Difference between Software Architecture and Software Design

This is one of the simplest question with not so simple answer. Many software developers struggle to clearly articulate the same and it has multiple definitions on the internet.

Hence, I decided to clearly articulate the difference so that everyone involved in software product development is aware of the differences between software architecture and software design.

In broader terms, software architecture is not directly dependent on (even though it may be influenced by ) programming languages, tools and databases we're planning to use or using.

This effectively means that a software architecture can be created using multiple programming languages, tools and databases.

Software design on the other hand is tightly coupled with the features and constraints provided by programming languages, tools and databases. e.g.

Object oriented design patterns can only be used with object oriented programming languages, SQL queries can only be used within SQL supported databases and so on

I do hope and believe that this post has helped you in understanding the difference between software architecture and software design

Thanks for reading?…?!!!

Daksh