I saw a note recently about the cost of decisions in programming made over time (thanks to BrentOzar, PLF). It's an interesting look back at what decisions might have ended up costing computing a tremendous amount of pain and problems over time. It's a nice read, especially if you remember something about the history of computing and how technology has evolved over the last forty or so years.
Making decisions and choices early on in the development of a system is hard work. There's a reason why architects are paid well, and sometimes seem slow to decide how to proceed in development. The high pay, however, is a reason why so many people crave the architect title, and even find reasons why they should get it, even when under qualified. Unfortunately we have no good guidelines on how to decide what titles someone should have, or they have earned.
A great developer, a great architect, is often worth much more and more productive than an average one. Not only while building a system, but also in the future as the system is used, evolves, and is improved by others. Making good choices early on can result in much better software over time, as the ways in which software is improved are often based on the way it was originally built. Future developers may struggle to add to the project, or they may be constrained, by the early decisions made about the architecture.
Hindsight always gives you a better view of a decision than you have when you are making it. Even in the article the author points out that the biggest mistake he found in computing was still the best decision at the time. We will hopefully make many good decisions, but all of us will make some bad ones. Whether in specifying hardware, writing T-SQL, or some other choice, we will find over time that some of our choices were poor ones.
The best thing we can do is learn to look back at our architecture decisions over time and evaluate whether they were good or bad. Learn from our mistakes, and learn from the mistakes others have made, trying to strive to do better in the future with the knowledge that comes from examining the past.
Steve Jones
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