“Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve” — Edsger Dijkstra

Having a role that requires me to sometimes wear the "software architect's" hat at a relatively large organization has given me ample material to digest and reflect on the practice of software architecture, i.e. the design of software systems comprising multiple components owned by different teams. I am hoping to write a small series of posts that articulate (hopefully in an intelligible manner) why some architecture is relevant in our day and age, why it should be a seen as core skill for teams (especially senior+ engineers) and reflect on my own view of the practice of software architecture. Since architecture is part of the broader process of building any non-trivial software system, let's start there.

An important part of the job of a software engineer is to ensure that our systems operate as expected. Establishing a feedback loop between the features a team develops and how it behaves in production is one of the traits of high performing teams[^1], and the idea that "you build it, you operate it" goes a long way to alleviate a lot of the toxic interaction patterns between traditional development and operations teams.

What's the most convenient way to set up a technical blog in 2024? The fact is that in this day and age there is an almost overwhelming plethora of choices from Wordpress, to Github pages it seems that there is something for everyone.

For a long time I've been thinking about using the techlead.net domain to create my very own blog. While not terribly exciting, the reality is that this serves two purposes:

• It's a good way for me to be more disciplined in my own writing and learning process
• Become a place where I maintain a curated list of articles and resources I find relevant.

With that out of the way, I guess this is the customary Hello world post.