Everything in software architecture is a trade-off. -- The first law of software architecture - ThreadSky

bits.onethingwell.dev • 69 days ago

Everything in software architecture is a trade-off.

-- The first law of software architecture

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If an architect thinks they have discovered something that isn't a trade-off, more likely they just haven't yet identified the trade-off.

-- The first law of software architecture / Corollary 1

claybath.bsky.social•69 days ago

I trade off writing worse code for it being way funnier to watch someone review it

2eanptz.bsky.social•23 days ago

I disagree. There's such a thing as objectively bad architecture. Design improvements require tradeoffs only for software that has been optimized to a local maximum, which is rare (imo).

co5micwaffle.bsky.social•69 days ago

It's more of a triangle

2eanptz.bsky.social•23 days ago

Yeah. Or you could picture it as a quarter disc going between coordinates (0, 1) and (1, 0) in a cartesian plane. There are tradeoffs, optimizing for distance from the origin, when moving across the boundary, but I'd argue most architectures land somewhere within the interior.

paulveitch.bsky.social•69 days ago

...and life

mark-schmeiser.bsky.social•69 days ago

So true. And hard to accept …

jtheophilus.bsky.social•69 days ago

True for all engineering disciplines I’d imagine.

davidalexlamb.bsky.social•69 days ago

Pretty much everything in engineering. I tried to teach the concept of "tradeoff studies" to my 3rd year undergraduate students, who tended to just want to pick the first solution that occurred to them.

mohsenhabibikhoo.bsky.social•69 days ago

So everything in software architecture is not a file but a contract? Do you know what are the consequences of this theory in the field of OS architecture and beyond? We can go beyond our monolithic Linux kernel and have a “distributed operating system” that its development is distributed too.

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