Building Evolutionary Architectures, 2nd Edition

Chapter 8. Evolutionary Architecture Pitfalls and Antipatterns

We’ve spent a lot of time discussing appropriate levels of coupling in architectures. However, we also live in the real world, and see lots of coupling that harms a project’s ability to evolve.

We identify two kinds of bad engineering practices that manifest in software projects—pitfalls and antipatterns. Many developers use the word antipattern as jargon for “bad,” but the real meaning is more subtle. A software antipattern has two parts. First, an antipattern is a practice that initially looks like a good idea but turns out to be a mistake. Second, better alternatives exist for most antipatterns. Architects notice many antipatterns only in hindsight, so they are hard to avoid. A pitfall looks superficially like a good idea but immediately reveals itself to be a bad path. We cover both pitfalls and antipatterns in this chapter.

Technical Architecture

In this section, we focus on common practices in the industry that specifically harm a team’s ability to evolve the architecture.

Antipattern: Last 10% Trap and Low Code/No Code

Neal once was the CTO of a consulting firm that built projects for clients in a variety of 4GLs, including Microsoft Access. He assisted in the decision to eliminate Access and eventually all the 4GLs from the business after observing that every Access project started as a booming success but ended in failure, and he wanted to understand why. He and a colleague observed that, in Access and other ...