The Software Architecture Demon
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I used to be a software architect. I think that's part of why I employ such a jaundiced eye when it comes to layered service architectures and sweeping design patterns just because and drowning in UML because reasons. It's true that when you're dealing with million dollar implementations, multiple deployment points, and disparate teams a lot of this abstraction can be useful. But how common is that in most people's development? I know it is for some of you, sure, but I think you're in the minority, or at least projects like these are in the minority. Not everyone is Plum Creek or Alcoa. It seems like the field of software architecture has taken on a life of its own and coupled with CPU cores to waste and infinite scaling out it has - and i'll just say it - poisoned software development. Just because you know how to do something doesn't mean you should. Most software application architectures do not survive contact with clients plus the erosion of time. They have a shelf life of significantly less than 10 years without some major portion of them being retooled. There are exceptions to this, but designing every solution to be that exception is a waste of time, money and creative energy. I'm also going to come out and say it makes things harder to maintain. When you're working with 20 different classes and interfaces where 3 would do it just increases the learning curve. There are definitely diminishing returns when it comes to decoupling software from itself, and you run into the cost/benefit wall pretty fast. It can only take you so far. It's best not to overdo it. Every fancy little UML entity you drop into your project increases the cognitive load of your project for other developers. Personally, I wouldn't care about that, because "cognitive load" is fun as far as I'm concerned but most people just want to do their work and go home, not spend odd hours studying someone else's work just so they can use it. Keep It Simple Stupid. Whatever happened to that? :sigh:
Real programmers use butterflies
honey the codewitch wrote:
not spend odd hours studying someone else's work just so they can use it
Part of the architecture is to structure the system, or the code, exactly so that people who want to do this can do it, and are not bothered with higher level topics.
honey the codewitch wrote:
I'm also going to come out and say it makes things harder to maintain
No. Over-engineered code or undocumented code is hard to maintain, whether it has been created based on highly sophisticated design patterns and architecture principles or "by hand", but you cannot say that using architecture design always makes code harder to maintain. 15 year old multi threaded spaghetti code resulting from a 15-year-old-company-time one guy developer show is hard to maintain. Always. Actually, UML or SysML are tools, and as every tool, they should be used adequately to fulfil a certain purpose to make sense. I agree that using a tool just because you can is not a good strategy, but on the other side and like any tool, they can come very handy if well used.
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I used to be a software architect. I think that's part of why I employ such a jaundiced eye when it comes to layered service architectures and sweeping design patterns just because and drowning in UML because reasons. It's true that when you're dealing with million dollar implementations, multiple deployment points, and disparate teams a lot of this abstraction can be useful. But how common is that in most people's development? I know it is for some of you, sure, but I think you're in the minority, or at least projects like these are in the minority. Not everyone is Plum Creek or Alcoa. It seems like the field of software architecture has taken on a life of its own and coupled with CPU cores to waste and infinite scaling out it has - and i'll just say it - poisoned software development. Just because you know how to do something doesn't mean you should. Most software application architectures do not survive contact with clients plus the erosion of time. They have a shelf life of significantly less than 10 years without some major portion of them being retooled. There are exceptions to this, but designing every solution to be that exception is a waste of time, money and creative energy. I'm also going to come out and say it makes things harder to maintain. When you're working with 20 different classes and interfaces where 3 would do it just increases the learning curve. There are definitely diminishing returns when it comes to decoupling software from itself, and you run into the cost/benefit wall pretty fast. It can only take you so far. It's best not to overdo it. Every fancy little UML entity you drop into your project increases the cognitive load of your project for other developers. Personally, I wouldn't care about that, because "cognitive load" is fun as far as I'm concerned but most people just want to do their work and go home, not spend odd hours studying someone else's work just so they can use it. Keep It Simple Stupid. Whatever happened to that? :sigh:
Real programmers use butterflies
Quote:
I'm also going to come out and say it makes things harder to maintain. When you're working with 20 different classes and interfaces where 3 would do it just increases the learning curve. There are definitely diminishing returns when it comes to decoupling software from itself, and you run into the cost/benefit wall pretty fast. It can only take you so far. It's best not to overdo it.
I would be very careful with the "3 would do it" part. SRP should always be respected otherwise you will get burned really bad sooner or later. I agree that overdesign is a waste of resources, yet underdesign tends to cause much more damage. If you design something with hundreds of entities and expect it to remain maintainable for 5+ years, initial investment into architecture pays off. Of course, if the architect is well familiar with both application architecture practices and the domain of the application.
