r/Python • u/Corvology • 12h ago

Discussion Python Architecture Design

Robert C. Martin's Abstractness (A), Instability (I), and Distance from the Main Sequence (D) metrics were designed for statically typed OO languages like Java and C#. In Python, applying them literally is misleading because Python has a fundamentally different notion of abstraction and coupling.

is this implementation valid?

https://0x416d6972.github.io/Istos/user-guide/architecture-health/

7 Upvotes

62% Upvoted

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36

u/j0holo 11h ago

Robert C. Martin is somebody that want to sell books. Please do not follow his advise, waste of time and money.

Architecture isn't something that you can apply and suddenly your project is magically good or has less coupling and all the right abstractions. You can't force architecture, you need to learn it.

And you learn by doing and making mistakes.

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u/Corvology 10h ago

I agree that there are no best practices in architecture and it's all trade-offs, but still there are some useful practices specially in the age of vibe coding, that keeping services in good balance can help it maintainable by both human and ai.

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u/j0holo 7h ago

Yes, but trust me Robert C. Martin is just not the way to learn this stuff. It is like the online Python editors to learn your first Python code. It is useless because you don't learn how to RUN actual Python programs on your own computer.

I sadly have his Clean Code book and once you start to build actually complex software you will realize all his "example" are carefully cherry picked.

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u/sunnyata 3h ago edited 3h ago

I think they can still be very useful things for beginners to encounter. It will be the first time they've thought about it and realised how you structure code and systems makes a big difference... like the overconfident beginner who won't even think about separation of concerns because the sprawling mess they wrote is "working".

Edit: I should add, I'm not talking about this book, haven't read it. Just the general idea of concepts like SOLID.

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u/giovanni_gatto 1h ago

You should not buy books since you can't read anyway. He never forces anything in any of his books, and he is basically also telling about mistakes, which is not a modern discovery. Just that smart people learn from others too.

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u/SecurityCritical379 12h ago

the metrics still useful if you adapt them, python's dynamism means you gotta think about coupling more in terms of import graphs than formal interfaces

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u/Beginning-Fruit-1397 10h ago

I think that the comment about learning by doing mistakes is the most solid advice in itself.

However reading your link I found that the metrics and reasoning behind them make senses. As always with everything, adapt it to your specific context. E.g if you are writing a library, let's say a new polars, the file with your dataframe class will obviously be +1000 LOC long.

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u/[deleted] 3h ago

[deleted]

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u/giovanni_gatto 1h ago

The same is valid for that critique as well. Who is this nobody anyway?

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u/giovanni_gatto 1h ago

Read the book, and use your mind. Be critical, absorb the useful stuff, forget the rest. As with any book. He has a quite big hater-base that is now trying to undermine his legacy for political reasons. His practical examples are rather useless though, but that does not invalidate the concept. He is probably not coding much nowadays, which is normal for someone in his career stage. Architecture is a language and code independent thing, most of the other authors teach more or less same anyway.