Why taming architectural complexity is paramount
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Software engineering is an endless battle against entropy. We start with systems that are simple and, if we're not careful, over time they become complex.
This is the last in a series of articles on System Design and the Cost of Architectural Complexity, a 2013 PhD thesis from MIT. You can read my scribbled-over version at /pdfs/system-design-and-the-cost-of-architectural-complexity-with-swiz-notes.pdf.
The thesis set out to empirically show that complexity hurts. Sturtevant, the author, structured the research as a natural experiment on a real-world project.
Using a real project is important because many "programmer productivity" studies are done on comp sci students (who are newbs and thus not representative) using unrealistic class projects. Or they study open source projects where you find too many uncontrolled variables.
Every engineer in this study had a similar 40-hour work week, had business objectives to accomplish, used similar tools, and had some level of understanding of the project. The study controlled for career tenure and company tenure.