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honey the codewitch wrote:
not spend odd hours studying someone else's work just so they can use it
Part of the architecture is to structure the system, or the code, exactly so that people who want to do this can do it, and are not bothered with higher level topics.
honey the codewitch wrote:
I'm also going to come out and say it makes things harder to maintain
No. Over-engineered code or undocumented code is hard to maintain, whether it has been created based on highly sophisticated design patterns and architecture principles or "by hand", but you cannot say that using architecture design always makes code harder to maintain. 15 year old multi threaded spaghetti code resulting from a 15-year-old-company-time one guy developer show is hard to maintain. Always. Actually, UML or SysML are tools, and as every tool, they should be used adequately to fulfil a certain purpose to make sense. I agree that using a tool just because you can is not a good strategy, but on the other side and like any tool, they can come very handy if well used.
Good post. I will add that I only find UML diagrams useful for documenting an architecture once it is stable. Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I've never laid out an architecture that didn't change once the code started to speak. Often I just start coding and refactoring, and it's probably because software has to grow organically. Bottom-up and side-to-side are as much of that as top-down. The static analysis tool that I developed was written without any up-front design, just diving in and starting on a recursive descent parser.
Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -
I used to be a software architect. I think that's part of why I employ such a jaundiced eye when it comes to layered service architectures and sweeping design patterns just because and drowning in UML because reasons. It's true that when you're dealing with million dollar implementations, multiple deployment points, and disparate teams a lot of this abstraction can be useful. But how common is that in most people's development? I know it is for some of you, sure, but I think you're in the minority, or at least projects like these are in the minority. Not everyone is Plum Creek or Alcoa. It seems like the field of software architecture has taken on a life of its own and coupled with CPU cores to waste and infinite scaling out it has - and i'll just say it - poisoned software development. Just because you know how to do something doesn't mean you should. Most software application architectures do not survive contact with clients plus the erosion of time. They have a shelf life of significantly less than 10 years without some major portion of them being retooled. There are exceptions to this, but designing every solution to be that exception is a waste of time, money and creative energy. I'm also going to come out and say it makes things harder to maintain. When you're working with 20 different classes and interfaces where 3 would do it just increases the learning curve. There are definitely diminishing returns when it comes to decoupling software from itself, and you run into the cost/benefit wall pretty fast. It can only take you so far. It's best not to overdo it. Every fancy little UML entity you drop into your project increases the cognitive load of your project for other developers. Personally, I wouldn't care about that, because "cognitive load" is fun as far as I'm concerned but most people just want to do their work and go home, not spend odd hours studying someone else's work just so they can use it. Keep It Simple Stupid. Whatever happened to that? :sigh:
Real programmers use butterflies
honey the codewitch wrote:
ust because you know how to do something doesn't mean you should.
I look at that the other way: I don't know how to do something so I do it. That philosophy is, after all, what makes our world go round.* Bitterness section - or perhaps just bitter-sweet: Let the next generation sort it out instead of staring at their cell phones. *like it or not - and thus giving you the answer to the great philospher's question "Why?"
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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I used to be a software architect. I think that's part of why I employ such a jaundiced eye when it comes to layered service architectures and sweeping design patterns just because and drowning in UML because reasons. It's true that when you're dealing with million dollar implementations, multiple deployment points, and disparate teams a lot of this abstraction can be useful. But how common is that in most people's development? I know it is for some of you, sure, but I think you're in the minority, or at least projects like these are in the minority. Not everyone is Plum Creek or Alcoa. It seems like the field of software architecture has taken on a life of its own and coupled with CPU cores to waste and infinite scaling out it has - and i'll just say it - poisoned software development. Just because you know how to do something doesn't mean you should. Most software application architectures do not survive contact with clients plus the erosion of time. They have a shelf life of significantly less than 10 years without some major portion of them being retooled. There are exceptions to this, but designing every solution to be that exception is a waste of time, money and creative energy. I'm also going to come out and say it makes things harder to maintain. When you're working with 20 different classes and interfaces where 3 would do it just increases the learning curve. There are definitely diminishing returns when it comes to decoupling software from itself, and you run into the cost/benefit wall pretty fast. It can only take you so far. It's best not to overdo it. Every fancy little UML entity you drop into your project increases the cognitive load of your project for other developers. Personally, I wouldn't care about that, because "cognitive load" is fun as far as I'm concerned but most people just want to do their work and go home, not spend odd hours studying someone else's work just so they can use it. Keep It Simple Stupid. Whatever happened to that? :sigh:
Real programmers use butterflies
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Quote:
I'm also going to come out and say it makes things harder to maintain. When you're working with 20 different classes and interfaces where 3 would do it just increases the learning curve. There are definitely diminishing returns when it comes to decoupling software from itself, and you run into the cost/benefit wall pretty fast. It can only take you so far. It's best not to overdo it.
