The migration that never finished
Half-completed migrations are the most expensive state a system can be in, and the most common one.
#architecture
37 pieces tagged architecture,
from May 9, 2025 to September 21, 2026.
Choosing an ID
Integers, UUIDs, ULIDs, or something with meaning. The decision is permanent and it leaks into everything.
The graph nobody drew
Your service dependency graph exists whether or not anyone has written it down. Writing it down takes an afternoon.
Timeouts: every one of them
A request crosses a dozen components with a timeout each, and almost nobody has ever added them up.
The queues you did not know you had
Every fixed-size resource is a queue. Most of them are unmonitored, and that is where latency hides.
The API you ship to yourself
Internal interfaces get none of the care external ones do, and they are the ones you'll live with longest.
Boring technology, revisited
The innovation-token argument is a decade old and still right, with one amendment nobody makes.
The service you should not have written
A checklist for the moment before you create a new deployable, when saying no is still free.
Vendor lock-in: an honest cost model
Portability is not free and neither is dependence. A framework for deciding how much abstraction to buy.
Connection pooling, explained properly
Why your database has 400 connections, why that is bad, and how to size a pool without guessing.
Backpressure is the concept your system is missing
When a fast producer meets a slow consumer, something has to give. Deciding what, in advance, is the whole discipline.
Cross-platform is a promise you make to your budget
Write once, run anywhere, debug everywhere. The honest accounting of what each approach actually costs.
everything else tagged #architecture 25
- Retries: a complete guide to not making it worseessay
- Configuration is the most under-designed part of your systemessay
- Rewrites: when they actually workessay
- Edge computing, honestlyessay
- Idempotency is the only distributed systems concept you needessay
- The queue is the architectureessay
- Search is hard and you should probably not build itessay
- The three kinds of technical debtessay
- The retrieval question, revisitedessay
- The API versioning decisionessay
- You still do not need Kubernetesessay
- Rate limiting: the four algorithms and when each is wrongessay
- The database you should have chosenessay
- Schema design is the only design that lastsessay
- Small models ate the middleessay
- What happened to microservicesessay
- Prompt injection is SQL injection without the fixessay
- SQLite in the browser and the end of the API round tripessay
- The dependency budgetessay
- The component model and the plugin problemnews
- Local-first is finally practicalessay
- SQLite in production, seriouslyessay
- The monorepo question has a boring answeressay
- Caching is the only optimization that reliably worksessay
- The test suite is a design documentessay