preface

Before we get into how architecture is harder than code, let’s talk about something interesting. Right

“Hey, have you been busy lately…”

“I’m so busy, working late into the morning.”

“Where’s your architect?”

“Forget it, do nothing but write powerpoint…”

The above dialogue, everyone should be more familiar with it.. It is true that these conversations often take place in the company canteen, on the road to fish, between toilets and private rooms, which is also the direct impression that most front-line developers generally have on the so-called “architect”. This contradiction is as sharp as the seller show and buyer show of Taobao stores

Programmer’s idea of an architect

  • Technical bull, proficient in all kinds of technology, one as ten
  • bald
  • Have a lot of technical secrets that the average developer can’t have

The architect that programmers see in reality

  • Every day in meetings, I know how to write PPT and draw pictures
  • Open mouth high concurrency, closed mouth high availability
  • You don’t know the React lifecycle, so you write code like that
  • bald

Em, 🤔 The only thing they seem to have in common is baldness

Before I was in an article in the front-end career planning – how to transfer from one line development professional architects throws a point of view, since it is become an architect, you face the competition will be 10 times than the original do develop intense, not give you time to grow up, facing the challenge from you accept this job has been started, Why is that?

Because being an architect means you no longer have direct control over the details, this fear of not touching the code will always be with you.

We all know that in the army, general most is come up a line of soldiers, compared to directly face the battle, general to face is how to in the case of scratching a sword sticks still effective command of the army and win the victory, it needs to experience at the same time also need talent, not all of the general is good, One out of ten. The rest are mediocre. Even mediocrity stem for a long time, return inferior soldier below

A general with a fat head and a brain, who could not move a sword or a club, and who did not know what it was to march and fight, might have been a tendin-fleshed general who could go into battle ten years ago.

So architects, too, became the architect, that out of the fear of the technical details, and the continuous development of technology cannot be synchronized between anxiety all the time by the architect’s mind, a big part of it may become a PPT, an expert in the path of self hypnosis and give up, and then into a senior development of writing code as below, I could only face the career dilemma of PPT architecture until I was eliminated by The Times.

Therefore, don’t look down upon PPT architects in everyone’s eyes. They used to be extremely excellent developers, and successfully established architectural thinking and transferred to other jobs, but gradually lost in the subsequent competition.

Let’s return to the focus of this article

How is architecture harder than code?

No matter how great the front-end architecture is, its smallest component is still the code, and the bottom is 01010. These are the basic materials of the architecture, just like you have to mix cement and sand in building a house. Then why can the architectural architecture design be separated from the control of cement sand and only make drawings and upper design? But what if the front-end architecture doesn’t work?

Because the front-end technology updates fast, fast to haven’t fully grasp these details, some technology already outdated, you can imagine, an architect when doing the building architecture and design to a half, workers tell him about this not line, you don’t have the material now, that doesn’t work, you this kind of cement has long been out of date, Now you don’t even need to pour a house…

Can’t imagine right, the designer estimates crazy, why I do architectural architecture for more than ten years have been using these materials ah, at most some new materials and new technology, how suddenly the earth turned upside down, how to do this architecture? !!!!!

But this is exactly what happens in front-end technology. Front-end architects face the awkward situation of constantly updating technical standards, technical frameworks, and a variety of different solutions to the same problem. I’m working on HOC. Well, I have to do some research. The CTO has a meeting, so I have to do it in my spare time.

A front-end architect is a human being who needs to do a lot of work in complex scenarios and constantly changing requirements, but the speed of front-end technology development forces him to understand it. But any new technology that you can claim to have mastered by looking at the documentation without actually using it in the business? Even if you stand with TODOMVC tried a pair of, but really use in its own architecture design, compared with the actual code of a line of development, always like tap feel confused, after all don’t like myself when senior development of accumulated rich experience, the new technology is tasted, is there a hole, not good, It is not clear whether I have applied and understood this technique correctly in my architectural design.

So it’s not hard to do front-end architecture design using the skills and experience you’ve accumulated in advanced development, just thinking change, but it’s hard when you become a front-end architect, you lose the opportunity to write code, you can’t touch the code anymore. In the face of the rapid development of front-end technology, how to keep my understanding of technology at the level of advanced development, and at the same time apply it to the architecture design, I also need to constantly learn and improve my architecture ability.

Therefore, the biggest challenge of being a front-end architect is not the ability problem, but the speed at which technology is updated in the front-end domain. As time goes by, the mastery of technical details gradually gets out of control and the effective maintenance and design of the architecture becomes impossible

When you are a front-line developer, you may not be able to test a promising new technology in the project. For the sake of stability, this operation is even more impossible as an architect. So now you know why many senior developers have great technology when they are doing development, and why they have been an architect for several years, but their skills are not good enough.

The general won’t be able to move his sword long enough.

Is this solvable? Of course not. There is only one way to get out of doing architecture while maintaining a constant grasp of technical details, and that is to become an architect’s architect.

I said in another article, the essence of architecture work is to build the boundary, the balance of boundary to space, when you are the architect as a line, facing the development of time, you should keep balance needs to be done quite a lot of work, spend a lot of energy, because the front end of the constantly updated technology is continuing to the boundary of seepage pressure, When you can’t maintain a balance between your architectural work and your mastery of technical details, it collapses and your architectural career fizzles. So what’s that? It’s a career structure

Architecture is everywhere

So in terms of architectural thinking, we want to reduce the difficulty of maintaining the balance, we have to build the boundary up again, and travel the second space to reduce the pressure from the first line of development. This is the architect’s architect, you know Ali’s P9, and that’s kind of the role. Why can the P9 with the front end team not be a technical bull, or a person who is very good at technical details? As he crossed the line architecture this layer pressure the biggest space, by maintaining between him and a line or two line structure boundary equilibrium was enough to finish the work, for this level of people, is already out of details see global, they challenge the unknown, innovation, future, trend, this is a story of another dimension. Of course, I’m not at that level, so I can’t describe it to you, haha, but you have to believe that the challenges just get bigger and bigger. The higher you go, the harder it gets. The higher you go, the more windy it gets

The latter

This paper to explain the architect and a line on the development work of the difference, as well as the development of many current line in the eyes of the architect reason why is like that, I hope one day if you become a trap architect can across this pressure, don’t do a line of architects have been developed at the same time is also a way, actually in professional life both differ not quite, In general, front-line architects who are overwhelmed by this kind of pressure will not be able to achieve higher professional achievements in the future and will have to sit on their laurels and rely on their past experience

Therefore, life is not a game, not a simple upgrade to beat monsters, becoming a front-end architect is not necessarily a better choice, choose your own path, for career planning is crucial.