Throwing new developers in at the deep end is kind of on brand for an industry where one of the most popular learning websites has an underlying culture of assuming people are both wrong and stupid.
#Architecture diagrams code#
When they do spend time with existing team members, such as pair programming or in code review, they'll make more efficient use of that time. The more they understand the meaning of the code they're working with, the more self sufficient they can be. Give a new developer good architecture diagrams and you give them the context to understand the code they'll explore in the first weeks on the job. Maybe that's short termist but it's the reality, for many dev teams, of juggling business demands with team responsibilities. Onboarding new developers onto a project is rife with bottlenecks.Įvery moment that an experienced team member spends teaching a newcomer the ins and outs of a codebase, for example, is time that they're not working towards that sprint's tasks.
#Architecture diagrams software#
So, if you want software architecture diagrams to be useful, rather than ritual, then make sure you:
#Architecture diagrams how to#
Later, diagrams are primarily communication tools that provide a record of decisions taken and act as learning aids.īut whatever stage you're at, if there isn't an agreement between everyone working on a codebase as to what its architecture is then can you really say you have an architecture at all? Don't you instead have an emergent phenomenon that just happens to work? How to be sure of why In the early design phases, it's the act of creating the diagram that's important because it enables systematic thinking. The answer you give will almost certainly change depending on the phase of your project and the audience for your diagrams. The first step to answering, "Why create architecture diagrams?" is to ask another question: what underlying problem are you looking to solve? Diagrams are effective when you know why you're using them There are even stories of enterprise software projects where architects spent years drawing UML diagrams without a single line of code being written.
Rather than describing the reality of a codebase, some teams set out to use UML to design solutions before committing anything to code. Even its Wikipedia page needs several diagrams just to describe how the various parts relate to each other.Īnd perhaps it's not entirely UML that's the problem but rather the way it was used early on. Not only does UML feel like it's from another era but it also has a reputation for complexity. Do you map out the broad components or do you dive into the specific interactions between functions and objects? Uh, modeling language?Īnd then there's UML whose answer is to get as deep into the weeds as possible.įor many developers, architecture diagrams are synonymous with this visual language and the mid-90s rush to object oriented programming. For a civil engineering project, there are well understood standards. Use other ways to describe it and you can easily introduce entropy, where the diagram gradually diverges from reality.Įven if there is an architecture diagram, it can be hard to get the level of resolution right. That's because code isn't like a building. Attempts at describing codebases have often been imperfect. Part of the answer is to do with history. So, why does it feel uncomfortably familiar for us as developers? Code should speak for itself, right? You'd be confused and, no doubt, you'd question the competence of everyone involved.īut, of course, this wouldn't really happen on a construction site.
With that they advise you to start prodding around at what's already been built and then they leave for their next meeting. Then they show you a handful of hinges, a few pipe connectors, and an unopened bag of cement. They start by telling you that it's a steel frame building with precast panels on the exterior. You join a construction project as a contractor and the construction manager gets you up to speed. So, then, why aren't they a core part of every software development project? Why are software architecture diagrams important? Outward communication: they're easily consumed by non-hands-on stakeholders.Collaboration: they make it easier to onboard new developers and to work across different parts of a large codebase.Coherent vision: they provide a clear statement of direction and of decisions made.There are three core reasons why architecture diagrams make sense for even moderately sized codebases:
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