Yearly archives: 2014

10 posts

An Elegant Solution to an Ugly Problem

Software and IT systems
Code dependencies visualisation --- Courtesy The Daily WTF
Dependency diagram—a representation of interdependence or coupling (the black lines) between software components (the grey dots) within a program. — Courtesy The Daily WTF

What if your fix introduces new bugs that reveal themselves in some future disaster which corrupts and loses data? The impulse then is to rewrite the whole program from the bottom up, in accordance with hard-won principles of good program design. But—often there is no budget for a complete rewrite, there is no time, there isn’t enough manpower

I do not remember when was the last time, some IT related article actually made me read it to the end.

This was the one.

The optimal IT System: Speed vs Safety vs Feasibility

Architecture. A formal description of the system

What is an optimal system?

Find the key attributes of the system.  Understand how do they correlate to each other.

Never forget the feasibility. Feasibility is a reality of building an optimal system.

Context: IT System

Key attributes are Safety and Speed.  Each of them has a feasibility factor attached to it.

  1. The Faster it is the less Safe it is
  2. The Safer it is the slower it becomes
  3. There is a point P1 beyond which there is no Safety
    1. P1 is where the safety is zero .  Beyond it goes into the negative safety which is called danger.
    2. The speed is too high beyond P1
  4. There is a point P2 beyond which system is too slow
    1. Safety might rise beyond P2, but that is an UnFeasible system because it is too slow.

The optimal system is on the line P1, P2.

The optimal system is the most feasible system.