Solving the run-time vs compile-time conundrum. — A somewhat popular brain teaser of a software architecture question is: “Where do I store my secrets?” First things first: What is a secret? A secret is confidential and sensitive information that needs to be protected from unauthorized access or disclosure. Typical examples of this could include passwords, encryption keys…

Putting microservices (and other architectures) in a realistic light without resurrecting what should stay dead. — Horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, in his short story The Nameless City, famously attributed this quote to a mad (fictional) poet: That is not dead which can eternal lie / And with strange aeons even death may die. And—yes indeed—here and now I will let the above refer to monoliths (and…

Start fixing the all-too-common problem at the heart of many dysfunctions. — Becoming stuck in work, never finishing things, and feeling the pain of never really “getting there” in terms of what you are doing, might be signs of a poor feedback loop. A feedback loop is, unscientifically speaking, the process by which you are informed of an action’s outcome. The faster…

What you need to know about them without any mysteries left to uncover. — You’ve heard about architectural fitness functions, but most of the material you find lacks concrete details. Let’s fix that. I’ll explain: What architectural fitness functions are What they help you do How they relate to other test types and architecture practices How to build them and use them Where to…

Why never finishing will leave you a worse person and worse off. — Being indecisive and/or wracking up heaps of unfinished work are two things that can send you into a tailspin. On this note—and on the occasion of going on summer vacation—I want to share two scenarios, one every-day, and one for those of you doing creative work. There are real and…

A short reflection. — There is no bad code. It just does the wrong thing very efficiently. The words effective and efficient both mean “capable of producing a result,” but there is an important difference. Effective means “producing a result that is wanted”. Efficient means “capable of producing desired results without wasting materials, time…

EventCatalog is great! But you can make it even better—let me show you how. — David Boyne’s open source project EventCatalog is an “Open Source project that helps you document your events, services and domains”. It’s a great tool to create discoverability of your event landscape. I love it! EventCatalog: Discover, Explore and Document your Event Driven Architectures. An open source tool powered by markdown to document your Event Driven Architecture.www.eventcatalog.dev

Tips and tricks for a totally zen online life, in terms of privacy, security, and cleanliness. — If you are anything like me, you trial all kinds of new digital products, creating accounts here and there, and you probably keep a few email addresses around—or you have an overburdened, overtaxed poor Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail account that has suffered, but worked, faithfully through the years. It’s easy to get into…

…and what you can do about it. — I am absurdly interested in how organizations with a big software engineering base can grow better. Before we get better, though, we need to see where we are right now. During a lazy Saturday, I read and collected a lot of candid opinions on what actual, real software engineers have…