What is the "architecture" often mentioned in the software industry?

For a long time, in the software industry, there have been many debates about what architecture is, and everyone has their own understanding. Even when many architects talk about architecture, they begin to talk about application architecture, hardware architecture, data architecture and so on. I have searched everywhere for the definition of architecture and consulted many people. As a result, I found that there is no definition that everyone agrees with. To paraphrase a popular joke about big data, it also applies to architecture:

Architecture is like teenagers' sexual behavior. Everyone is talking about it, and no one really knows what it is.

In fact, architecture existed for more than n years before the invention of software, and the word first appeared with architecture. So I think it is necessary to discuss the concept of architecture clearly from the source. Only in this way can it be meaningful to discuss the software industry architecture.

What is architecture?

The English word for Architecture is architecture. On Wikipedia, architecture is defined as follows:

Architecture (Latin architecture a, from Greek? ρχιτ? Arkhitekton, Architect, from? ▽νι-"Chief" and τ? The "builder" is the process and product of planning, designing and building buildings and other material structures.

From this definition, architecture seems to be a process, which is not very clear. In order to understand this problem, let's first look at why the architecture came into being.

Why does the architecture come into being?

Imagine that at the earliest time, everyone lived completely independently, with food, clothing, housing and transportation. They are all made by themselves. The whole human being is an independent individual, and there is no communication with each other. In order to solve the problem of human continuity, men and women naturally live in groups. There will be a division of labor at this time. What men and women do will have a certain division of labor, but the basic needs of people's daily life have not changed, and they are still necessities such as food, clothing, housing and transportation.

However, once many people work together as a whole, their strength becomes much stronger, and naturally ethnic groups are formed: some people are good at farming, some people are good at making tools, some places are suitable for producing food, some places are suitable for producing cotton, and so on. , naturally formed the grouping of people and geographical grouping. When the division of labor occurs, everyone's productivity is actually improved, because everyone is good at what he does.

The productivity and ability to resist the environment of the whole population have been improved. Why? Because everyone's ability and time are limited, and because of the limitation of human structure, people can only concentrate on one thing at the same time, which leads to the division of labor. Since the division of labor, all the things necessary for survival have been done by one person, which has become a cooperation with different roles. These people must be combined through some mechanism, so that everyone can complete what is necessary for survival, which actually leads to the transaction (this part of the transaction will not be launched here, and we will have a chance to discuss it again).

When everyone has to complete the production of all the necessities of life by himself, there is no framework (of course, personally, it is still possible to produce a framework in time if only a limited number of things can be done at the same time). Once the division of labor takes place, everything is divided into people with different roles to complete. Finally, through the transaction, each individual has the necessities of life, without doing anything, just doing what he is good at and having certain trading ability.

This actually forms a social structure. So how do you define the architecture? Taking the above example as an example, a whole (all the work of human existence) is divided into different parts (division of labor), which are completed by different roles. By establishing a communication mechanism between different parts, these parts can be organically combined into a whole to complete all the activities needed by this whole. This is the building. From the above example, we can also sum up the motivation of architecture:

Work that must be performed by people (no human intervention means no transformation, so no architecture)

Everyone's ability is limited (everyone has his own strengths, personal output is limited by the shortest board, and because of the structural limitations of people, he can only concentrate on doing one thing at the same time. For example, although he has two eyes, he can only concentrate on one thing at the same time and has two hands, so he can't do different things at the same time. Although a few people can draw a round picture frame with their left and right hands, this is not a common phenomenon. )

Everyone's time is limited (in order to reduce the input of time, it will inevitably lead to the decomposition of the work and give it to the role who is good at these jobs, see 2, thus shortening the time)

People have higher requirements for the target system (if they are satisfied with the status quo, they don't need architecture)

The complexity of the target system makes it possible for a single person to complete the system, satisfying conditions 2 and 3 (if an individual can complete the improvement of the system, there is no need for others to participate, so there is no need for architecture, just a craftsman, and generally this work is not urgent for time. When you are proficient enough, you will also have some architectural thinking, but pay more attention to how to improve quality and personal time efficiency.

Some people may question that if a person decomposes the target system, for example, someone builds a house and buys materials to build it himself, isn't that a building? This happens if you are not sensitive to time, but in this case, it does not necessarily lead to the occurrence of architecture. If you are conscious and skilled enough, you will also have architectural thinking, because it will help improve productivity, shorten construction time and improve the quality of the house. In fact, the architecture is the practice accumulated through these long-term activities.

When these five conditions are established at the same time, a framework will certainly appear. From this perspective, architecture is a way to transform the world with higher efficiency by changing from ignorance to initiative in the process of human development. We take architecture as an example to strengthen our understanding.

At first, human beings lived in caves and trees, mainly to avoid attacks from other wild animals and reduce changes in the natural environment and challenges to human survival. In order to achieve these goals, humans began to learn to use trees and leaves to build isolated space facilities on the flat land, which is the beginning of architecture. However, complete isolation also has many disadvantages, and slowly facilities such as doors and windows appear.

The essence of architecture is to draw an exclusive space from the natural environment, but it can still communicate with the natural environment through doors and windows. At this time, the architecture has already begun. Divide the space on the earth, and keep organic communication with the earth and space through doors, windows and foundations. When humans begin to learn to use fire, the hut will naturally be divided into two parts, one for cooking and the other for living. When human excrement slowly moved into the room, the bathroom slowly appeared. This is the division of space inside the building.

At this time, people's demand for architecture will gradually increase, the division of space will become a lot, and there will be many ways of combination, such as houses where everyone lives, houses of a religious nature produced by group living, houses for collective activities, and so on. At this time, people began to consciously design houses, and architects slowly appeared. Everything is to meet people's higher and higher needs, improve quality, reduce time, divide space more efficiently, and make space communicate more organically. This is the architecture of architecture, the evolution of architecture.

To sum up, what is architecture, that is:

Define the boundary of the target system according to the problem to be solved.

Divide the target system according to certain principles. The principle of segmentation should be convenient for different roles, and parallel or serial work should be carried out for the segmented parts. Generally speaking, working in parallel can reduce time.

And establish a communication mechanism for these segmented parts.

According to 3, these parts can be organically connected, merged and assembled into a whole to complete all the work of the target system.

Similarly, this thinking can also be extended to other industries, such as enterprise architecture, national architecture, organizational architecture, music architecture, color architecture, software architecture and so on. To paraphrase a sentence in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, long-term separation will lead to harmony, and long-term harmony will lead to harmony. Architecture actually refers to the practical activities that people actively and purposefully identify a problem according to their own understanding of the world, and decompose and merge it to solve this problem. The output of the architecture is naturally the analysis and solution of the problem, including the principle and reason of splitting, the principle and reason of communication and merging, and the roles and required core competence of each part of splitting and merging.

Hope to adopt!