Creswell on Architecture

Dan Creswell says stuff about architecture: Consider how prevalent the use of frameworks is within our industry and think about the fact that in many cases one simply writes a POJO or two and leaves the rest to the framework. The framework makes life easier, it solves the big problems but it also exerts force on the design of our software as after all we must write it to follow the appropriate conventions, implement the appropriate methods etc.

The very worst example of the framework trend is seen in the decision to purchase a mammoth framework offering that provides everything in one box as an “integrated solution”. A huge stack that gets connected into everything and exerts massive gravity on our architecture. Everything becomes an exercise in warping aspects of our system to fit with this stack and the assumptions of its creators. Essentially we’ve bought “architecture in a box”.

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The older I get, the simpler I like things. I don't have anything against frameworks, but they often become massive technical debt by themselves.

Einstein is over quoted, but more and more my views on software architecture are centered on Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

This means writing the tiniest amount of code you can. For instance, use HTTP clients, use JMS clients, write a security impl., perhaps a simple feed reader. Deploy some really good web architecture. Some good monitoring foo. And then build in unit, integration, and acceptance testing from the beginning. And yer done. At least if you want to take advantage of all the engineering that already went into the web - which at this point is kindove lot.