[crabl]

I feel like Kowloon is a decent metaphor for software design at most typical large SaaS companies: small changes accreted over time that lead to an impenetrable, wandering structure that only the residents (developers) truly understand.

[thefourthchime]

“We build our computers the way we build our cities — over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.”

― Ellen Ullman, Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology

[jazzyjackson]

Nicholas Negroponte's The Architecture Machine goes deep into analogizing software and housing along the dimension of "improvised / iterated on by the users" to "waterfall designed by committee"

(free with archive account, fascinating book, dedicated to "the first machine that can appreciate the gesture" https://archive.org/details/architecturemach00negr/page/n15/...)

[seanw265]

It's a fascinating comparison—I've seen this happen at companies too. Makes you wonder if imposing something akin to building codes for software development could prevent this kind of sprawling complexity.

[yungporko]

i've never seen coding standards properly enforced on any large project, nobody has time to read through and scrutinize 30 files of code every time somebody creates a new feature when everybody has their own work to be doing too. at my last job we had mandatory code reviews and some days half of the entire day was just doing that. it didn't long before reading turned into skimming and skimming just turned into clicking approve.

[rrr_oh_man]

Business moves faster than clean software architecture.

If there was 'code', arguably, nothing would be built in the first place.

[CamperBob2]

Yes, it certainly would have prevented a lot of things, including the creation of the OS and software you used to suggest it.

[duxup]

I feel like like that recently. Just examining an app that was largely written in isolation and ... I just discovered a new auth endpoint / service that nobody knew we had, and it does not behave logically. It has all sorts of limits that impedes testing / troubleshooting.

Pain ...

For the record I am going to eventually direct this app to the "normal" auth service and fix it all up, but man why is it this way???

[tokioyoyo]

Is this a reference to the “I divorced my wife and this is what it taught me about B2B sales” joke?

[aaroninsf]

Maybe... that's why I've been fascinated by it. :|

[eagerpace]

I think this applies to anything that is created over more than a single generation. Basically anything the government touches eventually goes this way too.