Lately I’ve been pretty busy, and I’ve also had the chance to take part in a lot of front-end architecture work.
Back when I was still mainly doing the “hands-on” kind of front-end engineering, I always thought architecture was an especially sexy job. I admired how a good architect could look at a complicated project and somehow take every detail into account.
As I got deeper into the work, I started talking more closely with architects. In those conversations, I gradually realized that architecture actually follows a lot of principles and patterns. Like Butcher Ding dismembering an ox, it can be elegant, effortless, and strangely satisfying. Many seemingly open-ended problems can, with a simple shift in perspective, become a very straightforward choice.
Then I was lucky enough to take part in some relatively simple architecture work myself. Once I started doing it for real, I found that the most basic idea behind architecture is to translate a product designer’s vision from Chinese into English — by which I mean, programming languages are basically built on English. In that sense, good engineering and good design often arrive at the same place without even trying. The process of technical architecture is really a process of combining technology and art in a clever way. Architecture is not only a sexy job; it is also an art.
Now that I have a lot of front-end architecture work on my plate, I’ve found myself somewhere between sexiness and art, and then I noticed something else…
Actually, architecture is still “manual labor”
— that’s also where my QQ signature came from a while back.
Of course, that conclusion has not made me lose any interest or enthusiasm for architecture. Just like when I first started playing with JavaScript, even if it’s considered “manual labor,” it is still genuinely enjoyable because it comes with a sense of sexiness and art alongside it :)
funny everyday with front-end architecture