What is Architecture? Do you Care?

What does architecture mean to you? Do you care about architecture? If not, should you care?

Depending on what you do, the term architecture signifies different things. And the fact that it is used as a verb (i.e. to architect) and a noun (i.e. this architecture) complicates things.

For instance, my civil engineering friends talk about building architecture. They might also talk similarly about building design. Now, consider my friends who work in automobile engineering. I hear them talk a about automobile design. But I don't hear any talk about automobile architecture. Why? What makes these two engineering kind different? And finally, consider software engineering in which I can claim some expertise, at least more than I can in any other engineering domain. In software, we talk a lot about both architecture and design. We also talk about software construction. Most often there is no clear delineation between these. We seem to transcend between architecture and design and sometimes even construction.

So when you build a building, you architect it, design it and construct it. When you build a car, do you just design it and construct it. Does a car have architecture?

I have some views on this, but before taking on them here, I truly want to understand your take on this. What do you think? Do you architect? Do you design? Do you do both?

YouRItSoftware Architecture Design

Posted on: Jun 16, 2005

Posted by: alur

Category: Architecture

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Comments:

I consider architecture as being a more high-level concept than design. In my opinion, arhitecture is more related to physical tiers (e.g. including decisions about whether to use load-balanced webservers and replicated database servers) than dealing with logical layers and more low level design patterns.

I also tend to agree with Martin Fowler in his introduction to the book "Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture" where he writes about architecture as, quote: "one of those impressive-sounding words, used primarily to indicate we're talking something that's important".

However, in my opinion, the quote above does not apply as much to architecture as it does apply to architects, i.e. those developers who love to put the title "Architect" in their email/forum signatures and the business cards.

There are quite a lot of "wannabe-a-software-development-guru" that try to exaggerate their competence by using an impressive "architect" title.

/ Tom

Posted by Tom on June 17, 2005 at 05:37 AM PDT #

This seems a little pretentious to me. Architecture and Design are the same extension of man -- you cannot do one without doing the other. Minus all the superfluous semantics and you're left with the same thing... If you show me an architect, then I'll show you a designer.

Posted by russo on June 18, 2005 at 07:48 AM PDT #

My take on this is that "architecture" is synonymous with "high-level design", and the exact phraseology used depends on the context.

In software and hardware computing development the use of the word "architecture" conveys to others the concept that what they are seeing is a blueprint for performing some activity, but that the actual implementation of this blueprint is up to the software or hardware engineers to whom it is entrusted.

As a slight aside, from my perspective as a software engineer having done some "architectural" design and implementation, I like to keep in mind the analogy with civil engineering architecture. That is: just because the 'architect" says that this is the way it will work doesn't necessarily mean that it can be built in the way specified. Just as builders work with architects to explain what will and won't work in creating a building, so software developers need to be involved with the software architects to discuss and decide on how a piece of software will actually be implemented.

Posted by Trevor Watson on June 21, 2005 at 02:10 AM PDT #

Architecture and design even most of the time used together, have quite a bit of difference. We usually don't talk about the architecture of a car because it was done years ago and never changed. Having four tires, an engine, a steering, brakes and gas pedal is the architecture of a car (to name a few). Design on the other hand can change. Steering may not only come on the left but can be on right and the middle. Engine can be placed infront or back of the car. Architecture is necessary to run the item, design addresses the interactions.

Posted by Ashish on June 23, 2005 at 05:53 AM PDT #

car architecture Yes a car does have architecture Architecture is a system that brings materials and ideas together to create a system that has a end result, through time. Is a car a time machine? think about it. Your feet will get you from point to point b in so many minutes. A automobile will get you there in a shorter amount of time. A automobile is a machine. Time Machine

Posted by david on August 15, 2005 at 02:25 PM PDT #

I would personally think Architecture means a creature as a whole. The design is just a step to inject a kind of life into it. (So the architects can call themselves the "God" if they are able to do so). The creature should grow, or say evolve, in body or in intelligence with the changes of surronding environments (here we normally call it Business Requirements, or even something called Business Modelling if you are luck to get an intellectual booss). A car is hard to grow in its soft intelligence, or its hard body. Or put it more right, it's not worthy of gorwing. The same theory goes to a functionality unit, or a software tool. But for the production line, for the platform, for the culture (whatever it means), you have to bother with Architecture. You have to care about the architecture. Hope this naive thinking makes theose so called "architects" happy for a while. :)

Posted by Zhong Li on August 23, 2005 at 09:35 AM PDT #

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