Righting software

A famous series of courses, workshops, podcast episodes, and books created by the system architect #Juval Löwy, all carrying the same name and teaching on the same topic: To teach the software architects of the world how to properly design software systems.

The name is a pun on the phrase “Writing software”.

Promises

Breaking the common misconceptions that today have become the norm:

  • “Software must have bugs”
  • “Software always misses its deadlines”

“[When I’m the architect for a project] we deliver on time and with zero defects”

J. Löwy, January 27, 2021.

Key observations

  • Features is an abstract construct that is the result from the integration, not from implementation.

  • A software architect is a human with the same components as a hunter/gatherer from 10,000 years ago, and yet it works fine.

Core concepts

Löwys proposed methods breaks down into two main categories:

  1. How not to design software: Functional decomposition#
  2. How to design software: Volatility decomposition#

Important to get what’s wrong with today’s way of designing software before digging into how to do it properly, as it’s a total shift in procedures and mixing them does not end well.

The design is of utter most importance. But to survive the brigade of “inevidable” bugs you need testing.

  • Unit testing: Requirement of any project.
  • Regression testing: Requirement to deliver zero defects.

The latter, regression testing, is not feasible nor fully achievable when desiging by Functional decomposition#.

Learn more

References

  • J. Löwy (January 27, 2021), “Righting Software - System Design” [Workshop], NDC London 2021.
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