Code, Noted· 4 min read
The strangler fig, twenty years on
Martin Fowler named the incremental-replacement pattern in 2004. Two decades later it is quoted more than it is followed, and the gap is where modernizations die.
#modernization#migration#architecture
Tagged: architecture
11 articles
· 3 min read
When the internal platform goes on sale
Spotify opened a storefront for its internal engineering platform on October 8. An essay on what a platform team becomes when its customers start paying, and what Amazon learned about that in 2006.
#platform-teams#leadership#architecture
· 1 min read
Everything ships a database
The most deployed software in the world has no server, no company, and no sales team. A short note on what SQLite's ubiquity says about infrastructure.
#sqlite#formats#architecture
· 2 min read
The audit that found the architecture
Sometimes the truest system diagram is produced by outsiders with a checklist. Why audits see what architects stopped seeing, and how to borrow the trick.
#architecture#audits#risk
· 2 min read
What a service boundary is for
Before arguing about microservices it helps to ask what a boundary buys you. The answer was written down in 1972 and has not changed.
#architecture#boundaries#microservices
· 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 monolith was fine
Twice a decade the industry rediscovers that one well-made deployable can be the correct architecture. A history of the rediscovery cycle.
#architecture#monolith#microservices
· 2 min read
On-call is an architecture signal
The pager is the most honest reviewer a system has. Reading on-call load as architectural feedback instead of an HR problem.
#architecture#on-call#operations
· 2 min read
Architecture review as an institution
Review boards drift toward theater or gatekeeping unless designed against both. Notes on making the review a working institution rather than a ritual.
#architecture#governance#process
· 4 min read
The glue code is a system, and it needs an owner
Every enterprise runs on integration code nobody drew. An essay on middleware's three eras, and why the connections deserve the architecture review the boxes get.
#integration#middleware#architecture
· 2 min read
Conway's law is a budget, not a curse
The 1968 observation gets quoted as fate. Read closely, it is a constraint you can spend on purpose, and organizations do, mostly by accident.
#architecture#organizations#conway