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Balancing Coupling in Software Design - Vlad Khononov

Domain-Driven Design Europe 2023 http://dddeurope.com - https://twitter.com/ddd_eu - https://newsletter.dddeurope.com/ https://linkedin.com/company/domain-driven-design-europe Organised by Aardling (https://aardling.eu/) We are used to treating coupling as the necessary evil. Hence, we aim to break systems apart into the smallest services possible, in the ever-lasting quest of decoupling everything. But what results are we getting by following this reasoning? — Instead of the promised land of evolvable systems, many such “decouple everything” endeavors lead straight into the chains of distributed monoliths. Can we do better? What if there is a better way to handle coupling in distributed systems? Or even, what if instead of fighting coupling, we can use it as a heuristic for designing systems that are actually evolvable and maintainable? That’s exactly what you will learn in this session: what coupling is, and how you can use it as a design tool. We will start by taking a journey through time, and explore the different models of evaluating coupling. Next, we will combine the existing knowledge into a coherent model — a simple function for evaluating a system’s decomposition into components. This function will allow you to assess the expected effort for evolving a system and use it as a heuristic for optimizing architectural design decisions. Vlad Khononov is a software architect with over 20 years of industry experience, during which he has worked for companies large and small in roles ranging from webmaster to chief architect. Vlad is a long-time proponent of domain-driven design and evolutionary architecture and currently helps companies make sense of their business domains, untangle monoliths, and tackle complex architectural challenges.

June 5, 2023