The presentation linked below, by Debbie O’Brien, is a great example of a frontend architecture mindset. I highly recommend you watch it. But before you do, let me make two small remarks.
The goal of the video is to discuss component drive development as today’s modus operandi for frontend development. However, in her introduction, Debbie makes a substantial review of how things came to this point. She leads the audience on a journey, describing the general approach used by the web development industry throughout the years, listing their shortcomings, and then commenting about the solutions used to try to solve them. This mental exercise of evaluating technical decisions, system designs, coding patterns, team organization, workflow, and so forth, is what front-end architects do.
However, instead of capturing those insights from history, we can and should proactively evaluate our scenario today, with a critical and strategic mindset, aiming to support our company’s directives and goals. In that way, we don’t become reactive architects, simply absorbing trends several years after the shift occurred. Instead, we become pioneers who provide the best architectural recommendations… even before they receive an official label/title in the community and later become a trend in the industry.
So as you watch Debbie’s great presentation, think about how some architects were implementing those patterns years before the community formalized them under one named trend. And then, notice how the proper mindset can empower us to be those architects who lead innovation, instead of merely playing catch up.