In the last post I highlighted some specific design problems and associated solutions. Now I want to look at these solutions a little more deeply.

To refresh our memory the solutions were as follows:

1. Separating Mutex Concerns.
2. Sequential Resource Allocation.
3. Global Command Identification.

I want to characterise these differently because these names sound a little like pattern titles. Although we as a software community have had success using the idea of patterns I think we have fixed the concept rather more than Christopher Alexander may have intended.

I want to rename the solutions as shown below in order to expressly highlight their dynamic behavioural aspect:

1. Access Separation.
2. Sequential Allocation.
3. Operation Filtering.

You might have noticed in the third example the original concept of “Global Command Identification” represents just one possible way to implement the dynamic issue of filtering operations. Something it has in common with much of the published design pattern work where specific example solutions are mentioned. To me design patterns represent a more fixed idea that is closer to the actual implementation.

Others may come up with a better renaming, but I am just trying to get to a more mobile and dynamic definition of the solutions. Looking at the issues in this light starts to get to the core of the issue of why it is so hard to develop an architectural awareness.

If you can truly understand, or ‘grok‘, the core concept of this characterisation, regardless of the actual words, you will see that they do not really represent design patterns – not in the way we have them at the moment.

This is where there is a difference between the architecture of buildings – where design patterns originated – and the architecture of software. Although both deal with the design of fixed constructs, whether it be the building or the code, the programmer has to worry far more about the dynamic behaviour of the fixed construct (their code). Yes – a building architect does have to worry about the dynamic behaviour of people inhabiting their design, but software is an innately active artefact.

Let me recap the debugging and design fixing process in terms of the following actions that are carried out in order:

1: Delicately Empirically Collect the Data.
Here we have to be very aware of the boundaries of our knowledge and collect information in a way that does not disturb the phenomenon we are looking at. Awareness of our own thinking process is vital here.

2: Imagine into the Problem Behaviour.
We have to imagine ourselves into the current behaviour that the system is exhibiting. (This is the hard bit when you are under pressure and is what requires a strong focus in order to understand what the existing design is doing)

3: Imagine into the Required Behaviour.
We need to imagine into what the required behaviour of the system NEEDS to be and it is here that we start to meet the ‘gap’ between problem and solution. It may indeed only need a one line fix, but quite likely there is a deeper design problem. Again here is a point where our self-awareness is important. Do we have the discipline to make ourselves stop and think more carefully and widely about the presenting problem?

4: THE GAP. Cognitively Feeling for the best Solution Concept.
In this stage there is a very fine “Cognitive Feeling” in action to decide what is a good fit to the problem. For the experienced programmer this is more than just a question of “Does this solution fit the requirement?”

There is the consideration of whether the proposed solution idea is going to be a sustainable fix during the future lifetime of the project.

This question is much like asking myself if I will still find
this painting beautiful in 10 years time.

There is a current widely held belief that the best procedure for coming up with a design solution is to produce many possible alternatives and evaluate them in order to choose the best one. In practice I have found that this very rarely – if ever – happens.

I usually arrive at a single design solution by trying out the multiplicity of possible solutions while in the ‘gap’ where I am considering various alternatives – imagining each of them in operation, possibly ‘drawing’ the thoughts out on a whiteboard as I think.

In this part of the process the more experienced programmer will slow things down to the extent of even putting in a provisional simple solution that gives them some breathing, or thinking, space. This is the idea of provisionality mentioned by Marian Petre, because this mode of design thinking requires time and reduced pressure.

It is amazing how often this happens in the shower!

Of course this is predicated on the fact that I have done the required detailed groundwork, but as I mentioned in the poem, our logical thinking can only take us to the boundary of what we know. Trying to push to go faster results in inadequate and buggy designs that are based on immature thinking.

This is the central conundrum of software development. The more we dive down into detailed analysis, the more we encounter these ‘softer’, heuristic elements.

5: Implementation.
Finally we get to the implementation. As you will have seen it is far too easy to jump into “premature implementation”. It is hard, if not impossible, to teach people just how small a part the coding is of the whole process. It needs to be experienced. Until you have seen how a good design triggers an amazing collapse in code complexity, the importance of taking the time to search for that great design is not an obvious conclusion. This is a fundamental eye of the needle that all programmers need to go through.

This is the main reason I like programming:

I get less code.
I get something I can reason about.
I get something that does the job!

Beautiful!

In the next post I am going to show how the dynamic design solution ideas and the human analysis process link to what I will call the “Organising Principle”, a term I have borrowed from Rudolf Steiner’s lexicon.

→ACCU2016: Talk on Software Architecture Design 6: Organising Principles
←ACCU2016: Talk on Software Architecture Design 4: A Design Example