Tech Debt and Refactoring
Refactor strategies, rewrites, migrations, and the cultural patterns that turn legacy into leverage.
35 posts · page 2 of 2
- Tech Debt and Refactoring
The Quiet Cost of Skipping Type Safety
Type safety has a price to add and a price to skip. The price to skip is paid slowly, in bugs that are hard to trace and refactors that take twice as long as they should.
13 min read
- Tech Debt and Refactoring
The Engineering Migration: Patterns That Work
The patterns that make database migrations, infrastructure migrations, and system rewrites survivable in production without downtime or data loss.
12 min read
- Tech Debt and Refactoring
The Architecture Decision Record: A Lightweight Discipline
What an ADR is, why teams that write them make better decisions faster, and the format that takes 20 minutes to write and saves months of rework.
12 min read
- Tech Debt and Refactoring
The Mock Versus Real Service Debate
When to mock external services in tests and when to use real ones -- and why the answer differs for unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests.
12 min read
- Tech Debt and Refactoring
The Test Pyramid for SaaS: Unit, Integration, End to End
Working notes on the test pyramid for saas: unit, integration, end to end. Written for founders, engineers, and operators who want a clear read on tech debt and refactoring from someone who has shipped the work.
12 min read
- Tech Debt and Refactoring
The Tech Debt Negotiation: How Engineers Should Talk to Founders About It
Working notes on the tech debt negotiation: how engineers should talk to founders about it. Written for founders, engineers, and operators who want a clear read on tech debt and refactoring from someone who has shipped the work.
12 min read
- Tech Debt and Refactoring
The Tech Debt Ledger: A Discipline Worth Keeping
Working notes on the tech debt ledger: a discipline worth keeping. Written for founders, engineers, and operators who want a clear read on tech debt and refactoring from someone who has shipped the work.
12 min read
- Tech Debt and Refactoring
Why Most Rewrites Fail
Working notes on why most rewrites fail. Written for founders, engineers, and operators who want a clear read on tech debt and refactoring from someone who has shipped the work.
13 min read
- Tech Debt and Refactoring
The Strangler Fig Pattern: Replacing Legacy in Stages
The strangler fig is the only migration pattern I trust for large legacy systems. It keeps the old system running while the new one grows around it, one surface at a time, until the original can be retired.
12 min read
- Tech Debt and Refactoring
When to Refactor and When to Rewrite
Working notes on when to refactor and when to rewrite. Written for founders, engineers, and operators who want a clear read on tech debt and refactoring from someone who has shipped the work.
12 min read
- Tech Debt and Refactoring
The Tech Debt Audit: A Two Day Process
A structured two-day process for auditing technical debt across an existing codebase. What to look at, how to score it, and what to do with the findings before they get buried.
12 min read
More than blog posts.
The Labs folder has the experiments themselves. The Systems folder has the stack and architecture. The Journey folder has the timeline. Pick whichever pulls you.