developers to go crashing through other sections of code, leaving something which may work but degrades performance & maintenance, and which is so pervasive and hard to fix the team must just live with it. AND the holder of that vision must be able to articulate it, in documentation & code & conversation, in a manner which keeps the team cohesive, informed, and upbeat.
- NiteCoder 14y agoI've worked in places where "architect" was nothing more than a title given to senior developers to soothe their egos so they didn't notice they were underpaid. I've all seen architects who didn't code, preferring their ivory towers of UML diagrams. Neither of these types are effective. A real software architect is a force multiplier: you help teams be more productive through your contributions, be it design, code, mentoring or leadership. Rather than being the team showboat, a good architect is the guy that helps everyone else be even better at their jobs.
- leothekim 14y agos/Architect/Engineer/g None of these characteristics should be stuffed in an architect role. Every engineer should possess them.
- jusben1369 14y agoAnybody fairly handy can build a garden shed. If someone showed up calling themselves an "garden shed architect" and stood off to the side directing traffic I'm sure the "builders" would find it and them to be a complete waste of space. (wait cheesy pun alert?) However, how many of us would like to get into an elevator ready to shot us to the 100th floor knowing that there was no architect on the project as all the builders decided that was an unnecessary title and those functions could easily be handled by the GC? Amazon, Heroku etc has made it much easier to build garden sheds - there's a lot more garden sheds around per large building than there used to be. So I suspect if you believe the SA title to be completely unnecessary it's most likely because you're building sheds not buildings. Doesn't mean we still don't want and need them for those larger buildings.
- joe_the_user 14y agoYes, But there is a difference between software construction and building construction. The difference is that for software, anything that would normally be "construction work" in another field is or can be done in an automated fashion. Thus it can be argued that all programming is done at the "design" or the "architecture" level. That isn't to be say that the software architect position is alway illegitimate. But gives one an idea why, in contrast to sky-scraper construction, some people might legitimately want to dispense with architect as a distinct position.
- thatusertwo 14y agoA software architect I worked with before thought he was gods gift to programming, every time something worked out it was his work, when it failed he always blamed the 'process'. You should change the title to 'Being a Good Software Architect'.
- Spearchucker 14y agoAgree with everything he says. Except for the part that I don't. A software architect creates a vocabulary to enable efficient communication across an entire company. That needs to be done with caution, because in a small team/organisation it's absolutely correct. In a large organisation it's just a non-confrontational way of saying "We need an enterprise architecture." That ends up becoming an IT dictionary whose value is to IT alone [1]. And IT serves the business. Not the other way 'round. If you're doing this in a large organisation, do it for a project, and not for the organisation. It's right up there with the architect that sees an enterprise service bus as a silver bullet. Aka a unicorn. Edit: [1] Unless you're HP Services, IBM, ATOS, Cap Gemini or some similar systems integrator, because if you're one of them you're in the business of selling billable hours, and an enterprise architecture is an awesome way of billing to eternity without even having to deliver business value.
- locacorten 14y agoReading throught the comments, it's amazing to see how much damage the cowboy culture of our community has produced. "Every engineer should be an architect." Ha, ha, ha... This also goes hand-in-hand with "Everyone can be a programmer" mantra that everyone likes to repeat. Go teach pointers to 20-year olds and you'll realize how most people can't be programmers. I don't understand where this culture is coming from. I definitely can't fix my car; when I see my mechanic, he doesn't tell me how I should go learn how to fix my car. I'm confident he's much better at fixing my car than I am. The same is true with other professions -- lawyers don't tell clients to go interpret laws on their own and dentists don't tell people to go remove teeth on their own. What is it about our community that we ingrained into our youth that "writing code" is the thing that everybody must do?
- mindcrime 14y agoI don't get the hate for software architects. Would you try to build a skyscraper without an architect? No? Then why is having one a problem for a large software system? Sure, if you're building something small, one person can be architect and general contractor and electrician and painter, etc. But the idea of division of labor is usually seen as a good thing. Not sure why we hackers should see it any differently. If you're building enterprise software systems that span multiple divisions and locations of an enterprise with 30,000+ people in 100 countries, ya know... you probably do need somebody who's job is to look at the big picture, see that the pieces being assembled fit the needs of the firm, and that the pieces work together in a clean and elegant way. Having an architect, where needed, doesn't denigrate or devalue the role of the developers at all. It really is a different role that needs to be filled.
- rickmb 14y agoProbably because the number of people with "software architect" on their business cards greatly outnumber the number of "enterprise software systems that span multiple divisions and locations of an enterprise with 30,000+ people in 100 countries". It's the 95% of useless bureaucrats that can't tell good working software from a print out of a diagram most developers have a problem with.
