Evolution of software architecture with the co-creator of UML (Grady Booch)

章节 1：IBM院士的视界与“遗留系统”的真谛

📝 本节摘要：

在本节中，Grady Booch 首先幽默地介绍了他在 IBM 的独特身份——从自称的“自由基”到拥有极高学术自由度的“IBM 院士（Fellow）”。随后，他对“遗留系统（Legacy System）”给出了一个发人深省的定义：代码写下的那一刻即成为遗留。他以美国国税局（IRS）为例，生动描绘了从 1960 年代沿用至今的 IBM 360 汇编代码如何成为现代化的巨大阻碍，并指出即使是 Facebook、Google 和 OpenAI 这样的科技巨头，也终将面临同样的“技术负债”与维护难题。

[原文] [Host]: It's safe to say I'm talking with a living legend in the field of software engineering so welcome to the podcast.

[译文] [Host]: 可以肯定地说，我现在正与软件工程领域的一位活着的传奇人物对话，欢迎来到这个播客。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: Emphasis on living I'm not done yet.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 重点在于“活着”，我还没完工呢。

[原文] [Host]: Yes absolutely. So to kickoff you're a chief scientist at IBM that's a pretty fancy title what does it mean and what do you do I'm curious to know.

[译文] [Host]: 是的，绝对是。那么开始吧，你是 IBM 的首席科学家，这是一个相当响亮的头衔，这意味著什么？你具体做什么？我很好奇。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: Well there was a time that my business card said I was a free radical but upper management didn't like that so I had to find something a little bit more tame.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 嗯，有一段时间我的名片上印的是“自由基（Free Radical）”，但高层管理人员不喜欢这个称呼，所以我不得不找一个稍微温和一点的头衔。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: Um actually the more important title position is that of fellow there are I think 68 of us still active no 89 of us still active and this has been out of 350 or thereabouts fellows throughout the history of IBM so we're a fairly Rare Breed.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 嗯，其实更重要的职位头衔是“院士（Fellow）”。我想现在还有 68 位……不，是 89 位现任院士，而 IBM 历史上总共也只出过 350 位左右的院士，所以我们算是相当稀有的物种。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: I was made a fellow upon the acquisition of our company rational software back in 2003 and the great thing about being a fellow is it's it's rather like having tenure meaning we trust you done good things we want you to continue doing things let's give you the degrees of freedom to do that.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 我是在 2003 年我们的公司 Rational Software 被收购时成为院士的。成为院士最棒的一点是，它有点像拥有了“终身教职（Tenure）”，意思是：我们信任你，你做过很棒的事情，我们希望你继续做下去，所以给你足够的自由度去发挥。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: And so as a fellow and with my focus upon first software engineering and then later upon AI I am given a lot of degrees of freedom to pursue what I think makes a lot of sense to trade to as Alan Kay would say invent the future.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 因此，作为一名院士，我的关注点首先是软件工程，后来转向人工智能（AI），我有很大的自由度去追求我认为有意义的事情，或者借用 Alan Kay 的话说，去“发明未来”。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: So in my journey from starting at 2003 I first stayed with the rational division but then quickly moved over to research because IBM's bureaucracy realized I was a person who worried about the next five to 10 years not the next quarter.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 在我从 2003 年开始的旅程中，我最初留在 Rational 部门，但很快就转到了研究院，因为 IBM 的官僚体系意识到，我是一个操心未来 5 到 10 年的人，而不是只关心下一个季度业绩的人。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: And indeed my very early work in research was looking at finding ways to automate the discovery of patterns within Legacy software systems this is something we were doing pre neural network days and it was interesting trying to see if we could discern the design patterns from the gang of four and elsewhere it never went anywhere because it was a hard problem.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 事实上，我在研究院非常早期的工作是寻找自动化发现“遗留软件系统”中模式的方法。这是我们在神经网络时代之前做的事情，当时很有趣，我们试图看看能否从中识别出“四人帮（Gang of Four）”或其他地方的设计模式。这项目后来没成，因为它确实是个难题。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: And so I then began to in the architecture sense of things I worked with a lot of customers and actually had been doing that for decades where I'd be parachuted in the customer would say come help me Mr Wizard uh with this particular architectural problem.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 随后我开始在架构层面工作，我与许多客户合作——实际上这事我已经做了几十年了——我通常会被“空降”到客户那里，他们会说：来帮帮我吧，巫师先生，解决一下这个棘手的架构问题。

[原文] [Host]: So when you say you worked on Legacy systems what does a legacy system mean to you?

