xstate VS c4-notation

XState is a powerful library with comprehensive documentation. Keeping the documentation handy while building your next app with XState will be invaluable.

XState is an excellent library that simplifies the utilization of actors in JavaScript applications. While this article focuses on using React, these principles apply equally well to other frameworks. In fact, they can be implemented anywhere JavaScript is executed.

In this article, I want to share a personal journey of discovery in the world of state management. My path led me to XState, a tool that I believe is the best choice for managing state in modern applications like React, Angular, Vue, and others. This isn't just a professional advice; it's a personal recommendation based on real-world experience.

You add the current user state to a React Context or state management library, read from it on the top bar, and write to it after a user signs in. Done. No big deal, right?

Lastly, I know that I've omitted many great tools like XState, React Query, and SWR. These tools are utilities that are very scalable in their own right, but aren't full replacements for a good state manager.

What you are describing sounds a lot like C4: https://c4model.com/

The C4 model [0] provides a mostly sensible structure and techniques for representing pure software systems across different abstraction levels.

For systems involving software and hardware, or other complex interfacing (both technology and bureaucracy) this starts to delve into the universe of systems engineering. There's a decent assembly of knowledge on that in the SEBoK [1].

As another commenter has already called out too, one of the most valuable sources of information is also _why_ a system is in its current form and _how_ that's changed over time. ADR's [2] really do a good job at nailing this for just about any scale.

[0]: https://c4model.com

[1]: https://sebokwiki.org

[2]: https://adr.github.io

There a various standards for documenting software architecture, like arc42 or C4. While useful and somewhat well-known (there is certainly a correlation here), here architecture documentation can be further simplified, particularly due to the self-similarity of project and component. Following is a small template, that can also serve as a project's and component's README:

I would suggest that if your architecture diagrams are a bunch of icons provided by AWS/Azure/GCP with lines pointing at each other... you are doing it wrong.

The 'what does this box do for my system' is vastly more important than the 'which in vogue offering from my cloud provider implements it'.

I highly suggest folks take a look at the C4 Model: https://c4model.com/

We often use abstractions in software engineering to communicate complex architectures and software systems. In this article, we’ll discuss how abstractions are inherently hierarchical and how the C4 model provides a nested structure for defining your software architecture. We’ll then cover how IcePanel allows you to create interactive and zoomable diagrams for your audience to zoom in and out of different levels of technical detail.

You probably want https://c4model.com/ which explains what a C4 architecture diagram is. (See the first footnote in the article.)

I looked at the book OP is talking about and it seems to be advocating 'C4' (https://c4model.com/). IMO this is the same kind of block diagrams we end up creating organically. I dunno that I'd call this 'modern' or anything special, it's just what everyone already does. I've done hundreds of these and not once has anyone ever mentioned 'C4' or anything being 'modern'. Shrug