**A system should have a powerful metaphor that is uniformly applied to each of its parts**
Conceptually integrity doesn't have a great definition from what I've gathered, it essentially just means you shouldn't have weird parts of a system that seem bolted-on or like they don't "fit" with the rest. Often times this is achieve through a powerful metaphor describing the philosophy of the system.
It strikes me that the strength of some of my favorite pieces of software is strong conceptual integrity:
- [[Notion]] is built around the *block*. No feature in Notion strays away from the block as a base concept. Everything it does is an extension of the block.
The [[PDW]] concept would be something like:
- An Entry owns a collection of related Points, with an associated Definition, taking place in a Period.
This is what's behind the argument that says "a hammer is the [[More is Unnecessary, Less is Impossible.|Perfect Tool]]". It executes on its concept perfectly. It cannot be reduced. It cannot be meaningfully improved on.
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### Source
- [[Udacity Software Architecture Course]]
### Related
- [[Conceptual Integrity Quote]]
- [[More is Unnecessary, Less is Impossible.]]