Key principles of software architecture, boring technology…

Hello there,

I am very happy to know that you are tuning in for the very first episode of my new monthly newsletter. I hope you enjoy the content, and I would love to hear back from you! Please let me know what you liked and what you want more of in the future, by replying to this email, or message me at twitter/__florian.

„5 Key Principles of Software Architecture” by Semi Koen

Great article, recapping architecture principles, that are important to always keep in the back of your head: SOLID, “least”, economics, opportunity cost and last responsible moment. It is very easy to forget some of those core principles in the twirl of the average work day, which makes it even more important to be reminded of them every now and then.

„Choose Boring Technology” by Dan McKinley

I will just leave you with this quote:

When choosing technology, you have both known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

• A known unknown is something like: we don’t know what happens when this database hits 100% CPU.
• An unknown unknown is something like: geez it didn’t even occur to us that writing stats would cause GC pauses.

„Why it is Important that Software Projects Fail” by Anthony Berglas

This is one of my favourite articles, that I read in the past weeks. It highlights why it is healthy for some software projects to fail, because their inner complexity just became too big for anyone to handle.

Given that the size of a bureaucracy is not related to its function, one might ask why the size of the tax office has remained between 1% and 2% of GDP for over fifty years, regardless of the technology available to it. […] The answer is that society could not tolerate a value much higher than 2% — we would be paying taxes just to fund the tax collection process.

„Why Great Managers Matter” by Katie Womersley

A wonderful article about the impact of great managers, and what makes them actually great.

The article also mentions Google’s Project Oxygen, which was a 2008 study on what makes great managers great. The top findings are:

1. They’re good coaches.
2. They empower their team and don’t micro-manage.
3. They express interest in their team members’ success and personal well-being.
4. They productive and results-oriented.
5. They’re good communicators and they listen to the team.
6. They help employees with career development.
7. They have a clear vision and strategy for the team.
8. They have key technical skills that help them advise the team.

This lead google to create a set of free tools that you definitely want to check out!

„The Foundation of Technical Leadership” by Brandon Gregory

A great article about fundamental insights, that will help you in your everyday technical leadership work. The article quotes Jerry Weinberg, saying:

If a programmer is indispensable, get rid of him as quickly as possible!

That’s it for this week, thanks again for reading, don’t forget to send me your feedback and have a wonderful weekend!

Cheers,
Florian

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