31. Derek goes camping

July 21, 2021

This week our heroes discuss Derek's recent camping adventure at Mammoth Cave National Park, and we learn how Mother Nature can inspire us to build more scalable enterprise software.

This past week, Derek went camping. While he was there he had the opportunity to tour Mammoth Cave. While inside, Derek noticed strata in the rock, created over millions of years.

You may be wondering what Derek’s recent adventure at Mammoth Cave National Park has to do with software architecture. What can Mother Nature teach us about building enterprise software in a more scalable way?

Derek had an epiphany.

These strata are a lot like what many of our enterprise software tends to look like over time. The “MVP” we build first gets stuck under the layers upon layers of code build on top of it over the years. It becomes increasingly harder to modify this base layer the more times pass. Minor mistakes become harder to fix. Tech debt becomes harder to erase.

How can we ensure our enterprise software stands the test of time? How can we ensure our software stays “soft”? How can we ensure the code we write today doesn’t hold us back tomorrow?

Topics:
• 04:09 – Derek’s camping adventure
• 09:12 – Derek has an epiphany
• 11:17 – Things won’t go the way you expect. But what did you learn?
• 14:51 – Jeremy’s Deliverance moment
• 16:19 – Derek has a second epiphany
• 20:54 – How do we keep from creating rigid software strata?
• 21:44 – Dan North’s CUPID principles might help
• 23:19 – Keep your systems composable

Helpful Links:
Mammoth Cave National Park
27. CUPID: A Software Love Story with Dan North

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Episode thumbnail by Laura Pluth on Unsplash