When an architect suggested tight coupling — Tales from Software Industry

Image credit: https://medium.com/wix-engineering/what-exactly-does-low-coupling-high-cohesion-mean-9259e8225372

One of the key principles of Software Design is low coupling. In web development, it is advised to decouple the front end and backend.

We designed a hackathon project accordingly. A colleague of mine designed the UI, and I designed the API. We were done with our development. The API worked and the UI integration worked.

As we were about to take next steps, in came an “architect”. He reviewed our design and without a second thought suggested, “Hey guys, why are you building this API? Open AI has cURL, use it directly in your front end.”

No one dared to cross question this preposterous suggestion, including the then manager. In fact, later in that day, the manager confessed that he would never suggest such a design where front end and backend are intermeshed together. Moreover, the UI developer gladly changed everything and made a tightly coupled application.

I understand that it was a hackathon project. But why dismantle the work that was done and create an inefficient design? Two possibilities come to my mind:

1. The suggestion (more of a commandment for everyone) came out of ignorance.
2. This was a typical case of corporate politics.

I am not a mind reader. Moreover, all is well if it ends well. It worked well during the demonstration, although there was a last minute glitch and the UI developer was running thin on time.

Lastly, this is not an article to pin point or blame people, but to inspire people to speak up when someone says something nonsensical, however big their stature is.