What is it about?
This paper provides a definition for elegant systems that enables their identification and comparison.
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Why is it important?
Current development of large-scale systems focus a lot on process fulfillment. Some academics and practitioners are calling for stepping aside and looking at solutions that are elegant. This may be a better choice to achieve affordability, adaptability, scalability, and ultimately success. The tricky part is: what makes a system (its architecture) elegant? Given the inherent subjectivity to elegance, it is important to set some guidelines or framework to achieve common understanding among engineers of what makes a system elegant.
Perspectives
A key aspect of this paper is that elegance has been defined in a structural manner. This enables the definition to not become obsolete as new system characteristics are identified as inherent to elegant systems. Instead, the structural definition provides a taxonomy where they can fit.
Dr Alejandro Salado
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Using Maslow's hierarchy of needs to define elegance in system architecture, Procedia Computer Science, January 2013, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.procs.2013.01.097.
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