Ask HN: At what point does "clean architecture" become technical debt?

4 points | by kiops 1 day ago

5 comments

  • mikewarot 5 hours ago
    Architecture is a set of trade offs you use to try to minimize the costs of building, or maintaining software. The moment you decide on one, you've precluded certain approaches, it's hoped those were the poor choices.

    We're 50+ years into null terminated strings

    We're 40+ years into Operating System architectures that favor ambient authority.

    We're 30+ years into the Web, and HTML that doesn't let you mark up (annotate) existing hypertext without copy/modifying it.

    We're 20+ years into trying to make everything work through a thin unreliable network connection onto a machine with a small glass screen and no keyboard

    There's a civilization ending amount of debt, while your project is important to you, know that in the big scheme of things, it really doesn't matter, and you'll be forgiven. 8)

  • LowTechHN 19 hours ago
    If both React and Angular are installed and actively controlling different parts of the UI (seen it) I think it’s worth spending the ~8 hours on the replatform.

    If the main database is a mix of JSON saved in S3 and “the good data” is in mongodb atlas, it’s worth spending the ~12 hours on the migration.

    But if it’s going from one fotm framework to another, or syntactic sugar type changes, I don’t think it’s worth sinking time into.

    Should be a clear problem:solution to any architectural choice starting with the core problem.

    • kansm 7 hours ago
      [dead]
    • kiops 17 hours ago
      [flagged]
  • aristofun 23 hours ago
    These meme only makes sense for very small products.

    After a certain threshold of complexity and size any software becomes a collection of trade offs and compromises, never something you might call a “clean architecture”. Its a red herring, myth, utopia.

    It’s a thousand years old attempt to calculate and reduce the complexity of real world interactions and problems to a bunch of mathematically elegant metaphors and formulas.

    The threshold is usually very low - first bunch of real world paying customers, real world usecases, startup market fit etc.

    • kiops 17 hours ago
      [flagged]
  • dtdynasty 1 day ago
    When the cleanliness doesn't serve existing or future requirements.
    • karmakaze 23 hours ago
      Exactly, architecture for its own sake is debt on day 1.
    • kiops 17 hours ago
      [flagged]
  • raicho 13 hours ago
    [flagged]