Disclaimer: this may be be a Seattle area phenomenon.

I have “software architect” on my resume, and it pains me. Wikipedia has a great article on what a software architect may or may not be. But, in my world, a software architect has the knowledge, insight and responsibility to make educated decisions about the scope and direction of a team-developed software project.

That was a mouthful.

Software architects pick frameworks. They find previously existing packages for functionality just before the rest of the team realizes they need it. And, they plan and communicate how all the moving parts will come together. They’re really-really smart.

Everyone wants to be a software architect. At Seattle’s Startup Weekend, no less than a third of the developers signed up as architects. And why not?! The act of creation - from art to programming - is egotistical. If you’ve ever referred to yourself as a “software engineer” with a straight face, then you’re advertising the capability to plan non-trivial projects.

You’re a liar.

Software is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to software.

With all apologies to Douglas Adams. Software projects are the most complex machines created in the history of invention. You’re telling me that you can do better than Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Edison, or the Wright Brothers? Because each of those iconic figures were geniuses driven to create simpler machines than a web application. And each was wrong up front.

This isn’t a fair comparison. We have Photoshop, Digi-Key, and kit airplanes. Also, Rails!

Those inventors were forging into unknown territory. Customizing a CMS or integrating SAP ERP into a SOA are known quantities. It could be argued the architect exists for the partially ambiguous problems.

My response is a question oft head in agile circles. I learned it from working in open source projects, corporate giants, startups and contracting. It’s a kōan:

“How will your program work in six months?”

The job of software architect is an answer. Is it the right one?

• There is value in understanding a problem domain.
  But, the stakeholders in a project tautologically have that.

• There is value in making the hard decisions.
  But, that is why we have team leaders.

• There is value in planning your design.
  But, software structure inevitably resembles its team’s structure.

… and so on.

The software architect exists because of the cultural need to have someone be responsible for these aspects. But it isn’t possible to satisfy these responsibilities and simultaneously attend to the details that inform future decisions. Architecture astronauts just don’t have the time to be any more grounded!

Instead? Go slow. Let the programmers make the decisions. Feed them knowledge and constraints. Try to develop a consensus among the actual stakeholders. And accept everyone’s input. That quiet intern? They go home and spend all their spare time playing with tools that handle 80% of the job.

I’m not arguing for agile development practices.

I’m arguing for considered diligence. Plan a little. Work a little. Rinse and repeat. Never let yourself slip into the tunnel-vision that comes with long cycles.

Because if your team cannot make responsible architectural decisions, then no one can save your project.

I’ve been on the Internet a long time.

> ;$network.MOO_Name
=> "LambdaMOO"
[used 2 ticks, 0 seconds.]

> @age me
Quad first connected on Tue Oct 31 17:07:28 1995 PST
Which makes us 12 years, 5 months, and 10 days old.
However, for official purposes our age is 12 years, 3 months, and 27 days.

And, in that time, I have accumulated a few e-mail addresses. I’m proud to say that, with a few exceptions due to legal complications, every one of them still reaches me. But, this means I invest quite a bit of effort into my infrastructure.

I have a VPS running Postfix / Fetchmail + Procmail + SpamAssassin + Dovecot. I use mutt and (increasingly) Thunderbird to read and write. It’s a well oiled machine pushing a 6 gigabyte spool.

How Stuff Gets In

The Postfix configuration is bog standard. megan.quadhome.com is the authoritative name for the server. My domains are all virtually aliased to UNIX accounts.

For relaying my mail, the settings are straight-forward. No relaying without authentication. No authentication without TLS.

For the addresses whose domains I don’t directly control, that’s where Fetchmail steps in. I have a .fetchmailrc listing my accumulated servers, accounts and passwords. A crontab entry on @reboot starts the daemon.

How Stuff Gets Munged

I used to use virtual addresses. scott_BLAH@scott.tranzoa.net for anything sketchy. But, I found the effort made no difference in my inbox.

Now, when an e-mail comes in, it goes through a Procmail filter that separates mailing list traffic into their own dedicated boxes. After that, everything remaining is fed into SpamAssassin. I use spamc / spamd with bayes_learn_journal enabled to keep things fast.

