Engineering•
Architecture without phases is just a diagram
The target architecture was usually clear. The route there rarely accounted for the team doing the work.
Engineering articles
Architecture decisions, migrations, technical debt, and experiments with AI coding.
Engineering•
AI coding advice is rediscovering the Agile Manifesto
AI coding advice is rediscovering an old lesson: clear code, visible architecture, and useful tests beat another page of instructions.
Engineering•
What AI coding taught me about micromanagement
We spent years complaining about micromanagers, then gave AI the same over-specified briefs and bloated documentation.
Engineering•
Micro-frontends won't fix your monolith
A tangled frontend can make every change expensive. Splitting the deployment may only move the coordination work somewhere else.
Engineering•
AI coding is a trust problem
AI taught me to ask how a confident claim was checked. The same question exposes weak feedback loops in teams and leadership.
Engineering•
Developers aren't being replaced, but coding might be
AI changed my workflow before it changed my job: the tool no longer gets to decide when the work is done.
Engineering•
The architect's job is to be wrong first
My team rebuilt the architecture I proposed. I now judge that first sketch by how easily they could challenge and improve it.
Engineering•
Service architecture is deliberate debt
At my first job, we split an unwieldy monolith into services. The extra complexity was deliberate, and it gave the team room to learn.
Engineering•
Technical debt is a tool
I used to treat technical debt like a failure. Thinking in interest rates gave me a more useful way to judge it.
Engineering•
A story should be able to ship on its own
A backlog can look orderly and still leave every task waiting on another. Vertical slices give the team something it can actually ship.