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by alexandercrohde·8y ago·view on hn ↗
Well, I think the author is alleging (and it concurs with my experience) that at a number of companies patterns are misapplied much (most?) of the time [and the more complex the pattern, the less likely it's necessary].

So if the majority of drivers hit trees then yes, transportation would be failing.

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That would be just as invalid an overgeneralization. It seems more likely that three drivers are failing. It is less likely that it could be three makes of cars. Generalizing to all cars is ridiculous, generalizing to all of transportation off the charts.

Maybe these patterns are being misapplied. Most likely, that's because people misapply stuff all the time. (Paraphrasing Sturgeon: sure 90% of software is crap. That's because 90% of everything is crap). Now it is also possible that these particular architectural patterns are prone to misapplication, though there is little evidence of that. Maybe there is a general tendency to apply over complex architectures (see architecture-astronauts), but even that doesn't mean that "architecture has failed".

At best: over-complex up-front architecting is maybe not such a good idea. But any competent architect will tell you that. Minimal, evolutionary architecture is just as much (and in some senses more) "architecture".

Every software system has an architecture. There is good architecture, bad architecture, big-ball-of-mud architecture etc. Citing examples of bad or badly applied architecture and claiming "architecture has failed" is a category mistake.