The Role of an Architect and the Importance of Understanding What Matters

The speakers delve into the elusive nature of architecture and how it can be challenging to define. They stress the need for understanding the essential aspects of each application and avoiding unnecessary engineering.

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Nathaniel Schutta (or Nate) is a software architect focused on cloud computing and building usable applications. A proponent of polyglot programming, Nate has written multiple books and appeared in various videos. Nate is a seasoned speaker, regularly presenting at conferences worldwide, No Fluff Just Stuff symposia, meetups, universities, and user groups. In addition to his day job, Nate is an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota where he teaches students to embrace (and evaluate) technical change. Driven to rid the world of bad presentations, Nate co-authored the book Presentation Patterns with Neal Ford and Matthew McCullough. Nate has published Thinking Architecturally and Responsible Microservices both available as free downloads from VMware.

Topics of Discussion:

[5:12] How Nate decided he liked development and architecture, and who was Dr. Evil?

[7:10] Nate worked at a software company for a brief period and spent a lot of his time building enterprise web apps.

[10:13] Is it possible to think and talk about software the same, regardless of language?

[14:17] Nate Defines circuit breaker.

[15:56] The importance of having good observability and monitoring in place to see what is going on.

[22:35] Nate gives some categories of architects and where he thinks it changes in responsibility and scope.

[26:14] To quote Ralph Johnson, "Architecture is the important stuff, whatever that is." While we may have different definitions of "IT," Nate thinks that it has the decisions that are hard to change later, and the ones we hope we get right in the first place. The "IT" is also what matters to the application at hand.

[36:14] Are we currently at another inflection point?

[38:03] The current landscape and challenges of inventing things on the fly.

[45:22] What can we expect from Nate's new book?

[55:54] Engineers often overlook soft skills, and the Dale Carnegie books on leadership are a great place to start.

Mentioned in this Episodes:

Clear Measure Way

Architect Forum

Software Engineer Forum

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Clear Measure, Inc. (Sponsor)

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