- astral303 14y agoDivision of "labor" is counter productive in development, because in immortal words of Jack W. Reeves, "Code is Design." Say anything else (UML) and you're deluding yourself. So non-coding architects are effectively only HALF-designing the system. Read this article and weep, for it was written in 1992 and 20 years later, is still rings true, even though there was no UML at the time: http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/reeves_design.html http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/reeves_design.h... The problem with non-coding architects is that they are isolated from learning. They have an incomplete feedback loop, and are isolated from the repercussions of their decisions. This at first makes a non-coding architect useless and then makes him actively wrong. This is especially true in systems as complex as enterprise systems. Because code is design and because building the design is free (in comparison to building a bridge), you need to actually translate your mental design into the real blueprint--the code. If you are isolated from that, then it's like sketching blueprints. You may be consistently wrong on some aspect of it, but you'll never know. If skyscrapers could be built and torn down overnight, I bet you money architects would build the skyscrapers without the same rigor of blueprints, look at the result and say "Nah, move this a foot over!" and build again. The correct equivalent for building construction workers is the compiler.
- krollew 14y ago"A software architect lives to serve the engineering team -- not the other way around." I thought they are supposed to serve people who are going to use software.
- mcgwiz 14y agoI don't like software architects. I'd much rather have a team full of A-type engineers that will stop at nothing to force their individual vision into a project. We can trust that every top-notch developer has the whole project's welfare at heart, and not just the part that they own and whose success impacts their performance evaluation. Ergo, a totally flat team of aggressive rock-star engineers is destined to build their constituent parts in a homogeneous and consistent fashion. A team of engineering ninjas are bound by a higher power to perfectly coordinate their coding style, core patterns, API design, conventions vs configuration trade offs, third-party dependencies, feature preference, etc., in a way that resonates precisely with the needs of the business and the risks of the industry. In short, all world-class engineers are business-savvy, have no conflicting interests, never have unresolved disagreements, and are also telepathic. And since all the engineers I work with are obviously world-class engineers, having a single point of accountability and a single vision of quality around is an insulting slap in the face!
- imechura 14y agoThis is brilliant sarcasm! I have worked with several of these A-List teams / "democracies". They are a perfect storm of nothing ever getting done because agreements cannot be made on a single issue.
- gouranga 14y agoI see lots of vitriol here. I think there are a lot of bad experiences, probably I imagine from the ivory tower architects that you get from big consultancies and the like. I am a proper solution architect. I'm there to serve others with my extensive experience, nothing more. I am always there in the shadows to keep the cogs oiled, provide canned and well tested ideas, stop things that shouldn't happen, start things that should, make sure communication is made and most importantly spend time teaching and helping people. I'm also there to do the risky horrible jobs that no one else wants to be responsible for. You're supposed to be more a spiritual guide than a facist dictator. I will say that there is no place for me in an organisation with less than 10 hands on engineering staff.
- cjdrake 14y agoI liked the article. Forget about whether the word "architect" is used by some as a pretense--the author is suggesting essential qualities of a leader. Teams need direction; this seems to me like good advice for a person to provide direction to other peers effectively.
- sbochins 14y agoThis is a nice ideal to have. Unfortunately I have never had the pleasure of working with the architect the OP described. I would say the ones I've dealt with have had some combination of: arrogance, stupidity, lack of technical knowledge, lack of creativity, and arrogance (did I say that already).
- biroran 14y agoA software architect job is about interfaces between modules. An architect job is to design interfaces that are aligned with the product direction and technical capabilities (both of the product and the people developing it) and tell a consistent story, both syntactically as well as semantically. Without such a person, each pair of developers, no matter how good an engineers they are, will have to develop their own language that is bound not to match those that are developed around it. This adds to the burden of each developer as he (or she) has to use APIs developed by different such teams. Consistency is key. Because the architect has to see the big picture to do his job, it makes sense that he's also the look-ahead guy. Because he defines interfaces and modules, it makes sense that he gets to evaluate new technologies - so playing with rabbitMQ really is part of the job description. This kind of job tend to require a working knowledge of the product internal, otherwise APIs can get completely incompatible with capabilities. As such, it attracts good developers that also think "strategically". Because many architect still love the code, you usually see such a person wearing two hats - the classic architect one but also the "lead developer" one - so code reviews, cleanup work and super important (but small) modules tend to be part the architect work, even if not in the job description. Lastly, the architect must have soft skills. The job requires a lot of human interaction, considerably more than a developer job does. It also requires a much closer interaction with "management", the architect understands the aforementioned big picture. Is the architect "better" than any developer? No. It's a complimentary role. Is this role always needed? No, but as a project gets bigger and start having more modules, interfaces tend to get hairy without a guiding hand. So why do architects make more? Supply and demand. Not everyone has the ability or the will to think "big picture" all the time. It's tiring, it's complex and you tend to think about balances (how will this affect the future? How much risk? How many man-hours? What's the alternative? How to phase development?) instead of "code purity". Disclaimer: I'm an architect but I also do a lot of "lead developer" parts. And while the definition tends to get fuzzy around the edges (and some interfaces are made ad-hoc, without that guiding hand), I see the best results when I follow the above recipe (which, sadly, means a lot less coding than I actually like to do). TL;DR: architecture is about interfaces between modules, not content of each module. Usually architects also wear "lead dev" hat because they like it.
