QCon Talk on "Generic vs. Specific Tradeoff"
At QCon London in March, I talked about some thoughts on generic vs. specific solutions. The video is now online at InfoQ. I wasn’t at all sure whether this would work; I like to think it did :-)
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Really nice talk! There are, of course no easy answers to these questions as we’re starting to enter the realm of human creativity and intuition in design. The best we can hope for, I think is guidance that will help people to avoid the obvious mistakes. But the creation of really great solutions is still much more of an art than a science.
Also, be careful as once you’ve been a “disillusioned architect” for a few years, and always answer “it depends”, many people will start taking you less seriously! Our industry is always looking for simple and quick answers to everything and one can very easily get a reputation for being “difficult” or “making things too complicated”. There is always some young (but just about credible) whippersnapper around who will say “it’s obvious - the answer is this - let’s just get on and do it”. Sometimes you need to remember this, hide your internal self doubt and “pretend” that the answer is simple, just in order to be able to move things forward. It’s part of the skills of leadership…
Thanks! Good to hear from you again. And yes, I’m well aware of the problem with “it depends” – simply following logic, we’d always be asking questions only, and never give any answers … which is highly unlikely to be paid for by anyone.