Do You Express Architecture In Your Code? An Interview with George Fairbanks

As you and your team structure your projects and write code, how conscious are you of the need to reflect the overall architecture in the code itself?

If you find that team members are not aware of the architecture of the system and, perhaps as a result, are making a mess of the intended architecture by introducing dependencies that hurt the project's agility, then you should listen and let George Fairbanks persuade you of the value of dropping architectural hints throughout the project definition, folders, and code.

Listen now: (download)



Reading recommendations:

In this episode, George, also focuses on the importance of modelling and the need to educate the newer generation of programmers on that importance.  George recommended a couple of books for those that would like to learn more about modelling:

Objects, components, and frameworks with UML: the catalysis approach
Implementation Patterns by Kent Beck

George should have also recommended his own book in this context: Just Enough Software Architecture. His book takes a very practical approach to software architecture that should appeal to the current generation of programmers as it advocates a risk driven, lean approach to software architecture.  In addition to talking about expressing architecture in code, his book also provides a concrete overview of the various models and how they buy us leverage--concepts that would ideally be taught in today's software engineering programs.

Bett:    Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Thinking  by Roger L. Martin

Russ:   Formal Theory of Fun and Creativity by Jürgen Schmidhuber

A link to George's "dandelion" presentation that Russ referenced: Master-Builders Have Rich Conceptual Models