Who Needs an Architect? (And a bit of sw architecture)

Who Needs an Architect?

Before this reading, I had a definition or visualization of an architect similar to what's concluded, an architect, is like a designer but more professional, the one that mostly decides what to do, to use and how everything shall work, may be the most skilled and wise of the team, hence why he is left with the more "important" decisions on a project.

There are two architects presented: 

• Architectus Oryzus: he is what in modern terms is defined a leader, someone who is in charge but not necessarily the only one who knows, he has a team and he has not only to direct them but to support and work alongside them, he may be the one with more abilities and in the end the one that decides everything but is not alone.

• Architectus Reloadus: basically, a one-man army, not only does he decides but also develop.

For me a software architect, is a mix of both, has to be good (really good) but also needs to work appropriately with a team, I hate when someone does everything and expects that the entire team will know what it did and how it works or when without any advice that person goes missing and the team is left without any idea of what to do with his part, this takes me to the next part of the reading.

A good architecture made by a good architect and his team, must be easy to manipulate (under legal terms), to understand, to upgrade, to change in general, and not because it's simple or basic (or insecure) but because all of the components were carefully designed, developed and implemented, no extra things were added and everything has its reason to exist, so, iif for some random reason, the original team changes or the project migrates to another platform, it is "easy" to perform, with minor trouble, if this is accomplished, it is (for me) a sign that a software was developed by a good architect.

Software Architecture opinion

Software Architecture

We've been told through our entire life that we cannot go without a plan, that nothing goes well if you just do whatever comes to your mind, yes, there are instances where improvising works for whatever reason, but it's not enough all the time.

A good preparation, a perfect understanding, a well-defined plan; all these boring, but necessary things are required to correctly develop any project, and on this case, a software project or even the software itself.

Every programmer performs an analysis before starting to code, however, this is mostly limited to knowing what to do and this can be seen with beginner programmers which face simple programs as they learn the basics and are carried along the way, but on more advanced programs or projects, a simple "know what to do" is not enough, the program ends up being more complex, bigger, that even teams are required to develop it which adds another layer of complexity because ones "know what to do" is different from the other members of the team.

It's something that each programmer faces on his career, to begin developing and suddenly facing that what you plan to do can't be done as intended so it's back to square one or at least to wait until you figure out what to do. In the meantime, the other programmer which took its time to fully comprehend the problem has already made some progress.

I consider myself from the second kind, as I'm a think-first person, I don't like to take risks and face something that I don't understand; relaxed, that's how I consider myself, so when time is short I tend to face trouble and rush things and make mistakes, that's why I prefer to take my time to understand my projects and problems, to define all the components of my program and begin to work only after I have a clear idea of what to do and also what may happen along the way.

Moon Machines thoughts

Moon Machines

The Cold War, the tension that the two biggest nations were having during the 1950's up to 1970's had the world on the border of their seats and with fear that only apocalypse could match, while people not only from the United States and the Soviet Union but from all around world (as these two nations were the most powerful at that time) had fear that a Third World/Nuclear War could arise and wipe out all life from Earth, these two sides had other things in mind (sort of).

Since the dawn of human era, to look up at the sky at night and find out that a circular rock in space gave light at night was enough to give the curiosity to find out what was on that rock that was going to be know as moon. No one ever imagined that reaching the moon was even possible, so what a better way to express superiority that by being the first one not only to get there, but why not? to put a man up there and show it off to the world. 

But first in order to do that it was needed to reach space itself, surpass the atmosphere and to know that whatever was sent was still alive/functional. When soviets achieved that with the Sputnik Satellite, USA rushed to beat the soviets in getting to the moon and that's how this documentary begins.

I particularly didn't knew the history of how mankind reached the moon, so to finally get to know how was the process, all the struggle that surrounded the project, the people such as engineers, investigators and scientists had to pass in order to beat the soviets.

From this project Apollo, I only had knowledge of the astronauts Neil Armstrong y Edwin Buzz Aldrin and Margaret Hamilton and only because of popular culture and commonly known facts, so to actually find out what was involved and what had to happen in order to put a man on the moon.

I knew that it wasn't easy, a lot of complex processes, machinery, computing and calculations were involved that I may have never imagined although that's what I think now, however after watching the video I noticed that with many things used on the missions my reaction was like "Oh! That actually makes sense!", yes, at that time everything implemented was like relatively new or completely new made specifically for this, so making and figuring out what and how to do was difficult even for the experts at that time hence why so many years were spent to fulfill the mission.

There were parts that I wasn't able to understand, old people speaking on a old documentary was difficult to understand, but I think that I managed to understand  most of the dialogue.

I liked that on some parts there was too much "content" so I was able to completely understand somethings, on other parts there was too much content that I was becoming overwhelmed  and bored; lastly, there were parts that I hoped to had more content, were briefly explained and sometimes I had rewatch that part or be left with the doubt.

A good documentary, sure, however I would gladly accept a longer version giving more depth to how some processes and things were developed......and subtitles, that will make it perfect.

'Bout me

Hi fellas!

I´m Marco Antonio Ríos Gutiérrez (the guy with freckles) and I have 21 years old just today (YAY!!!!)

What I mostly like up to this point on my university career is networking and as you may be guessing I plan to work at Cisco Systems, although there's still plenty of courses and thing to learn at school so I hope that on this class I'll find another interest for my further professional development (never used Ruby so if I get the hang of it maybe programming will be again, an option).

Sincerely I can't say that I expect something from the class 'cause I didn't even knew that we were going to use Ruby, so besides of hoping to pass and learn something new, I'm completely blank on this course.

What I most like to do (like most ISC students) is gaming, I'm nintenboy, love The Legend of Zelda and Pokémon since I have memory; recently I received an Xbox One and also began to do some PC gaming with what my little laptop can support :( so I divide my time among those 3 platforms.

I really like movies, series and music, however when I’m alone I tend to not watch  anything or put something for about 20 minutes to leave it and do something instead (like gaming, as an example I was watching Stranger Things on Netflix and stopped on the 4th chapter even though I'm loving it) however I particularly like horror, comedy, adventure and fantasy genres. On music I can say that i like almost anything (reggaeton and banda/corridos, nope, never, iugh, like poison to me) my favorite genres are Symphonic metal, classical and electronic (quite different genres I must say) but like I said, I hear and like songs from almost any genre and era. Quick note: Don’t ask me for name of songs or bands because ai have no idea, I just hear something and I like it but never wonders who’s from or how the song is called jeje

I also like to read however is not an activity that I perform regularly, mostly because of school or something like, but I really enjoy reading and use my imagination to visualize what I read, recently before reading Ready Player One I'm reading the books published by youtuber Dross.

I'm a man of family and although I’m not a man of many words (as probably everybody will notice on this semester) however I like to be with my family, I'm somewhat of a lonely wolf, I enjoy being with me alone, not that I hate being with other people but for me, having time for my self is important.

I think that what I consider relevant for my group to know about me (or at least what I can recall, sorry).

Thanks for your time and have a happy and successful semester.