On Architecture

From "Planning a Computer System - Project Stretch" [PDF]

Fred Brooks coined the term computer architecture as early as in the 1950s and ever since it has been a favorite in the computing circles and much has been written about it. The building analogue has been prevalent ever since and misused and stretched so much that most of the laws of physics and humanity must have been broken on the way. So I'll stretch it some more.

Currently in software the term architecture most commonly means a power point illustration of boxes and arrows with names of applications, products or imagined layers of software construction inside them. And if architecture is mentioned in a discussion the very definition of Mr. Brooks for architecture - the determining the needs of the user - is not mentioned at all. Architecture is the comfort zone of the techies who have been promoted away from the programming tasks in the corporate ladder but in a stairway not leading to the penthouse where the business people do the world domination thing but in the other one leading to the dusty attic of IT management.

This is not the "where the rubber meets the road" architecture but architecture where someone not part of the problem (the biz) or the solution (the dev) tries to affect the result.This might be well meaning or malign but usually is done too far away from those who are actually accountable for their deeds (the biz and the dev).

A beautiful day in Itä-Pasila.

Architectural styles are subject to fashion and trends like the clothing industry. And just like with high street fashion the garment that is most fashionable today is just a heartbeat away from being so totally out of fashion. This can also happen in the real world architecture of buildings and cityscapes.

The bridge integrates two areas in the top layer of the architecture and isolates them from the lower layer.

In the 1970s the eastbound neighboring country of Finland was not Russia but the Soviet Union. And that's where the architectural ideas came to Finland in the 1970s. The Itä-Pasila region of Helsinki built then looks like stuff made behind the iron curtain.

Here the architecture allows four paths to the other side - all not very inviting. But at least you have a choice.

The trend then seemed to be a 2-tier architecture where the system is divided in two layers: the bottom or "back end" layer is for the heavy lifting: cars and lorries transporting stuff. The second tier, the "front end" is then for more slow paced and lightweight traffic of more lightweight units called persons. However, these two layers need heavy integration and this is implemented with lifts, ramps and staircases between the layers.

In a flat architecture it would not matter which way you should walk if you want to go around the building in the picture. In this multilayer architecture you must make your navigational decision at this point.

The whole thing is built to serve the person units and their needs. That usually means moving from a place to another one and enjoy the company of other person units meeting them in some designated areas in the front end tier. The two tier architecture was said to enable this as the person units can freely move on the top tier without the impedance mismatch of mixing their paths to the remarkably faster moving cars. Something that the architects did not take into account was that the person units had to visit the bottom tier quite often as they use the cars to move about from region to another. And that they are quite good at finding routes from A to B in a two dimensional surface but really suck in the task if they have to move in a three dimensional surface consisting of two levels where the navigational rules of the 2D environment do not apply.

Good naming conventions are a must. This indoor hallway with a concrete ceiling is named "Aurinkoraitti" which translates to "Sun Passage".

The architects seem to have this obsession with organizing stuff in layers and making barriers between them but it is more natural to people when things are not that well in order as long as they are simple and the scale of things is convenient. So perhaps also in computing making the small decisions right, keeping the needs of the user in mind all the time and having the right scale is more important than forcing everything to some artificial layers in a heavy foundation framework based on the latest sales pitches of large IT vendors.

The lift on the left comes from a parking hall underground straight to the top layer where there is nothing of interest but from where you can descend to lower levels with either a staircase or a ramp or take the bridge crossing the road below.