Principles for Software Engineering and Technical Leadership
In computing nothing is free, always there is a cost and in a world with an increase cloud-based services and AI use, an overuse of external resources like files, databases, Web APIs and network can give a sad surprise when you see your Cloud Invoice. This principle is useful for on-promise operations too; in these
Modern systems rarely operate in isolation. Instead, they integrate with other systems to collaborate and exchange data and services. Think of it as a binary team effort, where each system must not only know how to interact with others in a secure, efficient, and loosely coupled manner, but also be capable of continuing to operate
Unless you’re building something very simple, your application will require configuration management. Database connection strings, URLs for external services accessed through REST APIs, GraphQL, gRPC, or even SOAP, as well as application-specific settings such as cache TTLs, cron expressions for scheduled jobs, feature flags, and many other parameters are all examples of configuration data that
Your business value proposition may rely on several applications working together. However, when implementing a new feature or refactoring an existing one, we sometimes forget the application’s identity and introduce unnecessary performance issues or added complexity. I like to explain this with examples. Imagine you are a developer on a team responsible for building a
If you’re an enthusiastic programmer, you’ve probably written or kept code that you don’t actually need right now. Let’s look at a few scenarios: At this point, the idea should be clear. You probably don’t work alone—you’re part of a team. Maybe you have junior teammates, or your team is under time pressure. In these
If you have a large technical solution, you probably have many applications running in your production environments. Not all of them are critical, but some are. Those critical apps must be monitored — deep, comprehensive observability is essential. I see two levels to monitor: the low level and the product (or high) level. The low