Introduction: There’s a saying that a programmer who doesn’t want to become an architect isn’t a good programmer, and a programmer who can’t draw architecture diagrams isn’t a good lead technician. Becoming an architect is a career goal for many programmers. Architectural knowledge accumulates gradually, and programmers at each level must master their own set of skills, among which architectural diagrams are one of the core skills required.
Types of Architectural Diagrams: Architectural diagrams can be divided into various types according to different dimensions:
- Development View: Depicts the system development process, describing module division, composition, and internal package design.
- Logical View: Explains the overall construction of the system, describing the relationships between components after software functional decomposition.
- Process Flow View: Shows functional and data flows, describing the timing of communication between components and data transfer.
Steps in Drawing an Architectural Diagram: The process of drawing an architectural diagram can generally be divided into four steps:
- Determine the type of architectural diagram to be drawn.
- Identify key elements in the diagram, such as products, technologies, services, etc.
- Clarify the relationships between elements, such as containment, support, parallel relationships, etc.
- Produce a clear architectural diagram that reflects these relationships.
Drawing Challenges: Although it sounds simple, in practice, drawing an architectural diagram can be full of challenges. How to choose appropriate symbols, lines, arrows, colors, deciding what information is necessary, etc., to ensure that the diagram is easily understood by stakeholders.
Microservices Architecture: In a microservices architecture, each microservice may have its own architectural diagram. In this context, drawing an architectural diagram requires attention to the types of distributed components, their interactions, lifecycles, and dependencies.
Effective Architectural Diagrams: A high-quality architectural diagram needs to have consistency, accuracy, and should not only meet current needs but also anticipate the future, while corresponding with the code it represents.
Drawing Tips: To improve the skills of drawing architectural diagrams, one can refer to the sharing and case analyses by professionals, understanding types of architectural views, system sequence diagrams, and drawing techniques.
Recently, our backend has been frequently receiving inquiries about career choices, especially concerning the question of “whether one should enter a large company.” I personally agree with the views once expressed by Andy Lau. He said that whether to enter a large company is not the most crucial question; the key is to join a company with ongoing business growth. In doing so, you will be able to improve your technical level as the business scale expands. At the same time, this also becomes the motivation for you to learn cutting-edge technologies.
Those who have experienced technical challenges are favored no matter where they are. By that time, you will have more choices. However, if the choices before you are few, then you should remain grounded and continue to learn and practice.
Remember, personal growth and capability enhancement are the most crucial, the future is full of possibilities, and we are all moving forward on our own journeys.