- specialist 14y agoI met Grady Booch at the kickoff meeting for the Society of Software Architects (or some such). OOPSLA 1998 in Vancouver. I asked Grady Booch "What is software architecture?" He answered "Software architecture is what software architects 'do'." At that point I stopped caring. Until I found the book Design Rules: The Power of Modularity. http://www.amazon.com/Design-Rules-Vol-Power-Modularity/dp/0262024667 http://www.amazon.com/Design-Rules-Vol-Power-Modularity/dp/0... It is the sole source I've ever encountered that had anything useful, actionable, insightful, informative, rigorous, etc. Alas, I've never been able to synthesis Design Rules' methodology into any of my efforts. Because what I do is software craftsmanship. I've designed some awesome stuff (and a lot of crap). But nothing rigorous, repeatable, explainable. For a few years, I bought every software design book I could find. Some of them actually good. But the ones claiming to be about "software architecture" are really describing software craftsmanship. Describe as in descriptive, vs prescriptive. From memory, Design Rules states that architecture is the set of visible design choices in a product. The entire thesis of the book, backed by oodles of case studies and data, is that deciding where the lines between subsystems, the interfaces, and the allowable parameters for those interfaces, is architecture. PS- Just read the OP. Nothing actionable. Move along.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- woodholly 14y agoRead Cringley's Accidental Millioniares book for lots of background on the "Software Architect" idea, particularly at Microsoft.
- j45 14y agoI liked the article. I'd like to apologize with some liberty to the sentiment in this thread who deny someone has value because they can't see it. If I may go out on a limb, I'd like to try and apologize for what I feel is being trivialized, but to me, is non-trivial. I'm sorry every piece of software looks like CRUD and Reports to SA's. Nothing's special like Pagerank special, no matter how many magical automating unicorn wands of libraries and frameworks and methodologies we try to make it seem magical with. Domain knowledge, and experience, on the other hand, seems generic, but it's understanding how the data works, plays, interacts, and exists in all it's states. I'm sorry if some developers forget that software only answers one question, "Where is everything at?" in different ways for different users, and it's made to be more than it is. We're not out to trivialize anyone's work, however, this point is a rallying point, not something to feel insecure about on anyone's part. I'm very sorry for all the failed software projects that are inherited for wanting to use the latest, greatest, untested, unhardened. They have compensated well for letting me teach customers how you shouldn't build a house without a blueprint just because you can build a shed without one. No agile mega global waterfall method will get around having to understand the world people face when they use computers in their day to day life. No one cares what we code in, or how we coded. It's up to us to do well, but most importantly, reach a goal for a wider audience without getting hung up on ourselves. I love the latest and greatest tools, but I know better than to put it into production somewhere to be kind to the future me. I'm also really sorry to myself that I might have learnt some skills I may never use or enjoy using, like overseeing a full cycle ERP implementation. It did help tremendously, though in being able to find and connect the dots in intricate relationships between data and be able to put a picture together that makes sense for everyone beyond me. SA's existing do not mean anyone is a dummy, or smarter. It just is, what it is. Trivializing what anyone does is a pretty close minded, harsh judgement for the intelligence and open-mindedness here. Just because one person can't imagine a position having value, doesn't mean the value can't exist. Architects get thrown down more wells than they deserve and smart developers are always open to learning from the rattlesnake biting the other person. It goes both ways. Great architects listen, listen, listen. They provide the foresight that today can't always show. Good architects code. Most I know thrive on Proof of concept coding things. If there's SA's that don't stay current (meaning, they don't keep hacking with new stuff), that's something that can be faulted in anyone. We can look at it the same way with developers.. having a legion of coders who have not yet had a relationship with a code base for more than a few years don't really learn the reality of being kind to your future self in code, thought, and trivialization of what anyone does. Maybe some part of this is from having been online for almost 2 decades, and building web based software for over a decade. If I'm off, I apologize and ask for your tolerance. Our coding isn't special. Frameworks come and go. All glorious languages worshipped today were made in the 90's. Any code that is 2 years old is legacy. So, what is your legacy? Mine is writing code that can outlast and not need me anymore and can be well structured and maintained without me. Why? So I can go solve the next problem. Connecting a need to technology and making ourselves invisible is what I really enjoy doing, but maybe it's just me.
- Produce 14y agoThe same could be written of managers and leaders. They exist to serve those they work with, not the other way around. Our society just doesn't seem to understand this.
- dbattaglia 14y agoThe name plate on my desk says "Software Architect", and honestly I feel kind of silly repeating that when people ask what I do. I usually just tell them 'I write software'. That said, I've worked in a bunch of different C#/.Net/SQL Server shops (IT depts, educational, shrink wrap apps, advertising), and I can see in some of these places why the role can be necessary. Not because .Net demands these over-architected enterprise uber-solutions, but because a large amount of developers in those places just don't seem to care about what technology choices and design methodologies are out there. And there's nothing wrong with that, so long as there are some there who are thinking beyond the next sprint, regardless of what their job title is officially. I'm also pretty sure the role itself means different things depending on the scale of what the company is doing. At my current job (a recruitment advertising company w/ some very large clients), we have a lot of traffic and only moderate development resources in-house, so you really need to depend on proven technologies to prevent the whole thing from falling apart. So part of my job is making sure we are using the right technology where we need to and only rolling our own when it makes sense.