Documenting Software Architectures: Views and Beyond, Second Edition

E. Epilogue: Using Views and Beyond with Other Approaches

The word architecture goes back through Latin to the Greek for “master builder.” The ancients not only invented the word, they gave it its clearest and most comprehensive definition. According to Vitruvius—the Roman writer, whose Ten Books on Architecture is the only surviving ancient architectural treatise—architecture, is the union of “firmness, commodity, and delight”; it is, in other words, at once a structural, practical, and visual art. Without solidity, it is dangerous; without usefulness, ...