I would be very careful with the "3 would do it" part. SRP should always be respected otherwise you will get burned really bad sooner or later. I agree that overdesign is a waste of resources, yet underdesign tends to cause much more damage. If you design something with hundreds of entities and expect it to remain maintainable for 5+ years, initial investment into architecture pays off. Of course, if the architect is well familiar with both application architecture practices and the domain of the application.
Niemand25 wrote:
agree that overdesign is a waste of resources, yet underdesign tends to cause much more damage.
I'm not advocating for doing away with the design phase. I also think that while what you say is true, people are also taught this heavily, and I think they take too much to heart. Maybe that's what it is too? Maybe people get so afraid of a deathmarched project that they overengineer everything?
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote:
not spend odd hours studying someone else's work just so they can use it
Part of the architecture is to structure the system, or the code, exactly so that people who want to do this can do it, and are not bothered with higher level topics.
honey the codewitch wrote:
I'm also going to come out and say it makes things harder to maintain
No. Over-engineered code or undocumented code is hard to maintain, whether it has been created based on highly sophisticated design patterns and architecture principles or "by hand", but you cannot say that using architecture design always makes code harder to maintain. 15 year old multi threaded spaghetti code resulting from a 15-year-old-company-time one guy developer show is hard to maintain. Always. Actually, UML or SysML are tools, and as every tool, they should be used adequately to fulfil a certain purpose to make sense. I agree that using a tool just because you can is not a good strategy, but on the other side and like any tool, they can come very handy if well used.
I agree to a point.
Rage wrote:
Part of the architecture is to structure the system, or the code, exactly so that people who want to do this can do it, and are not bothered with higher level topics.
This is how it should be. In my professional experience it was sometimes the case that a software project would be designed appropriately for its size and the team situation. In many cases, it simply wasn't. People would endlessly decouple things that only one person was ever going to work on, and this kind of thing happens all the time. The design would end up taking up the majority of the bandwidth even well past the design phase after the project was supposed to be nailed down. I've seen projects deathmarch over it even. Basically the project was thought to death. Is it as common as badly designed or simply undesigned software? No. Is it destructive and harmful to projects? Yes! I guess to sound cliche it's about moderation. You have to make the design appropriate for a project. I'm not dismissing UML entirely either. But it's is one of those things that strikes as having the perception of being far more useful than it actually is.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Most of my code goes directly into (ASP.NET Core) Controllers and PageModels nowadays. I have a Core project, which has code shared between all my projects and a SqlServer project for my database stuff. Then a Services project which has some common services, like Smtp, some Azure stuff, etc. All injected using the default .NET Core DI library. Sometimes I think, maybe I'll need this piece of code in another page later on, but then I ignore that thought. When (if) I actually need to re-use that code it's just a minor refactoring to move it to the Core, SqlServer or Services project. I recently made some NuGet packages for functions I use over and over in different projects. I'm also not concerned with keeping my copy/pasted functions up-to-date in every project anymore. It works in older projects in its current state, so no need to "fix" what isn't broken there. And that's how I roll nowadays, KISS and YAGNI :D
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
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Good point, I'm not unfamiliar with UML, in our shop it was all done years ago and luckily I did not have to redesign any parts I'm working on. Sometimes when I see articles on CodeProject about architecture I wonder if the person who wrote it was bored and had nothing better to do than writing lengthy theoretical and incomprehensible articles. :-\
Yes to this. Glad I have some support here. Everyone but you and Sander are all sideeying me now. :laugh:
Real programmers use butterflies
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I agree to a point.
Rage wrote:
Part of the architecture is to structure the system, or the code, exactly so that people who want to do this can do it, and are not bothered with higher level topics.
This is how it should be. In my professional experience it was sometimes the case that a software project would be designed appropriately for its size and the team situation. In many cases, it simply wasn't. People would endlessly decouple things that only one person was ever going to work on, and this kind of thing happens all the time. The design would end up taking up the majority of the bandwidth even well past the design phase after the project was supposed to be nailed down. I've seen projects deathmarch over it even. Basically the project was thought to death. Is it as common as badly designed or simply undesigned software? No. Is it destructive and harmful to projects? Yes! I guess to sound cliche it's about moderation. You have to make the design appropriate for a project. I'm not dismissing UML entirely either. But it's is one of those things that strikes as having the perception of being far more useful than it actually is.