[译文] [Host]: 既然你说你研究过遗留系统，那么对你来说，“遗留系统”意味着什么？

[原文] [Grady Booch]: Well the moment you write a line of code it becomes a legacy system until you throw it away so all code to some degree is a legacy system.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 这么说吧，你写下一行代码的那一瞬间，它就变成了遗留系统，直到你把它扔掉为止。所以从某种程度上说，所有代码都是遗留系统。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: Facebook is a legacy domain Google is Legacy uh Heavens even uh open AI has a legacy problem because reality is that as I often say old code Never Dies you have to kill it.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: Facebook 是一个遗留领域，Google 是遗留的，天哪，甚至 OpenAI 也有遗留问题。因为现实是，正如我常说的，旧代码永远不会自己死掉，你必须亲手杀掉它。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: Once you have built something that's useful then it's going to live on and so you're unless you have fully disposable code there is some body of code that you have there that represents something immutable something that has a cost something that has some degree of technical debt to it.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 一旦你构建了某种有用的东西，它就会存活下去。所以，除非你拥有完全一次性的代码，否则你必然拥有某些代码体，它们代表着某种不可变的东西、某种成本、某种程度的技术负债。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: It may be very very small if you look at many of the classic organizations in the big Financial space these are groups who have been working with code bases since literally the 60s.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 这负债可能非常非常小。但如果你看看大型金融领域的许多经典机构，这些团队维护的代码库确实可以追溯到 20 世纪 60 年代。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: I had one engagement with the Internal Revenue Service in the United States because they've been trying to modernize their systems since the 1960s.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 我曾参与过美国国税局（IRS）的一个项目，因为他们从 1960 年代起就一直试图使系统现代化。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: Now let's go back in time what was happening in the 60s well you had the of the population the increase of Social Security and the like and more and more organizations who were creating lots of paperwork and so the banks and the government realized by the late to Mid 60s there was simply so much going on that you couldn't do it by hand.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 现在让我们回到过去，看看 60 年代发生了什么。当时人口增长，社会保障需求增加等等，越来越多的机构产生了大量的文书工作。银行和政府在 60 年代中后期意识到，事务太繁杂了，根本无法靠手工完成。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: And why did banks used to close at 3 p.m. because they needed the time for the humans to reconcile accounts.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 为什么银行过去常在下午 3 点关门？因为他们需要时间让人工去核对账目。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: The IRS was very much like that and so there was during the 60s this period of automation of human processes and so most of that was written in IBM 360 Assembly Language.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 美国国税局的情况也非常类似。所以在 60 年代，出现了一段人类流程自动化的时期，而这些系统大部分是用 IBM 360 汇编语言编写的。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: Zoom back to today there is still code in the IRS system written in IBM 360 Assembly Language running on emulators upon emulators upon emulators but that creates really difficult problems because some of that code embodies business rules that are within the Assembly Language itself so how do you change that?

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 回到今天，IRS 系统中仍然有代码是用 IBM 360 汇编语言编写的，运行在模拟器之上的模拟器之上的模拟器里。但这造成了非常棘手的问题，因为其中一些代码本身就内嵌了业务规则（Business Rules），就在汇编语言里，你要怎么去改它？

[原文] [Grady Booch]: And the answer is you're faced with a real human problem of how do I transmogrify old code in cobal Assembly Language so that it can work on modern technology there's only so much you can do via emulation.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 答案是，你面临着一个真正的人力难题：我该如何将 COBOL 或汇编语言写成的旧代码“变形（transmogrify）”，使其能在现代技术上工作？光靠模拟能做的只有这么多。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: And then would you consider that the government you know makes new business rules every year how do you keep up with that that's a real and present Legacy problem.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: 然后你再想想，政府每年都在制定新的业务规则，你怎么跟得上？这是一个真实且迫在眉睫的遗留问题。

[原文] [Grady Booch]: Facebook has the same thing although their code doesn't date back that far Google has the same problem as well open AI will soon have that problem.

[译文] [Grady Booch]: Facebook 也有同样的情况，虽然他们的代码没那么古老；Google 也有同样的问题；OpenAI 很快也会面临这个问题。