Practical software architecture

Good architecture should make software easier to understand, change and operate. It should reflect the problem being solved, the constraints of the environment and the needs of the people maintaining the system.

My approach is informed by hands-on experience developing web applications, integrating external services and working with systems that support real business processes.

Clear boundaries and responsibilities

Applications are easier to evolve when responsibilities are well defined. I consider where business logic belongs, how components communicate and which parts of a system should remain independent.

APIs as integration boundaries

APIs connect applications, services and business processes. I focus on clear interfaces, appropriate data structures, explicit behaviour and predictable handling of failures.

Integration with existing systems

Real-world development rarely starts from a blank slate. Existing databases, payment providers, external APIs and established workflows all influence the solution. Understanding those constraints is an essential part of engineering.

Maintainability over unnecessary complexity

I prefer solutions that are proportionate to the problem. Abstraction, infrastructure and additional dependencies should earn their place by improving the system rather than merely making it look more sophisticated.

Testing and verification

Changes should be verified against the behaviour they are intended to deliver. Testing, reproducible experiments and clear diagnostics help distinguish a working solution from one that merely appears to work.

Exploring AI-assisted development

My current experiments include local coding agents, model-serving infrastructure and middleware intended to improve the reliability of tool calls from local language models.

These investigations explore how AI tooling can fit into existing development workflows while retaining control over execution, testing and verification.