Is design dead?

Is Design Dead? The place of architecture and design in a world of frameworks

Overview

The purpose of this session was to discuss near-ubiquitous emergence of frameworks and platforms and their impact on the traditional elements of software architecture and design. The session was an open discussion format.

Proceedings

The session lacked formal recording capabilities. These highlights are from my own perspective, and any other attendees who wish to offer their takeaway from the discussion are encouraged to do so.

• There is still a great deal of flux surrounding the use of frameworks, despite their growing popularity. In particular, it emerged late in the discussion that the simple terminology of what constitutes a framework can vary from person to person.
• General consensus is that frameworks have a larger impact at the architectural level than the design level.
• Frameworks don't necessarily make architectural understanding obsolete, but they do bring a pre-canned architecture which must then be followed.
• Design is still necessary as a deeper specification of components within the architectural constraints of the framework.
• It seems relatively common for modern systems to start with selection of a framework, and evolve both architecture and design to accommodate that framework. It seems less common that framework selection would happen even in the absence of requirements, but it does happen.