A geometric shape is simple to remember and visualize concept, familiar to any child. In software development we have a few concepts with associated shapes: agile is shown as a spiral curve, waterfall as, well, a waterfall, etc. In this presentation I will show the shapes that describe other modern development approaches and architectural styles.

In this presentation I will go through a list of concepts, each concept closely matching a geometric shape. While the list is long, here are the main shapes:

- Artifact repositories decouple software development steps, and can be visualized like large warehouses storing versioned code, ready to be "shipped" to be assembled into a new application.
- Software isolation using Docker can be drawn as a box. Multiple boxes can be stacked and deployed together in a cluster. Closely related to are immutable deploys that always build a new set of boxes, rather than modifying the existing one.
- A reactive system useful for modeling modern user interfaces can be described as a directed acyclical graph (the user is the missing link that would close the cycle)
- Functional programming concepts usually deal with functions, but also with "boxed" types like Monads. Visualizing these helps to understand the modern JavaScript, Elm and Haskell languages.
- A typical developer's expertise is a T-shaped figure, and often a little investment in related vertical "bars" can be extremely beneficial. In particular, the knowledge to install a library or an application can be modeled as a pyramid. By making the pyramid's layers thinner we can achieve reusable software.
- A right abstraction goes a long way in making a concept simple to understand.

This presentation shows the shapes that helped me be more productive and explain my work to others.