Real programmers use butterflies
honey the codewitch wrote:
You have to make the design appropriate for a project
Agreed, and this exactly is what should be (also) taught in CS courses.
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Niemand25 wrote:
agree that overdesign is a waste of resources, yet underdesign tends to cause much more damage.
I'm not advocating for doing away with the design phase. I also think that while what you say is true, people are also taught this heavily, and I think they take too much to heart. Maybe that's what it is too? Maybe people get so afraid of a deathmarched project that they overengineer everything?
Real programmers use butterflies
As you agreed in other post. Overdesign is rare if compare to underdesign. Which makes its impact quite low. At the moment I'm angry with myself as I one more time cut corners due to time pressure, disrespected SRP and now fixing my mess :doh: I guess the time pressure is the reason for underdevelopment and (for the most part) effectively prevents overdevelopment. Not that many developers have spare time to go to the jungle of abstractions and irrelevant use cases.
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As you agreed in other post. Overdesign is rare if compare to underdesign. Which makes its impact quite low. At the moment I'm angry with myself as I one more time cut corners due to time pressure, disrespected SRP and now fixing my mess :doh: I guess the time pressure is the reason for underdevelopment and (for the most part) effectively prevents overdevelopment. Not that many developers have spare time to go to the jungle of abstractions and irrelevant use cases.
Niemand25 wrote:
Not that many developers have spare time to go to the jungle of abstractions and irrelevant use cases.
That's probably why I see so many offending projects posted at CP. :laugh: Rarer in the field sure, but when you have a pointy haired boss who just heard about UML at a conference and now wants to impose it on every project it can make it near impossible to make deadlines.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I used to be a software architect. I think that's part of why I employ such a jaundiced eye when it comes to layered service architectures and sweeping design patterns just because and drowning in UML because reasons. It's true that when you're dealing with million dollar implementations, multiple deployment points, and disparate teams a lot of this abstraction can be useful. But how common is that in most people's development? I know it is for some of you, sure, but I think you're in the minority, or at least projects like these are in the minority. Not everyone is Plum Creek or Alcoa. It seems like the field of software architecture has taken on a life of its own and coupled with CPU cores to waste and infinite scaling out it has - and i'll just say it - poisoned software development. Just because you know how to do something doesn't mean you should. Most software application architectures do not survive contact with clients plus the erosion of time. They have a shelf life of significantly less than 10 years without some major portion of them being retooled. There are exceptions to this, but designing every solution to be that exception is a waste of time, money and creative energy. I'm also going to come out and say it makes things harder to maintain. When you're working with 20 different classes and interfaces where 3 would do it just increases the learning curve. There are definitely diminishing returns when it comes to decoupling software from itself, and you run into the cost/benefit wall pretty fast. It can only take you so far. It's best not to overdo it. Every fancy little UML entity you drop into your project increases the cognitive load of your project for other developers. Personally, I wouldn't care about that, because "cognitive load" is fun as far as I'm concerned but most people just want to do their work and go home, not spend odd hours studying someone else's work just so they can use it. Keep It Simple Stupid. Whatever happened to that? :sigh:
Real programmers use butterflies
"Simplify, simplify" -- Thoreau I totally agree, but I prefer to work alone anyway. I never begin with much of a plan, I simply begin and see where it goes. Twice I recall being handed a "spec" for something I was to develop, but I ignored them and did what I knew was right -- one of the specs was actually dangerous. Specs always come from people who have no idea what they're doing, but want to appear smarter than the people who do. For one personal project, I made kind of a grid to track which features needed to be developed, which didn't, and which I had completed, but that's about it.
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Niemand25 wrote:
Not that many developers have spare time to go to the jungle of abstractions and irrelevant use cases.
That's probably why I see so many offending projects posted at CP. :laugh: Rarer in the field sure, but when you have a pointy haired boss who just heard about UML at a conference and now wants to impose it on every project it can make it near impossible to make deadlines.
Real programmers use butterflies
Bosses are ... well ... bosses :) Not the worst case, I met a head of DBA's in one international company who never heard of normal forms. Discussion between her and reporting team was marvellous. She couldn't understand why reporting team are so much displeased about xml in fields. It is so easy to parse, isn't it? :cool:
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Yes to this. Glad I have some support here. Everyone but you and Sander are all sideeying me now. :laugh:
Real programmers use butterflies
Just heard a line "we all stand together" on the radio: The Frog Chorus & Paul McCartney - We All Stand Together - YouTube[^] :-\
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"Simplify, simplify" -- Thoreau I totally agree, but I prefer to work alone anyway. I never begin with much of a plan, I simply begin and see where it goes. Twice I recall being handed a "spec" for something I was to develop, but I ignored them and did what I knew was right -- one of the specs was actually dangerous. Specs always come from people who have no idea what they're doing, but want to appear smarter than the people who do. For one personal project, I made kind of a grid to track which features needed to be developed, which didn't, and which I had completed, but that's about it.
