In this episode, we cover the Software Architecture Fundamentals 2nd Edition chapter on identifying architectural characteristics, an important skill for all software architects. Many think this type of analysis is only useful at project inception, but it turns out to be useful even for existing systems. As always, we cover the basics of the chapter and answer a number of questions from the live audience.

Architects can split structural design into two analyses: architectural characteristics and logical component analysis. This episode introduces what we mean by architectural characteristics (and why we don't care for alternative terms such as non-functional requirements, cross-cutting requirements, etc.). We discuss our definition and how it impacts architecture decisions.

A key concept for structural design in software architecture is modularity, which this episode dives into. We define the difference between modularity and granularity, and focus on some of the concrete measurements architects have to understand the macro structure of component-based systems. As usual, we also answer some great questions from our live audience.

In this episode of the podcast, we sync up with chapter two of Software Architecture Fundamentals 2nd Edition, Architectural Thinking, including topics like architecture versus design, the distinction and importance of technical depth versus breadth, the primacy of analyzing trade-offs, understanding business drivers, and balancing role expectations like coding versus non-coding activities.

In this episode, we start our chapter-by-chapter exploration of Software Architecture Fundamentals 2nd Edition. We discuss our (updated) definition of software architecture. While we were writing the first edition, we kept our eyes open for things that seems universally true; we hoped to find about 10, but we ended up with two in the first edition. For the second edition, we added a third law after some insights in the intervening years. In this episode of the podcast, we cover all three laws and how they apply to the remainder of the book.

What's it like to author a technical book? Especially one as stylized at Head First Software Architecture? We take a brief departure from our normal pattern of covering one book chapter per episode as we're between books and thought this might be a good time to go meta. We provide some insight in writing "regular" technical books, along with the special constraints and challenges inherent in writing for a series like Head First.

Head First books by their nature cannot cover as much material as conventional books, especially for such a broad topic as software architecture. Thus, the "Leftovers" chapter was born--several important topics that we just didn't have room to cover in the book. In this episode of the podcast, we cover the Head First Software Architecture "Leftovers" and sum up our last thoughts on the book.

Continuing our exploration of distributed architectures, our next architecture style is event-driven architecture, one of the few styles that can also double as a communication pattern. We discuss what makes an architecture event-driven versus microservices, and discuss why architects might choose this style for certain classes of problems ill suited to other styles. And, as always, we cover both the super powers and kryptonite for this style.