The Decoherence Trap(maevyn.codes)
163 points by cassianoleal | 69 comments
An essay introducing 'decoherence', the buildup of incompatible models in a system, arguing it is the worst form of tech debt and that AI-generated code is accelerating it.
#software-architecture on Hacker News
32 stories tagged software-architecture, newest first.
Ask HN: What is the current trajectory of a senior engineer?
25 points by guitarlimeo | 32 comments
Ask HN discussion asking whether senior engineers' architecture and design roles will survive as LLM coding agents improve through reinforcement learning.
Clojure in the age of language models(yogthos.net)
23 points by silcoon | 7 comments
Blog post arguing that Clojure's data-centric, high-level style suits developers working alongside language models that handle low-level imperative code.
Immich Sequence Diagrams(app.ilograph.com)
7 points by billyp-rva | 1 comments
Interactive Ilograph sequence diagrams documenting Immich's front-end and back-end flows, here showing a user uploading a photo from the web client.
Change Coupling: Why One-Line Fixes Touch Ten Files(kb.buildingbetterteams.de)
3 points by mooreds | 0 comments
A knowledge base article explaining change coupling, why small fixes spread across many files, and how to use it to understand software system structure.
The problem is not AI code, but not knowing about system architecture or intent(ssp.sh)
317 points by zazuke | 204 comments
A short note in a personal knowledge base arguing that the real problem with AI-generated code is that teams no longer understand their system architecture or the intent behind design decisions.
Show HN: Whiteboard (YC W26) – An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design(github.com)
395 points by sidharthkmenon | 129 comments
GitHub repository for Whiteboard, an MIT-licensed desktop IDE built on Code-OSS where developers and AI agents collaborate on software design via diagrams and diffs.
What AI-Native Looks Like(fagnerbrack.com)
14 points by fagnerbrack | 7 comments
A blog post by Fagner Brack on Medium describing what an AI-native approach to software development with stable infrastructure looks like.
Show HN: An atlas of system designs with interactive architecture diagrams(atlas-sysdes.vercel.app)
29 points by mertkahyaoglu | 18 comments
A Show HN web app presenting an atlas of system designs with interactive architecture diagrams.
PostgreSQL for Everything(raphaelbauer.com)
412 points by karlmush | 238 comments
A blog post by Raphael Bauer arguing for using PostgreSQL as the single backend for many workloads instead of specialized tools.
Choose Boring Technology (2015)(mcfunley.com)
398 points by tosh | 225 comments
Dan McKinley's 2015 essay arguing that engineering teams should favor proven, well-understood technologies and spend limited 'innovation tokens' carefully.
Fintech Engineering Handbook(w.pitula.me)
597 points by signa11 | 184 comments
An online handbook by Voytek Pitula describing software engineering patterns for systems that handle money, covering precision, rounding, currencies, ledgers, and audit trails.
Learning Software Architecture(matklad.github.io)
526 points by surprisetalk | 107 comments
Blog post by matklad, written as a reply to a researcher physicist, offering advice on learning software design and architecture skills, mainly by doing.
Laws of Software Engineering(lawsofsoftwareengineering.com)
1092 points by milanm081 | 495 comments
A website cataloging 56 laws, principles, and patterns that shape software systems, teams, and decisions, with a companion book.
Simplify your code: Functional core, imperative shell(testing.googleblog.com)
389 points by reqo | 172 comments
Google Testing Blog Tech on the Toilet post explaining the functional core, imperative shell pattern for separating business logic from side effects.
Why is everything so scalable?(stavros.io)
360 points by kunley | 330 comments
Blog post by Stavros arguing that most companies over-engineer their systems with FAANG-style scalable architectures like microservices and cloud datastores they don't need.
Do the simplest thing that could possibly work(seangoedecke.com)
1015 points by dondraper36 | 364 comments
Blog post by Sean Goedecke arguing engineers should understand the current system deeply and then do the simplest thing that could possibly work.
Most RESTful APIs aren't really RESTful(florian-kraemer.net)
324 points by BerislavLopac | 493 comments
Blog post by Florian Krämer arguing that most APIs called RESTful don't follow Roy Fielding's original REST architectural style as described in his dissertation.
12-factor Agents: Patterns of reliable LLM applications(github.com)
388 points by dhorthy | 57 comments
GitHub repository by HumanLayer documenting twelve principles for building reliable, production-grade LLM-powered agent applications, modeled on 12 Factor Apps.
Architecture Patterns with Python(cosmicpython.com)
405 points by asicsp | 96 comments
Preface of the free online book Architecture Patterns with Python (Cosmic Python), covering DDD, event-driven architecture and related patterns in Python.
Systems ideas that sound good but almost never work(hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com)
356 points by kaycebasques | 215 comments
Steven Sinofsky's Hardcore Software essay on engineering and systems patterns that sound good ("Let's just...") but almost never work as intended.
Cognitive load is what matters(minds.md)
1649 points by zdw | 685 comments
An essay by Zakirullin arguing that reducing developers' cognitive load should be the main goal when writing and designing software.
We no longer use LangChain for building our AI agents(octomind.dev)
431 points by ma_za | 253 comments
Octomind blog post explaining why the company stopped using LangChain for its AI agents and what it learned using it in production.
In Defense of Simple Architectures (2022)(danluu.com)
523 points by Brajeshwar | 394 comments
Dan Luu essay arguing for simple architectures, describing how Wave scaled a Python monolith on Postgres instead of complex microservices.
The costs of microservices (2020)(robertovitillo.com)
381 points by kiyanwang | 347 comments
Blog post by Roberto Vitillo examining the trade-offs and costs of splitting a monolithic backend into microservices.
The Twelve-Factor App (2011)(12factor.net)
351 points by edward | 226 comments
The Twelve-Factor App is a methodology describing best practices for building portable, scalable software-as-a-service applications for cloud platforms.
Death by a Thousand Microservices(renegadeotter.com)
405 points by thunderbong | 277 comments
A Renegade Otter blog post by Andrei Taranchenko arguing that the software industry is relearning that microservice complexity kills.
Data-Oriented Design (2018)(dataorienteddesign.com)
351 points by DeathArrow | 123 comments
Free online reduced edition of Richard Fabian's book Data-Oriented Design, showing the table of contents and an introductory note.
Is ORM still an anti-pattern?(github.com)
337 points by AnhTho_FR | 611 comments
A GitHub wiki page from the Lago project arguing that ORMs are criticized for the wrong reasons and examining whether ORM is still an anti-pattern.
Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development(mermaidchart.com)
573 points by knsv | 333 comments
A Mermaid Chart blog post arguing sequence diagrams are UML's most useful contribution and explaining how they model interactions between system parts.
The Prime Video microservices to monolith story(adrianco.medium.com)
456 points by mparnisari | 357 comments
Adrian Cockcroft's Medium post responding to takes on Amazon Prime Video's move from microservices to a monolith, discussing lessons learned.
System design and the cost of architectural complexity (2013)(dspace.mit.edu)
423 points by damethos | 152 comments
MIT doctoral thesis by Daniel Sturtevant measuring how architectural complexity in software systems affects defect density, developer productivity, and staff turnover.