As incredible as it sounds, occasionally SpamAssassin is wrong. Two folders named “Ham” and “Spam” exist for those situations. I appropriately file the miscategorized mail and the following script ran @hourly solves the problem:

#!/bin/sh
#
# learn-mbox
#
# An fancy wrapper around SpamAssassin's sa-learn.
#
# Learn an mailbox and then delete it.
#
# Lock to ensure we don't clobber anything.
#

MBOX="$1"
MODE="$2"

if [ -z "$MBOX" ]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 [MAILBOX] [ham | spam]" >&2
  exit 1
elif [ ! -f "$MBOX" ]; then
  echo "$0: '$MBOX' does not exist." >&2
  exit 1
elif [ ! -s "$MBOX" ]; then
#  echo "$0: '$MBOX' is empty." >&2
  exit 1
fi

if [[ "$MODE" != "ham" && "$MODE" != "spam" ]]; then
  echo "$0: '$MODE' is not a learning mode. ('ham' or 'spam')" >&2
  exit 2
fi

lockfile-create $MBOX
lockfile-touch $MBOX &

sa-learn --mbox --$MODE $MBOX > /dev/null
echo -n > $MBOX

kill %1
lockfile-remove $MBOX

How Stuff Gets To Me

No Hotmail, Eudora, or Squirrelmail for me. I used Pine for the first years of my online life. After the licensing dispute, I switched to mutt and never looked back. It had all the features I needed.

Time marched on, and different features became more important.

Now, I use a combination of Thunderbird and mutt. The former provides a richer experience. The latter is a safety net for when I’m on random computers.

mutt is on the server, so it accesses my mail directly. But, Thunderbird is an IMAP client. And, Dovecot provides those necessary IMAP services.

Dovecot is also configured with out-of-box defaults with one exception. My IMAP passwords are different from my UNIX passwords. Dovecot provides TLS-only SASL authentication with hashed passwords. Postfix also works with Dovecot to share the same authentication method.

The practical upside is when Mallory finds my mail passwords, she can’t destroy my server and backups.

My commute includes two bus rides through the worst of Seattle traffic. My evenings rarely leave me wanting to stare at a computer screen. And my weekends are spent with my friends.

Thanks to this new work-life balance, I have rediscovered books.

A few years ago, I top-loaded my Media to Consume note with the ALA’s list of most frequently banned / challenged books. After those come a large set of philosophy texts included half from curiosity, and half because “why should only liberal arts majors swoon the ladies?” Finishing it off are instructionals on the practice of programming.

Since January, here is what I will admit to having finished:

• “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens
• “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Erich Maria Remarque
• “An American Tragedy,” Theodore Dreiser
• “Beautiful Code,” Andy Oram and Greg Wilson (Editors)
• “Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things,” Donald Norman
• “Moneyball,” Michael M. Lewis
• “Parliament of Whores,” PJ O’Rourke
• “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” Michael Pollan

I’m finishing, starting, and working through every exercise: (respectively)

1. “The Design of Everyday Things,” Donald Norman
2. “The Practice of Programming,” Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike
3. “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs,” Abelson and Sussman

All were time well spent. That’s why I provide convenient links. Because I care. Even though, I use the library.

What are you reading?

Every morning I wake up, roll over, and reach for my laptop. It sits on the floor beside my futon. I unplug it and pull it to my lap. Before leaving my bed, I have already started on my only daily habit: I “catch up.”

This process is carefully refined and practiced. I glance over accumulated IMs, review new e-mails, and open my feed reader. These tasks are ordered by the time they take.

I can read and reply to a dozen pending IMs in a minute or so. Sorting and responding to e-mails is another ten. It’s the feed reader that consumes hours.

I have found my information limit.

I’m merciless with ignoring IMs and removing buddies since the great shakedown. Instituting rules dramatically reduced the cognitive load of e-mail. But, my feeds were becoming difficult to stay current with.

I evaluated what I found interesting. I reviewed previously saved and shared articles. Then, I cut. Video games, tech news, and politics were all cut. Friends, a few web comics, and local music were kept. Aggregators like reddit were deleted, but Planets like Parrot remained. Personalities like Tim Bray, why, and Joel not only survived but were added in bulk.

My direction became clear. Notice that Facebook, Twitter and other attention networks aren’t in that above list. When “catching up,” I’m writing test programs to understand concepts, noting ideas that pop in my head, and spamming my friends with exciting links. Attention networks provide me with little gain except a personalized tabloid.

Thus, I’m dropping them, for varying values of “drop:”

• Facebook: I hate it so much. I wish it didn’t have messaging. But, until it dies, there are two reasons to keep my account: profiles and events. But now, I receive no notifications.
• Twitter: I used it as an SMS note-taking service. Then, I started communicating on it. But, it’s just so awkward! So, no more following and back to note-taking.
• LiveJournal: I’m not reading my friend’s page anymore. Sorry.
• All the rest: Gone. Let me know if you see any stray accounts.

Hopefully, I’ll be blogging more.

I’ve been remiss on this.

7368 9770 0615 7417

But, this has got to be the most inefficient method of getting my friend’s codes.

Let’s try something even worse.