this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
16 points (100.0% liked)

Experienced Devs

3920 readers
3 users here now

A community for discussion amongst professional software developers.

Posts should be relevant to those well into their careers.

For those looking to break into the industry, are hustling for their first job, or have just started their career and are looking for advice, check out:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Somewhere between API resources, queue workers, repositories, clients and serializers there is a class of ... classes/modules that does the needful. Gun-to-my-head, I would call them "services" but I'm looking for a less overloaded term. Maybe capabilities? Controllers? Pick a term from the business domain? What do you call them?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Corbin 1 points 3 months ago

At their most general, they are "data processors." In common parlance, they're often called "algorithms," although some folks insist that that is reserved for programs with trivial control flow. For disambiguation and comparison:

  • A service is an API surface and a contract promising that the surface has certain behaviors; data processing may be part of how the API is implemented. In practice, a service is e.g. an HTTPS endpoint and an OpenAPI specification.
  • A capability is a copyable token which simultaneously authorizes its holder to perform an action and designates the holder as having the authority to perform that action. This won't be part of your normal curriculum and training; see this post for an introduction, or this story for motivation.
  • A controller is a modulator for a (distributed) system. Typically a controller is anything which is actuated by a control loop, although sometimes a controller can sit outside of the system. Common examples include MVC patterns, k8s components, and video-game controllers.