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RE: Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You

• To: "'Paul Prescod'" <paul@p...>,"Mike Champion" <mc@x...>, "XML Dev" <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You
• From: "Maciejewski, Thomas" <Thomas.Maciejewski@l...>
• Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 12:08:14 -0400

<paul>
I don't think that it is as simple as that. Some coherent architectures 
do emerge as a package from a single person or small team. Examples 
include the WIMP interface, the original Web, the Lisp programming 
language. Of course all of these have been incrementally extended since 
then.
</paul>

yes this is because they work though. 

there are scientists and engineers
the scientists reach out to extend knowledge and the engineers try to find
practical uses of this knowledge by applying these new findings to problems
that they need to solve.  

I don't think that anyone here is saying that it is bad to invent.  But the
case in point here is that for most of us we don't need to risk our jobs on
new technology that have not been proven. Especially in the case where the
technology already exists to solve the problem at hand. 

Also things incrementally change. This is evolution. Evolution is much more
common that revolutionary new ideas. 

Necessity is the mother of invention.  As needs arise the technology will
fill the gaps that need to be filled probably by evolving the current
technology into what it needs to be. 

One thing that I was thinking the other day when looking at some very badly
designed code was that design itself has evolved.  How people programmed 10
years ago is very much different than how they program today ... even in C
or C++.  How projects are managed also is also evolving and becoming more
efficient naturally.




-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Prescod [mailto:paul@p...]
Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 11:06 AM
To: Mike Champion; XML Dev
Subject: Re:  Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You


Mike Champion wrote:
> ...
> 
> I think that's a good list.  It reminds me of how URLs, HTTP, and HTML
> -- three relatively uninteresting designs on their own, but with
> great "emergent properties" together -- formed the foundation for the Web.

Anyone who met Tim B-L in 1989 would have called him an architecture 
astronaut just as they do today.

http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html

 > ...
> Joel Sapolsky's rhetorical excesses aside, I think his point needs
> to be carefully considered.  The architecture of products we use
> year in/year out tend to evolve from the experiments of individual
> craftpeople rather than being handed down by the Intelligent Designer.
> "Architecture" can be the art and science of figuring out the 
> enduring principles of things that actually work, rather than
> building abstractions that can live only in the rarefied air of
> pure thought.

I don't think that it is as simple as that. Some coherent architectures 
do emerge as a package from a single person or small team. Examples 
include the WIMP interface, the original Web, the Lisp programming 
language. Of course all of these have been incrementally extended since 
then.

  Paul Prescod


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