Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You (2001)

The article is from 2001, but it’s an evergreen reminder to _stop building solutions in search of a problem._

I struggle with this a lot.<p>I have a hard time knowing if I am going to need something in the future or if something is &quot;YAGNI.&quot;<p>I&#x27;m not sure if the issue is more common in web applications than in other types of applications, but every choice I make feels like a catch-22. If something is not modular enough, then I may regret one day. If something is too complex, I may also regret it one day.

One way I&#x27;ve seen architectures get really complex really quickly, is when engineers try to foresee and plan to multiple rare non-critical scenarios.<p>The famous &quot;what if&quot; driven architecture:<p>- What if we get 10k concurrent users tomorrow? Everything needs to be CQRS event-driven, HA queue backed, produced and consumed by a fleet of microservices or it wont work perfectly!<p>- What if the user loses their internet connectivity while submitting this mundane form? We need localstorage backup for all CRUD operations and implement custom conflict resolution logic for each POST&#x2F;PUT&#x2F;DELETE.<p>I mean, yes we can try to tackle all possible issues and outcomes in our timeline but the sun would have cooled down by the time we are done.<p>Sometimes, well most of the times, you just gotta keep the project focused and 80&#x2F;20 it.

&gt;&quot;The Architecture Astronauts will say things like: “Can you imagine a program like Napster where you can download anything, not just songs?”&quot;<p>Yes, and that is how things like VPNs, Tor, BitTorrent (but more broadly, P2P file sharing&#x2F;downloading), Bitcoin (but more broadly, cryptocurrency&#x2F;blockchain) and (more recently) Decentralized (aka &quot;anti Big Tech censorship&quot;) Video&#x2F;Content Sharing -- were all invented...

Jini. I remember reading an article (in print) in Wired about that. With Bill Joy with I guess &quot;genie shoes&quot; on the cover.

2001.<p>it’s always heartening to see things like this:<p><i>All they’ll talk about is peer-to-peer this, that, and the other thing. Suddenly you have peer-to-peer conferences, peer-to-peer venture capital funds, and even peer-to-peer backlash with the imbecile business journalists dripping with glee as they copy each other’s stories: “Peer To Peer: Dead!”</i><p>for the simple fact that it’s a reminder that if we have indeed strayed from the light, we did so long ago.