Yesterday, a one-hour meeting to finalize some details of another developer’s feature turned into a multi-meeting all-day extravaganza that re-examined a number of central architectural issues, including modularity, data model, separation of powers, capabilities of APIs, and the nature of God.

OK, we didn’t get to the nature of God. But it was exhausting, and at the end of it, a handful of architectural decisions that I really liked were in question. Now I have to put on my thinking cap and make some proposals. It means getting past the disappointment of my direction not being taken, and getting down to the key issue: what is the best design for the current set of requirements. No wonder they call it “work”.