Generic or Specific? Making Sensible Software Design Decisions

GOTO Amsterdam 2023

In software design and software architecture, we often face the question: should we build this generic or specific?
Usually, this is not an easy question to answer. The answer depends on a lot of different factors, including future factors you may not be aware of - yet. In this talk, I’ll share my experiences and thought process as a developer and software architect with choosing between generic and specific solutions.

I’ll talk about generic vs specific design & architecture, both on a project level and organization level. We’ll look at sharing code/components between teams, inner source culture, monorepo’s, microservices, lifecycle management of generic components and strategic design as a tool to help decide. After this talk, you’ll have practical insights that can help you to choose between generic and specific solutions yourself.