Thinking Architecturally - Nathaniel Schutta

Rich Hickey once said programmers know the benefits of everything and the trade offs of nothing…an approach that can lead a project down a path of frustrated developers and unhappy customers. As architects though, we must consider the trade offs of every new library, language, pattern or approach and quickly make decisions often with incomplete information. How should we think about the inevitable technology choices we have to make on a project? How do we balance competing agendas? How do we keep our team happy and excited without chasing every new thing that someone finds on the inner webs? As architects it is our responsibility to effectively guide our teams on the technology journey. In this talk I will outline the importance of trade offs, how we can analyze new technologies and how we can effectively capture the inevitable architectural decisions we will make. I will also explore the value of fitness functions as a way of ensuring the decisions we make are actually reflected in the code base.

Nathaniel T. Schutta is a software architect focused on cloud computing and building usable applications. A proponent of polyglot programming, Nate has written multiple books, appeared in various videos and speaks regularly 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 dynamic languages. In an effort to rid the world of bad presentations, Nate coauthored the book Presentation Patterns with Neal Ford and Matthew McCullough.

6:00 : Pizza

6:20 : Announcements

6:30-7:45 : Presentation

7:45 : Door Prizes