Learn How To Build Anti-Fragile Systems

Step by step guide

In order to build really strong anti-fragile systems, we need to understand the certain characteristics

Identify the weak components proactively

In order to build anti-fragile systems, we really need to proactively identify weak components. We might have a system which would be running smooth but not necessary that it is anti-fragile. Fragile systems do work well unless there is a big blow to its normal operations. Hence it is very important to proactively keep identifying the weak components.

You can think about practising Chaos Engineering. It is the discipline of experimenting on a distributed system in order to build confidence in the system’s capability to withstand turbulent conditions in production. Chaos Engineering would help you generate randomness in your system and can help help identifying weak components.

Build Reactive Systems

This is an era of reactive systems. The systems which are fault-tolerant and self healing. Whenever you are thinking of building distributed systems, think about how the system would react in case of failure. Does it provide high availability? Is there any data loss? Is there any communication loss? Think about these paradigms while designing the solution.

There are various libraries like Akka which provides you with all these capabilities by default. Try to use those whenever possible. If the libraries are of no use, then at least learn the principles on which they built — The Reactive Manifesto.

Build Micro Services

When you build bigger systems they are more fragile. They are less adaptable to change. They might seem to work for sometime but might fall at stress. So think about breaking down the problem definition into smaller chunks. Think about Single Class Single Responsibility Principle- if a class or a module needs to be changed then it only should be changes because of only one reason. This way you can easily identify the couplings.

Microservices are the great means to achieve — Low coupling and High cohesion! There is an interesting book on this topic — Antifragile Software — Building Adaptable Software with Microservices

Conclusion

To conclude, we need to remember that in order to build antifragile systems, we need to constantly keep following above mentioned practices. This isn’t something you design at the beginning and forget after that. This needs to be constantly maintained and rigorously followed.

Keep innovating so that you will be able to generate randomness and keep stressing your system to only make it better.

Thank you for reading

If you have came across any better techniques on practising anti-fragility, feel free to share those in comments section.