In my last post on this topic, I looked at some of the commonalities between learning to play a musical instrument and writing software. In each case, there are “rudiments” to be learned, boring though they may be, that help one become great at either craft. In this second installment, we’re going to look at what happens when you’ve finally learned to play and decide you’re ready to take the next step: Composition.

Finding Your Own Voice
There us a huge difference between playing the notes written on a page and making music. When we find a piece of music we really like, more often than not it’s the feel of it that draws us. More than the simple, linear arrangement of notes or chords, it’s the interpretation of those notes through the act of performing that makes a simple sheet of musical notation actual music.

For many musicians, this is more than enough. But for some, the satisfaction of simply playing music written by others wanes quickly and they seek to find their own voice, to express their own ideas, their own reflecting glass for their experiences. So they turn their energy to musical composition.

To be a successful songwriter or composer, you need:

• Experience: First and foremost, you must have mastered the art of playing music before you can master composing music. I’m certain that this is an arguable point (I’ve never seen a point that wasn’t), but in my experience, those who can’t play generally can’t write very well either. They tend to have unrealistic expectations of the musicians that will need to take what they’ve written and perform it. They also tend not to have a good feel for what musical structures fit well together and sound most natural to the human ear. It’s that sense of recognition and comfort, after all, that differentiates what people consider music from background noise.
• Creativity: This seems like kind of an obvious one, but you’d be surprised how many people I run into that try to write music based on an astoundingly detailed knowledge of musical theory. Certainly, theory provides you with the tools to understand the what of music, but the how, and more importantly, the why must come from the mind and imagination of the composer. Without creativity in composition, we’d still be listening to waltzes and chamber music, the lute would still be the string instrument of choice and percussion would be optional (though some may argue it is anyway). Human creativity pushes the envelope and fosters an environment where the art can evolve beyond the status quo.
• Knowledge: This is related to experience, but is slightly different. Imagine you’re composing a piece for a major symphony orchestra. Think of all the individual instruments for which you’d need to write parts: Violins, violas, cellos, basses, winds, brass, percussion, etc. And within each instrument group, you need to write the first part, second part, etc. If the only instrument you’ve ever studied is the clarinet, then you’ll likely write a fantastic clarinet part, but will likely find it very difficult to successfully write all the other parts in a way that leverages the strengths of each instrument and creates one unified piece of music. Understanding and knowing the composite parts of the larger ensemble of instruments will certainly lead to a more cohesive and sonorous piece of music.

The Composition of Architecture 
Musical composition clearly has parallels to the software development process when you consider the role of the architect, vague though the definition of that role can often be.

In my experience, I’ve found it very unusual to see successful architects that didn’t start out, in some capacity, as software developers. What I find to be the case more often than not is that the best developers on a particular team gravitate into the role of the architect, either de facto or de jure. I can’t speak for all architects that followed this particular career progression, but I can speak for myself.

I was drawn to software architecture for a couple of reasons:

1. Writing software handed to me and designed by someone else started to hold less interest day-to-day for me
2. I felt I had good ideas for designing systems and wanted to be in the position to express them

In other words, I wanted to stop just being a “performer” and wanted to become a “composer” because I saw it, primarily, as a venue to better express my technical ideas. That being said, I still code as often as I can (which isn’t very often these days, but I do find time now and again). I’ve never met a composer who didn’t continue to play on a regular basis, even though it wasn’t their primary vocation. We do this because it keeps us sharp and in touch with the ultimate results of our work. If we can’t play it, it will be difficult for others to play it. Some of the worst architectural designs I’ve seen have come from architects who never paid their dues in the trenches writing code and making software work on a real project. I once had a friend who told me, “True wisdom comes from great pain and suffering.” Over the years, that dictum has been proven true time and time again.

I think that creativity is one of the most overlooked characteristics in successful software developers and architects. When we think of people who work in software, it’s easy for us to picture the long-faced nerd with an overbite, thick black glasses and a picket protector tucked into the front of wrinkled white dress shirt, purely analytical and socially inept. While the industry certainly has its share of those archetypal individuals, it’s also filled with mainstream, highly creative people who simply love the malleability of software and the ability to make it into just about anything you want or need it to be. Like music, software architecture has “theory” (we tend to call it “best practices”) that, if followed, get you moving in the right direction, and ultimately it’s the creative use of those guidelines that allow new ideas, techniques, and yes, best practices to be tried and vetted. It is creativity, I think, that makes a lot of musicians and other folks with artistic backgrounds who work in the software industry so successful. Because the tenets of theory are more guidelines as opposed to hard rules, musicians tend to be more comfortable experimenting with things that haven’t been tried before. Musicians don’t have a corner on the creative market, of course, but for the most part they have active, creative minds that can drive the “next big idea” to make developers, architects and the products they produce better. When you stop to consider something like test-driven development (TDD) and the progenitors of that movement, it’s easy to see the important role creativity can play in building better software. Many people would call this “Thinking outside the box.” A creative approach to developing software precludes the idea of a box in the first place.

Certainly, the role of knowledge in software architecture should be self-evident. In this case, it also warrants a discussion of its own and will be the topic of the next and last post in this series: Teaching.