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One of my developers asked me what was the difference between an architect and a developer. Given that my architects do some development and my developers do some design work, it's not necessarily clearcut.

But it didn't take me long to explain that the primary difference is the approach. A developer is firstly looking for the solution that will make a feature work (making sure that error paths are handled). This involves understanding data structures and algorithms and deciding what to do for error modes.

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An architect's primary approach is to see how the system will scale, handle failure modes staying resilient, and remain secure. Of course they're also looking at how the feature will fit into the system, but the difference is outlook - where you start looking.

It's a continuum, you aren't really one or the other. Developers also consider scaling and failure modes and security, architects also consider data structures and algorithms.

How will the feature scale, and what are the failure modes and how to handle them so that the system degrades rather than fails, all while keeping the system secure, that's how the architect starts.

Now on to our usual links to tools, articles, news, talks and as ever, all the extracted tips from all of this month's referenced articles.

News

Java performance tuning related news.

• How does Java Both Optimize Hot Loops and Allow Debugging
• JMeter 3.0 released, first major version release in 12 years
• BMC releases MainView for monitoring JVMs on mainframes
• Java is THE choice for extreme performance requirements and extreme scalability requirements
• Updated Java performance related books list
• Updated Java thread analysers list

Tools

Java performance tuning related tools.

• opsclarity monitoring targeted at data processing applications
• Mastering Concurrency Programming with Java 8 By Javier Fernandez Gonzalez Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Sematext SPM lets you collect metrics and events across your whole stack
• Universal Thread dump analyzer - parses thread dumps and provides metrics, graphs, intelligent thread dump analysis patterns and identifies root cause of the problem

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Articles

• Micro-services for performance (Peter Lawrey/vanilla java)
• Microservice Threading Models and their Tradeoffs (Glenn Engstrand/InfoQ)
• Locating Common Micro Service Performance Anti-Patterns (Andreas Grabner/InfoQ)
• Hopelessness and Confidence in Distributed Systems Design (Camille Fournier/Strange Loop)
• Architectural Patterns of Resilient Distributed Systems (Ines Sombra/Strange Loop)
• Logging stop-the-world pauses in JVM (Gleb Smirnov/plumbr)

Jack Shirazi

Back to newsletter 186 contents