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I agree to a point.
Rage wrote:
Part of the architecture is to structure the system, or the code, exactly so that people who want to do this can do it, and are not bothered with higher level topics.
This is how it should be. In my professional experience it was sometimes the case that a software project would be designed appropriately for its size and the team situation. In many cases, it simply wasn't. People would endlessly decouple things that only one person was ever going to work on, and this kind of thing happens all the time. The design would end up taking up the majority of the bandwidth even well past the design phase after the project was supposed to be nailed down. I've seen projects deathmarch over it even. Basically the project was thought to death. Is it as common as badly designed or simply undesigned software? No. Is it destructive and harmful to projects? Yes! I guess to sound cliche it's about moderation. You have to make the design appropriate for a project. I'm not dismissing UML entirely either. But it's is one of those things that strikes as having the perception of being far more useful than it actually is.
Real programmers use butterflies
honey wrote:
People would endlessly decouple things that only one person was ever going to work on, and this kind of thing happens all the time. The design would end up taking up the majority of the bandwidth even well past the design phase after the project was supposed to be nailed down. I've seen projects deathmarch over it even. Basically the project was thought to death.
Wow. I guess the world has changed since I last had a salaried job, because I only saw this twice in over 20 years. The second time, I realized what would eventually happen, so I transferred to another group and built the appropriate subset of the same thing that a team of 30 or 40 were working on.
Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -
"Simplify, simplify" -- Thoreau I totally agree, but I prefer to work alone anyway. I never begin with much of a plan, I simply begin and see where it goes. Twice I recall being handed a "spec" for something I was to develop, but I ignored them and did what I knew was right -- one of the specs was actually dangerous. Specs always come from people who have no idea what they're doing, but want to appear smarter than the people who do. For one personal project, I made kind of a grid to track which features needed to be developed, which didn't, and which I had completed, but that's about it.
It takes a certain talent to be able to code like that, and I respect it. Naturally I do, because I'm much the same way when left to my own devices. It's useful to know architecture, UML and all of that mess just to be able to communicate with people who speak it, and I will concede that huge projects with large teams pretty much demand architecture and pre-planning but otherwise just let me at the code.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I used to be a software architect. I think that's part of why I employ such a jaundiced eye when it comes to layered service architectures and sweeping design patterns just because and drowning in UML because reasons. It's true that when you're dealing with million dollar implementations, multiple deployment points, and disparate teams a lot of this abstraction can be useful. But how common is that in most people's development? I know it is for some of you, sure, but I think you're in the minority, or at least projects like these are in the minority. Not everyone is Plum Creek or Alcoa. It seems like the field of software architecture has taken on a life of its own and coupled with CPU cores to waste and infinite scaling out it has - and i'll just say it - poisoned software development. Just because you know how to do something doesn't mean you should. Most software application architectures do not survive contact with clients plus the erosion of time. They have a shelf life of significantly less than 10 years without some major portion of them being retooled. There are exceptions to this, but designing every solution to be that exception is a waste of time, money and creative energy. I'm also going to come out and say it makes things harder to maintain. When you're working with 20 different classes and interfaces where 3 would do it just increases the learning curve. There are definitely diminishing returns when it comes to decoupling software from itself, and you run into the cost/benefit wall pretty fast. It can only take you so far. It's best not to overdo it. Every fancy little UML entity you drop into your project increases the cognitive load of your project for other developers. Personally, I wouldn't care about that, because "cognitive load" is fun as far as I'm concerned but most people just want to do their work and go home, not spend odd hours studying someone else's work just so they can use it. Keep It Simple Stupid. Whatever happened to that? :sigh:
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey wrote:
People would endlessly decouple things that only one person was ever going to work on, and this kind of thing happens all the time. The design would end up taking up the majority of the bandwidth even well past the design phase after the project was supposed to be nailed down. I've seen projects deathmarch over it even. Basically the project was thought to death.
Wow. I guess the world has changed since I last had a salaried job, because I only saw this twice in over 20 years. The second time, I realized what would eventually happen, so I transferred to another group and built the appropriate subset of the same thing that a team of 30 or 40 were working on.
Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.I was a software architect and consultant working primarily in project rescue. I came across all kinds of trash fires.
Real programmers use butterflies
