When I started professional software development the world was different. It was fine to slap PHP here and there and you got your software masterpiece. Frameworks were not a thing for me. I remember I had a dialog with my friend that time and we both agreed that nobody needs a framework because "we can do it ourselves". It was a time when each company had their own framework, which at first was nice and slick but than quickly grew to 🧟♂️ Frankenstein as more and more of the new functionality was added. Reality has proven, that it was impossible to maintain such, which meant it was impossible to grow the business.
There are still businesses that bring their owners thousands of dollars and consist of a the huge PHP file and no frameworks. But these are exceptions and, usually, are maintained by the small amount of people.
Architecture for the
Staff+ engineers is not a question whether to use PHP or Go or to use framework or not. From my perspective architectures which Staff+ is helping to build shall confirm to two purposes:1️⃣ It shall help the business reach its goal
2️⃣ It shall be maintainable in the long run
Good
Staff+ engineer possesses the skill of balancing between these two goals. There is no single article or book that will help you to understand how to find this balance. You rather master it through out your life.However, there are quite good tools that we can use as a baseline when we reflect on the architecture. I like these two:
* AWS Well-Architected Framework. This framework explains to us, that each successful software solution (and business) relies on six important pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance, cost optimisation, sustainability. When we have this foundation solid and developed relatively equally, then we have a higher chance of building a long-lasting software setup.
* DORA metrics. Four metrics that can predict if the engineering component of your business is performing well. Deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, time to restore service. Investing in these four is a safe investment and will definitely help your setup to keep going.
As
Staff+ engineers we are not expected to be the best architects and experts in their company, but what we shall do — we shall apply our expertise to make sure that the architecture performs it's purpose. Which means it will be something which teams can maintain and develop throughout the years and it will help business to achieve it's goals.