Time Changes Everything

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Time Changes Everything

Philip Nelson

One of the things I ' ve been most entertained by as the years has gone by are observing what things has lasted and what ha Ven ' t. So many patterns, frameworks, paradigm changes, and Algorithms-all argued for with passion by smart people, thinking of th E long term, balancing all the known issues-have not warranted more than a yawn over the long haul. Why? What's his-tory trying to tell us?
Pick a worthy challenge
This was tricky for a software architect. Challenges or problems is given to us, so we don't have the luxury of choosing, right? It ' s not so simple. First of all, we often make the mistake of believing and we can ' t influence what we're asked to do. Usually we can, but it gets us out of our comfort zone in the tech-nology space. There is dragons there when we don ' t choose to does the right things. Time passes, we have worked diligently and hard solving the requested challenge, and the end it doesn ' t matter:we didn Really needed and our work is wasted. Over time, a good solution to the right challenge would probably outlast all others.
Simple Rules
We say it to ourselves:keep it simple, stupid. We say it, but we don ' t do it. We don ' t do it because we don't have to. We are smart and we can handle some
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?? Complexity and easily justify it because it adds agility to our design, because it's more elegant to our aesthetic Sensib Ilities, because we believe we can anticipate the future. Then time passes; You walk away from the project for a year or more. When you come back to it, you almost always wonder why do you do. If you had to does it all over again, you would probably do it differently. Time does this to us. It makes us look silly. It is good to realize this early, get over yourself, and really try to learn what's simple means in the lens Can grind.
Be Happy with the old Stuff
Architects love-to-search for the ' One True ' ": the methodology or school of thought that provides the predictability we Crave and the clear answers that always seem just out of reach. The problem is, whatever guiding light, you had in one year would probably not match the Guiding Light you had in a CO Uple of years, much less a decade later. As-you-look-back, you'll always have looking at designs that don ' t match your the current expectations. Learn to embrace this old stuff, and resist the temptation to think you should go back and "fix" it. Was the solution a appropriate one for the problem? Did it solve the needs of the problem? Keep these as your measure-you would be a lot happier.

Time Changes Everything