Thoughts on Beautiful Architecture ch. 14 - Reading the Classics

This chapter is roughly divided into three sections. First, Panagiotis Louridas generally describes the software classics and just as the literary classics they have heavy influences on the later works. The author also proposes that programming languages can also be considered as classics as they also have major influences on the later languages and the software architecture that build on top of them. The author uses the Design Patterns and the Smalltalk language to make his point. One thing about thinking in patterns that the author has pointed out is that it inspires design reusability. These days, many of us already think software as consisted of modules with clear APIs that are reusable and easily swappable.

The author then dives into an introduction of the Smalltalk language and at the same time describes typical Object-Oriented language features in general. Compare to many other OO languages, Smalltalk is the purist that everything in it is an object. Unlike the strongly-typed language, its users do not explicitly declare type information. Instead, types are defined implicitly by what they do and their interfaces thus the type-checking is done at runtime when a selector (message) is passed to an object. There, an unexpected receiver may not handle such message and thus an error is notified.

At the end, the author turns the focus to brick and mortar architecture and in an attempt to also explain Smalltalk's lack of popularity. It is a rather interesting read as the author illustartes that some of the most influential architectures are actually hardly usable. As the author quotes Louis Sullivan, "form ever follows function". While we set to in search of beautiful architecture, we should not sacrifice the function. This being at the end of the last chapter of the book serves as an awakening advice to its readers.