Post-Architecture: Premature Abstraction Is the Root of All Evil
published on 2024/07/18
To recap: Post-Architecture is a method of defining architecture incrementally, rather than designing it upfront. It prioritizes velocity during the early phases of development and minimizes the risk of making the wrong architectural decisions.
With this post I want to take a bit of a different direction, instead focusing on how we can apply Post-Architecture in a practical sense. To do so, I want to use this post to dive into the shadow side of abstraction. People who work with code architecture a lot often view abstraction as a useful tool to model complex problems. And they’re not wrong. Where it goes wrong however is when people try to apply abstractions prematurely. In fact, I would adapt one of Donald Knuth’s famous quotes to say:
Premature abstraction is the root of all evil.