Dev Thoughts

Talk on architecture from Taylor Jones

Rails Architecture

Architecture is the root of quite a bit of technical debt.

History of Application Architecture

Early web development

• License driven
• Difficult to deploy
• Inconsistent code organization

Rails market change

• Open Source
• More straightforward to deploy
• Convention over configuration

How Has Rails Evolved?

• Based on existing project (basecamp)
• MERB released, focused on speed, flexibility, and resulted in Rails 3
• 4.0 broke out Active libraries into separate gems
• 5.0 integrated web sockets and API specific apps

"What killed smalltalk was that it was easy to make a mess" - Uncle Bob

Living in Between Microservices and Monoliths

• Microservices that allows for a master component to manage them
• In a sense, Rails is a blended ecosystem

Important Notes

• Don't jump on shiny new things, being skeptical is important
• Find a balance and use the right tool for the right job
• Architecture needs to fit the team size
• Address technical debt consistently

"Architecture can be an escape hatch" - Taylor Jones