Software Architecture 3 Ways

Abstract: Architecture is a specific abstraction, but it is hard to describe it to others. Most of our explanations refer back to shared experiences – but early career developers don’t yet have those experiences. In this talk, I will describe software architecture three ways, none of which refer to shared experiences.

  1. By showing a system that was redesigned several times with the same requirements.
  2. By charting the critical insights that added up to architecture, starting in the 1970s.
  3. By walking through the design of an example system and knocking down some misunderstandings, such as “the code is the truth” and “there’s one right way to build it”.

If you are new to architecture, I hope you will understand architecture better. If you already know architecture, I hope you will have new ways of explaining your passion to others.

This invited talk was delivered at the 2021 Codecamp Conference - The One With Architecture, 24 February 2021.

Here are the slides: