

Ask HN: Do you have a need for architecture-as-a-service? - skyraider

Hi all,<p>At the beginning of a project, I can plot out exactly how an application should be architectured, but it then takes a while to input all of the necessary keystrokes to create the application. I want to generate most of the app based upon what I already know is there, download some nice code that binds to open source architecture components, and edit the code at key customization points.<p>I know from the outset the way data facets will be related on the UI (drag-and-drop, tables), the transactional guarantees of the application backend (atomicity and other ACID properties) to the methods (formats, frequencies, and distributed systems algorithms) that queues, web servers, tunnels and will use to communicate with each other.<p>I would like to enter the data models (and their object authorization schemes and UI components), transactional guarantees, and general architecture into an interface and have a modern web application come out the other end.<p>My questions for the HN community are: If this spit out HTML5, {Python,Ruby,Scala}, and an architecture that's immediately deployable to arbitrary cloud backends, would you pay for such a thing? If so, how much? Do you actually think up transactional and performance guarantees beforehand?<p>Would you want to select from a list of PaaS providers (like Heroku) whose addons are compatible with the architectural guarantees you specified, or would you use Iaas like Amazon Web Services? Or would you want the choice to deploy to either PaaS or IaaS?<p>In short, is Heroku sufficient for folks out there, or do you need something finer tuning dials that will save you a lot of time on architecture?<p>Thanks very much for any feedback. Also, if anyone is interested in this idea, give me a ping :-)
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gosteen
This is something that I would very much like to see. Personally, I'm a bit of
a fanatic about fine-tuning every small detail of a project but I always start
with designing the architecture. I feel that it would be of great benefit to
use something as you describe to generate the connecting architecture and, as
necessary, it can be fine-tuned from there. I have little doubt that it would
enhance existing rapid application development.

