Architecture Weekly #110 - 16th January 2023

Jan 16, 2023

Welcome to the new week!

I was asked multiple times how I’m building the validation flow from the Web requests to storage. The general advice is the same as Fox Mulder got: trust no one!

Yet, if we start implementation, then decisions made around that are not as trivial as they may seem. I wrote about that in my latest article:

How to validate business logic

Martin Fowler said:

Software architecture is those decisions which are both important and hard to change.

And decision making is one of the most important tools we should be practising. It’s a skill that we need to train. We also need to understand what are good and bad decisions. To find that out, it’s worth looking at resources outside our industry. For instance:

Art Markman - How You Define the Problem Determines Whether You Solve It

We also need to understand the surrounding environment, as software architecture is not only built from decisions around tech stack.

People are essential for applying the design. Good design is not created in a vacuum; we need to consider the stuff we have and how we organise their work. Microsoft recently decided to give employees unlimited time off. It’s a controversial decision, as it doesn’t mean people will work less. The research shows that most of the time, it ends up with longer work time. It’s not enough to allow people to take time off; it’s essential to build an environment where people feel safe to take it. More in:

If you want to check the report about hiring trends, check the following:

CodinGame - State of Tech Hiring in 2023

Speaking about trends and “State of something” reports.

My main issue is that they’re not representative, quite often artificial and are not using proper statistical methods.

For instance, the JS dev surveys show that people are mostly using React, Angular, Vue, etc., while comparing that to actual usage, it appears that 81% of the web world is running jQuery.

I understand that they’re more around trends rather than hard numbers. It would be better if they could at least compare that to realistic numbers and analyse the statistical significance of those results. Especially since the results are usually not presented as “made for fun” but as the “State of (...)” and impacting the market. Then people believe in such and make wrong assumptions, overwintering, etc. See also:

State of JS 2022

If you’d like to get back to basics and find a decent rabbit hole to go down, check out great material on crafting your own scripting language:

Robert Nystorm - Crafting Interpreters

Check, also other links!

Cheers
Oskar

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p.s.2. Ukraine is still under brutal Russian invasion. A lot of Ukrainian people are hurt, without shelter and need help. You can help in various ways, for instance, directly helping refugees, spreading awareness, and putting pressure on your local government or companies. You can also support Ukraine by donating, e.g. to the Ukraine humanitarian organisation, Ambulances for Ukraine or Red Cross.

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