The Architecture of the Death Star - 20 Years of arc42 and What We Can Learn

“Fear will keep the local systems in line… fear of this battle
station!” - Grand Moff Tarkin


In this session, we’ll examine the most iconic space fortress in
film history through Juan’s complete arc42 documentation. This
creative Star Wars project becomes an educational journey through
the arc42 template - exploring how fictional architectures can
teach us real lessons about software documentation.


What to expect:




A practical arc42 walkthrough: Exploring how
Juan applied the arc42 template to document the Death Star’s
architecture. We’ll walk through the key chapters and see how
each section contributes to understanding this complex
system.




Architectural decisions that made history:
What can we learn from the Empire’s architectural choices?
How does documenting fictional systems help us understand
real-world architecture decisions?




20 Years of arc42: The template celebrates
its 20th anniversary in 2025. We’ll explore why arc42 has
remained relevant and how creative examples like this help
teach architecture documentation.




Lessons learned from creative documentation:
What can we learn when we apply serious architecture
practices to fictional systems? How does this approach help
both newcomers and experienced architects understand
documentation principles?




Using Juan’s arc42 documentation of the Death Star (available on
GitHub in English and Spanish), we’ll explore how structured
documentation works in practice - and why good documentation
matters whether you’re building software or a space station.


Target audience: Software architects, arc42
users, Star Wars fans, and anyone who wants to learn how to
document architectures so that even after 20 years, someone still
understands why certain decisions were made.


“Remember… the documentation will be with you, always.”