Patterns
Same fad, new logo
Cross-era playbooks. The diagram changes; the failure mode does not.
Silver-bullet architecture
The belief that one diagram — SOA, microservices, serverless — solves organizational dysfunction without changing how teams ship.
15 linked techs →
Big-bang rewrite
Freeze the money-making system, rebuild in the hot stack, switch over on a weekend — a schedule written by optimism, paid for by reality.
9 linked techs →
Cargo-cult hyperscale
Copying Netflix, Google, or Amazon patterns into an org whose scale problem is actually a spreadsheet and a single Postgres instance.
12 linked techs →
Config-as-architecture
When XML, YAML, and low-code graphs replace design decisions — until the config becomes the unmaintainable system.
8 linked techs →
Framework churn
Rewriting the same product surface every eighteen months because the frontend framework shipped a new blessed stack, not because users asked for anything new.
15 linked techs →
AI replaces engineering
The recurring fantasy that the next model — or low-code, or codegen — eliminates the need for people who own production outcomes.
15 linked techs →
Platform risk
Building your product on a vendor runtime, hosted backend, or plugin stack that can EOL, price-shock, or pivot — leaving you with a migration as the roadmap.
12 linked techs →
Resume-driven architecture
Choosing stacks, meshes, and agents because they look good on LinkedIn and conference CFPs — not because traffic or constraints demand them.
13 linked techs →