Dont let architecture astronauts scare you

1
Dont let architecture astronauts scare you

• Joel Spolsky
• joelonsoftware.com

2
What?

• Great thinkers that build revolutionary ideas
  from multiple layers of abstraction.
• When they get too high abstraction-wise, they run
  out of oxygen.
• Result we have new inventions with cool names
  and all, but no one knows whats the point.

3
An attempt to explain

• Architecture astronauts might say Napster was
  cool thing, because it was peer-to-peer service,
  ignoring the fact that most people were just
  intrested in the functionality it provided.
• Obsession evolves. Soon everything is about
  peer-to-peer. They have new great ideas based on
  peer-to-peer, even if those ideas dont provide
  anything new.

4
4th slide already...

• They come to your house at night, and...claim
  that their new architecture solves something!
• Fine architectures indeed, but not worth the
  millenial hype surrounding them.
• So, did it cure the cancer?

5
Conclusions

• They usually solve the problems they think they
  can solve, not the ones that are useful to solve.
• Most of the people really just care about what
  they can do with the application, not why and how
  it works.

6
INTERMISSION
7
Paper prototyping

• Joel Spolsky
• joelonsoftware.com

8
Why prototypes?

• To ease testing
• To save time
• So if making of the prototype to test a little
  feature takes insane amount of time is it worth
  it?
• If prototype can do the same thing software is
  supposed to, it might as well be the software.
• If not, whats the point of it?

9
Paper prototypes

• Instead of time-consuming creation of
  software-based environment, we can use...
• Paper. Just print some images representing
  interface elements and play with them ?

10
The last slide.