Software like a garden, not city

Guys
I rather like this thought. It seems to reflect experiences i have had
with complex pieces of software.

 I think many people think about software architecture the way they
 think about city streets. When you build city streets, you come, you
 pave, and you come back in six years, after a lot of heavy wear and
 tear, and you patch a few potholes. And after another four years of
 heavy wear and tear, you scrape it all and you repave. That very
 inorganic view of the world is not how I think of modern software
 architecture. Modern software architecture is much more akin to an
 English garden that you plan and you plant and you weed and you
 improve. Yes, there's an overall plan, but the result requires more
 tending. I think that tending is one of the things that frustrates
 executives. Why does software require tending? Things shift on you.
 Your database just upgraded, you have XML infrastructure to deal with,
 the customer wants a middleware option, and an operating system just
 changed. There's more shifting in software than people realize.

 Now, we do actually repave city streets and fix potholes, but the city
 streets metaphor is more about mindset. To me, the mindset of the city
 street builder is, I'm going to pave it and I hope to God I don't have
 to come back for ten years, because that's my cost model. Whereas to
 me, my expectation is that you are tending and nurturing this software
 architecture that you have created. 

 http://www.artima.com/intv/entropyP.html
-- 
Regards,
                            
.__.|_    | |    ._ _  _.._ 
|(_|| ||_|| |<|_|| | |(_||  
                            
    Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft.
    That will just be a completely unintentional
    side effect
    -Linus Torvalds 

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