OMG you worked on that? The blame for this one (and Universal Credit) sits with GDS. Their approach at the time was agile or die, and then try to develop an enterprise system like they did the Guardian's CMS (GDS was staffed initally by ex-Guardian devs).

I had the misfortune of reviewing their Government Gateway replacement, which at the time focused singularly on identity federation. GDS was hugely anti-Microsoft, who built the Govrernment Gateway. And so they chose the SAML protocol over the incumbent ADFS, breaking every dependency.

GDS was way out of its league. An inexperienced 25y/o will draft exactly the kind of architecture document you describe.

I feel for you, and I now understand the cyncism.

By way of example - here's a conceptual design for an insurer wishing to participate in a panel of protection providers.

https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/images/consulting/conceptual_de...

If you're in this world all of it is self-evident, none of it a surprise, and you understand the flow. That document leads to other more detailed designs that each address one distinct rectangle in that image.

At some point all of this will become a specification. Again the immensity of that depends on the ability of the authors. On their ability to manage complexity, and their skill as technical writers.

Either way yes, when the wheels fall off that document becomes the truth, the one everyone goes to to settle disputes. And with a capable team it never gets to that because the documentation is succint and agreed to, and what is delivered matches what was specified.

Typically I try to start with tiers (1, 2, n-tiers...?) that show how the system might be deployed. I then list list layers (user/facade/business/data), interfaces between these layers, and components within each layer. I do that for each tier.

After that maybe something about quality objectives and how they might be met, eg: availability (MTTF / (MTTF + MTTR) * 100), efficiency, flexibility, integrity, interop, usability and so on.

This leads to a physical delpoyment model, which shows layers deployed to tiers. And yes, I'm rather fond of Visio.

Then a bit about approach (dev/deployment and operational management) risk and stakeholder management, technical reviews (change control board maybe?), and project reviews.

To be fair I come from a predominantly critical systems world (telecoms OSS and BSS, healthcare, transport and some fintech. And in that world architecture is very far removed from actual code until eventually.

Also, many attacks today target security protocols rather than, for example, cracking passwords.

Another huge impediment to creating secure systems is agile, which discourages up-front design. The average sprint duration of two weeks is too short for meaningful security testing. Testing is not feasible with nightly builds or pre-release sanity checks, either.

Product owners or customer representatives are too often non-technical stakeholders that have the authority to make technical design decisions. While never a good idea, this has bad consequences on architecture and particularly on security.

Of course .NET can be replaced by anything that supports async, non-blocking functions.

If instead I used message queuing instead of writing the code myself I'm adding yet another configuration item to my system, replete with security holes, patches, operational management, and sourcing the skills to procure, install and run it. Of course each has idiosyncracies you need to learn and understand - like Rabbit's memory-based queues. When the instance goes, so potentially does reliable messaging.

I'm very much not a fan of message queues. Haven't been for a good many years.

"Anger treats its target as someone capable of recognizing that she has done wrong... "

This is true in some cases, but not all. Had a girlfriend once who used anger to get what she wanted. It was like cash to her - a simple means to an end.

When I pushed back it spiraled into abuse. She became ever more hurtful instead of being conciliatory tory. Blew my mind.

I'm firmly in the camp that seeks to eliminate all anger from my life, and avoid it in others. Like the plague.

That said, apparently they've just reached a deal, and the transition period ends in 7 days, so lets see what they decided about with data protection.

It was as insane marginalising Google back then as so many other tech fads since then, including IOT, Bitcoin, XP/agile, Netbooks, 3D TVs (remember those?), and so on.

There is an upside to not having used anything Google - to this day I have zero reliance on any single product of theirs.

I mostly cook German stuff, some French, a little Chinese and a fair few BBQs in the summer. I have quick and easy things I make, and more elaborate stuff that tastes unlike anything you can buy ready-made.

I shop at local markets where you get to know the farmers, smallholders who sell what they grow. Food is way too important to me to not put the effort into it that I do.

Lastly, I'm not a health nut. I don't go to the gym. I see my GP once a year and age usually tells me to try get more sunlight in the winter but otherwise gives me a clean bill of health. I'm approaching 50 and sleep 8 hours most nights.

All encompassing: The web hosts most of our desktop applications. It should host even more of them, it should host mobile applications, it should be the universal platform. More APIs. More ways to package and present sites. (See Project Fugu)

I fundamentally disagree with this one. There's just too much of a bad security track record on all 6 of the first 6 levels of the OSI model for me to use web apps for office apps.

And so, as I said, I strongly agree with your #3.

- Situation

- Complication

- Implication

- Position

- Action

- Benefit

It's a bit heavy for my tastes but helps focus thinking.

https://www.mandel.com/why-mandel/SCIPAB-how-to-start-a-pres...

The mistake, I believe, is absolutism. If you're a Replublican everything Democrat is bad. Maybe there's a future in which the best parts of opposing sides meet to create a happy place?

Everything is a balancing act. Some FAANG is good. Some distributed web is good. Where on that scale we live is our choice. Choice is good. And sometimes, very occasionally, the illusion of choice is good.

There already is a common language and it's English. It may not be officially recognized but it's what everybody working for an EU institution uses.

Not knowing any MEPs by name is your choice and not a deficiency of the EU.