Code, Noted· 3 min read
Y2K, reconsidered as a success
The disaster that did not happen is remembered as a panic that was wrong. The record says otherwise, and the difference matters for every deadline since.
#history#remediation#non-events
Modernization
11 articles
· 1 min read
On finally reading the mainframe
AI made forty-year-old COBOL cheap to read at last. Comprehension and migration remain different problems, and the industry keeps buying one as the other.
#modernization#mainframe#ai
· 4 min read
What the mainframe's survival teaches
Six decades after System/360, the machine every strategy deck kills is still clearing the payments. A long essay on why, and what its persistence actually indicts.
#mainframe#legacy#institutions
· 2 min read
Enterprise AI is an integration problem
The model is the easy part. Enterprise AI succeeds or fails on the same unglamorous surfaces as every prior integration wave.
#enterprise-ai#integration#architecture
· 2 min read
The half-life of internal frameworks
Internal frameworks decay on a schedule set by staffing, not technology. On estimating the half-life before writing the framework.
#modernization#frameworks#maintenance
· 2 min read
The rewrite that worked
Everyone can name a rewrite that failed. The instructive ones are the rewrites that shipped, because they share an unglamorous shape.
#modernization#rewrites#strangler-fig
· 4 min read
Chesterton's fence has a maintenance schedule
The famous fence argues for caution before removal. It says nothing about leaving fences unexamined forever. An essay on institutionalizing the second half.
#legacy#decision-records#modernization
· 4 min read
Two years after the license turn
HashiCorp relicensed in August 2023, Redis followed, and the forks are now old enough to evaluate. An essay on licenses as architectural dependencies.
#licensing#open-source#forks
· 3 min read
The cost of a second datacenter
Multi-site resilience is bought in step functions, not increments. On the honest arithmetic of the second location, cloud or concrete.
#modernization#infrastructure#resilience
· 2 min read
The deprecation nobody owns
Systems accumulate deprecated things that never finish dying. On why removal is the least-funded phase of the lifecycle, and what owning it looks like.
#modernization#deprecation#maintenance
· 2 min read
Why migrations stall at eighty percent
The first eighty percent of a migration moves on rails. The last twenty is a different project with different economics, and it is rarely funded as one.
#modernization#migrations#planning