Let's say you work for some organization and there is a need for a new application. If you are responsible for the architecture / design then
My initial post was going to end up being a "ancient" IT history book with some extra stuff. I decided that wasn't very helpful - not many people want to read a book in a "blog format".
I'm condensing the content down to the following.
- Use standard practices for
- project management
- design techniques
- Understand the reasons/basis for soft/hard requirements - This covers why a requirement exist and why a specific requirement was chosen over other similar prospective requirements.
- Examples reasons are;
- development / operational / infrastructure costs
- time to market / speed of handling requirement changes
- maintainability
- performance / scalability / availability
- Carefully evaluate technology choices.
- Consider the risk of using any technology that could become unsupported before the end of the useful life of your application. New "amazing" technologies may only be around for a short period of time before something new replaces it.
- Make plans to keep 3rd party frameworks, libraries and languages/run-times up-to-date with regard to the most current versions.
- Consider the risk, for example, of using early versions of SpringBoot such as 2.1 which are not maintained now - if a new security flaw comes up, it may be very hard to fix the issue.
With regard to standard practices, use whatever is appropriate for your organization and the project need. Many organizations are trying follow "Agile" practices but that doesn't mean that "Waterfall" is always bad to use. Use what is appropriate for the situation.
Understanding the reasons used for requirement selection helps to keep requirements aligned with each other and provides useful context for handling business changes over time.
Technology comes and goes. Don't love or hate particular technology - it is a tool. Use appropriate technology and if needs change then consider more appropriate technology. Don't select technology just because it is considered "great" by any person or group - consider the positive and negative aspects in-depth for your use-case.
Small example of considerations - given a service expecting high transaction rates; what technology stacks might be considered and what are the trade-offs?
- Python
- Positives
- Increasingly used in enterprises
- OpenSource
- Negatives
- Library ecosystem isn't as mature as for Java
- You want a library to help with web requests? Which option do you pick? What version of Python are you on?
- https://pypi.org/search/?q=web+requests&page=1
- Considerations
- Security
- https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/28/python_pypi_security/
- https://medium.com/ochrona/arbitrary-code-execution-during-python-package-installation-3a60990350ef
- https://snyk.io/blog/python-security-best-practices-cheat-sheet/
- Some libraries need local compilation
- Cross-version compatibility
- Transitive dependency handling
- Long term maintenance questions
- https://medium.com/codex/python-4-0-will-never-arrive-3d994dce54f1
- Runtime aspects
- Python global lock
- https://wiki.python.org/moin/GlobalInterpreterLock
- Memory management - also consider context including containers
- https://www.askpython.com/python/examples/memory-management-in-python
- Threading
- https://docs.python.org/3/library/threading.html
- Java
- Positives
- Heavily used in enterprises
- Generally has useful features and reasonably performance
- Many enterprise level libraries and frameworks
- Negatives
- New version every 6 months by Oracle can cause some thrashing of work
- OpenSource vs Oracle licensing
- Considerations
- Alternative JDK / JVM / run-times
- Oracle JRE
- OpenJDK
- Azul
- IBM OpenJ9
- Eclipse Temurin
- Amazon Corretto
- SpringBoot vs JEE
- Cross-version compatibility
- Transitive dependency handling
- "Java versions are backward compatible so keeping up with current versions isn't important."
- "We are pinning the SpringBoot version at version 2.3 instead of upgrading to 2.7+ because it improves stability by preventing changes."
- OpenJDK support matrix from RedHat
- https://access.redhat.com/articles/1299013
- SpringBoot support matrix
- https://spring.io/projects/spring-boot#support
- SpringBoot / SpringCloud compatibility matrix
- https://spring.io/projects/spring-cloud#overview
- Django support matrix / roadmap
- https://www.djangoproject.com/download/
- Nx / NodeJS / TypeScript compatibility matrix
- https://nx.dev/packages/workspace/documents/nx-nodejs-typescript-version-matrix
Thanks,
Scott
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