And more importantly… why does it matter? — In many of the articles I’ve written — particularly those discussing microservice architectures — I’ve drawn a direct line between technical architectures and organizational structures. This idea, of course, has parallels with Conway’s famous Law. But in my discussions, I’ve tried to emphasize one specific point: If your engineering organization…

Aren’t they really just the same thing? — Domain Driven Design — or DDD — is a software design methodology popularized by Eric Evans. DDD focuses on domains; that is, subject areas within an organization, coupled with the experts of those subject areas. For those of us working with microservices, two particularly useful patterns have arisen out of…

The wrong perspective can doom a microservices effort from the start — Most of us know up front that moving to microservices will be difficult. It will be a long process — many months, or years even. It’ll be tough, and scary. Sort of like entering a huge, pitch-black cavern, replete with labyrinth-like twists and turns. With little to help guide us…

Someday you’ll die from some cause, but odds are, it won’t be any of these — Let’s face it: life is perilous. Everywhere we turn, we’re faced with something that can kill us. Most of us could easily rattle off a list of threats— from avalanches to airline crashes, hippos to heart disease — that are just waiting to claim us as their next victims. …

Why don’t we put more thought into the work we assign to our engineers? — It was the start of a new fiscal year, and I had just taken over as engineering director. My organization was about to launch a series of new projects. So one of my first tasks was to help staff the new initiatives, assigning each of my twenty-some engineers to a…

I’m doubling down on declaring this a microservices anti-pattern — Though I’ve written a number of software engineering articles, I write rarely the typical programming how-to’s. Instead, my articles are more like opinion pieces. Having worked with software for a few decades, I’ve seen some practices that work, and others that don’t. So I write about these practices, offering up…

What they are, what they are not, and why you should care — Cross-Functional Team. It’s one of the nifty buzzwords we run into so often these days. But unlike some buzzwords whose meanings are vague, this one has a fairly unambiguous definition. Moreover, this one is actually quite useful. …

How to think about dates and timestamps, timezones, and offsets — Phil Karlton famously said that the two hardest things in programming are cache invalidation, and naming things. I’d add dates and times to that list. For something so seemingly simple and intuitive to humans, the interaction of dates & times, and timestamps & timezones, has proven deceptively tricky for many…

My approach to turning experience into words — I’ve been writing as a hobby since I was a kid. But it’s been only recently that I’ve written articles for wide publication. Still, in that relatively short period of time, I’ve learned a lot about how to write compelling, informative articles (well, I hope that they are compelling and…