Why Self-Contained Systems Are a Perfect Fit for AI-Driven Development

AI is rapidly changing how we build software. Many teams already use AI to generate code, write tests, or analyze changes. Yet, despite all this progress, there is often a feeling[...]

A View Is Not a Table: It Is a Controlled Integration Contract

The recent article “Your Database Table is an awful API” claims that exposing database tables (or database-derived structures) as integration boundaries between systems is a[...]

An AI-Ready Architecture for Business Applications

Agentic AI is changing how we build software. AI is no longer just a helper that writes small code snippets. It can reason about requirements, generate larger parts of a system,[...]

SPAs Are the New Client/Server Applications

Single Page Applications promise modernity. But in reality, they bring back all the classic client/server problems. With Vaadin, we can avoid them.

Balcony Architecture: A Symptom of Fear and Confusion in Legacy Code

In many legacy systems, you can see something I call “Balcony Architecture”. It is not an official pattern, but it describes a real problem I often see in[...]

The Simon Martinelli Stack: A Pragmatic Approach to Full-Stack Java Development

In the fast-paced world of software development, developers are often overwhelmed by endless framework choices and architectural trends. Over the years, I have refined a stack[...]

Goodbye Microservices, Hello Self-contained Systems

Microservices are not inherently bad. But they are not a one-size-fits-all solution either. In fact, for many business applications, they can introduce unnecessary complexity. In[...]

The Real Value of Microservices

For several years, the microservices architecture has established itself as a quasi-standard and is deployed in many projects. That it is not a catch-all solution is well known.[...]