Yes, I use Alan Kay's pyramid image[1] in my talks about software architecture[2][3][4]. But then I compare it to the Cologne Cathedral, which encloses a vastly larger space with vastly more light using 1/50th the material, yet it's the same kind of material: cut stones piled on top of each other.
So there is hope, I think, and that hope, I think, is improving our understanding and practice of software architecture[5].
And it's not like there we don't have examples in software. Let's take Bentley's challenge[6]: Don Knuth with 12 pages of (literate/web) Pascal, Doug McIllroy with 6 lines of shell. Or Nile/Gezira, a modern graphics subsystem (think Cairo or Quartz) in ~500LOC. Yes, 500LOC.
So we need to figure out what makes these examples work so much better and how we can apply what we've learned to make our lives better. That's what I am doing, care to join me? [5]
So there is hope, I think, and that hope, I think, is improving our understanding and practice of software architecture[5].
And it's not like there we don't have examples in software. Let's take Bentley's challenge[6]: Don Knuth with 12 pages of (literate/web) Pascal, Doug McIllroy with 6 lines of shell. Or Nile/Gezira, a modern graphics subsystem (think Cairo or Quartz) in ~500LOC. Yes, 500LOC.
So we need to figure out what makes these examples work so much better and how we can apply what we've learned to make our lives better. That's what I am doing, care to join me? [5]
[1] http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5hGmXFHQS4
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKY-0atLDAo
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OAtHOLIg84
[5] http://objective.st
[6] http://franklinchen.com/blog/2011/12/08/revisiting-knuth-and...