From Novice to Architect: My Journey of Learning and Growth

If you missed OpenAI's Dev Days presentation, you missed out on Sam Altman, the CEO, ~~killed many startups~~ has shown updates to OpenAI and ChatGPT.

Haven't seen it? Do yourself a favor and watch it here. It's not just a presentation; it's a glimpse into the future, at least until the next big thing rolls around.

Post-presentation, like many others, I had a lightbulb moment. Why not feed all our internal organization docs to a GPT and let it do the heavy lifting? Then just kick back, relax, and sip coconuts on an island somewhere.

Turns out, it's not as easy as Sam made it look. If your company's processes and org structure resemble a labyrinth, you'll need to roll up your sleeves. It's not all AI magic and coconut sipping, unfortunately. But at the same time, it is much-much-much-.....-much easier than it was before. We just need a little bit of wizarding around crafting precise instructions to GPT.

As of writing this, internet does not have a lot of takes on how to make it work. So, I decided to put my two cents in and draft one.

Asynchronous data loading is a pervasive challenge in modern web development. When using React and MobX, the complexity can quickly escalate, giving rise to questions about type safety, error handling, and boilerplate code. In this article, we won't just talk about these challenges; we'll solve them.

Through a targeted design session, we will dissect the problem and build a type-safe and efficient solution for asynchronous data loading in React and MobX applications.

Additionally, this article aims to offer more than just a solution; it aims to walk you through the thinking process involved in tackling a problem that lies at the intersection of technology and application design.

Sooner or later, companies reach a point where architects are needed, but it can be difficult to hire them on the market, so they have to be trained in-house. Training takes place when someone within the company wants to move towards architecture or when promising people are found in the labor market, if, for example, a person falls slightly short of the required position.

Teaching architects is, in my opinion, a rather difficult task because architecture is poorly formalized and heavily dependent on the organization's context. Since I do not consider myself a specialist in training, this post will change from time to time as I make mistakes and find better approaches.

Over the years, I've seen many different models for organizing work on infrastructure. In this article, I would like to systematize what I've seen and briefly describe when and why different options should be preferred to others. It is important to note that infrastructure refers to work with hardware, cloud, hosting, etc., which is usually referred to as DevOps. Each section describes one model, its pros and cons, risks, and when to prefer other models.

So, we came to the point where at the beginning we discuss the requirements that need to be taken into account in the decision before going into any technological specifics. The team agreed on the goals and the points that need to be achieved. Now we finally need to move on to the solution and discuss one or another idea.

Suppose we have several solutions and all of them already meet the requirements. Solutions that do not meet the requirements are not considered by default. More precisely, if we imagine collective work - then we gently remind that some requirement is not considered in the solution and it needs to be either expanded or not considered.

I constantly hear that in order to write tests, you need to increase the time estimate for the task by 1.2, 1.5, 2, 3 times. Usually, I don't argue with this, since the team knows best, but inside me there is often a simmering feeling, or at least a bubbling one. I would like to explain my view on automated tests and why I believe that such an increase is not entirely correct.

Very often, organizations experience local conflicts between developers and infrastructure teams that need to be resolved afterwards. Since I am often brought in to resolve such conflicts, I would like to share my view on why these conflicts arise and what needs to be done, in my opinion, to significantly reduce their number.

How did DevOps come about?

We all know why such a marketing name as DevOps was invented. In case someone doesn't know...

I think many of you have worked in a team and have faced heated discussions when making a decision. Usually, there is a person in the team who has the final say, for example, the tech lead. But sometimes there are disagreements that are quite difficult because the team consists of senior people, each of whom has many arguments why their opinion should be heard.

If there is only one architect on the project, then this problem is less pronounced in their work because there is an option, in case of equivalent solutions, to keep the last word to themselves. Not always their option, but it is important that there is an opportunity to stop the argument if it exists.

However, if there is a team of architects on the project, then an interesting game begins here. Even if there is a lead or a CTO among them, the decision is still an exhausting activity. Everyone understands that architects are specialists who know their job, and it is necessary to try to listen to everyone, but since everyone has a bunch of arguments for their options and in opposition to the opponent, a lot of energy is spent.

Once, I was in such a situation for a very long time and at one point, I got tired of it and started thinking about how to get out of it.