Software architecture

How We Solved Agent Building — Andrew Qu, Vercel

How We Solved Agent Building — Andrew Qu, Vercel

Andrew Qu, Chief of Software at Vercel, details the year-long journey of building an internal data science agent, from its initial "awful" state to the release of Eve, a framework for agent development. He covers iterative architectural improvements, the critical "file system unlock" inspired by Claude Code, and the distillation of common queries into reusable "skills," culminating in a framework that simplifies the creation of specialized, company-specific AI agents.

Building ambitious software — Jonathan Kelley, Dioxus Labs & Cognition

Building ambitious software — Jonathan Kelley, Dioxus Labs & Cognition

Jonathan Kelley, founder of Dioxus Labs, shares insights from building a cross-platform Rust app framework for five years. He details Dioxus's evolution, its core technologies like Blitz and Subsecond, and the transformative impact of AI coding agents. Kelley explains how AI excels at handling Rust's complexity, automating mundane tasks, and serving as patient specialists for knowledge-intensive problems, yet falls short in writing effective tests. He concludes that while AI makes code cheap, quality remains paramount, shifting the engineer's focus to architecture and strategic system design.

Code Quality in the Age of AI: Why Great Code Isn't Enough

Code Quality in the Age of AI: Why Great Code Isn't Enough

Meenakshi Kodati discusses how AI is transforming software engineering, shifting the focus from coding to critical decision-making. As AI rapidly generates code, the true challenge and value lie in architectural choices, system-level understanding, governance, testing, and continuous quality assurance to deliver meaningful business outcomes, emphasizing human judgment over mere implementation.

Platform Engineering for Developers, Architects & the Rest of Us • Daniel Bryant • GOTO 2025

Platform Engineering for Developers, Architects & the Rest of Us • Daniel Bryant • GOTO 2025

Daniel Bryant discusses platform engineering for software developers and architects, emphasizing treating platforms as internal products with developers as customers. He outlines a three-layered architecture, the evolution from monolithic systems to microservices, and the importance of 'golden bricks' over 'golden paths' for composability. Key takeaways include API-first design, minimizing cognitive load, avoiding leaky abstractions, and measuring success through frameworks like DORA and DevEx to achieve speed, safety, and scale.

Modern Enterprise Architecture: Architecting for Outcomes • Simon Rohrer • GOTO 2025

Modern Enterprise Architecture: Architecting for Outcomes • Simon Rohrer • GOTO 2025

Simon Rohrer challenges traditional Enterprise Architecture (EA) principles, proposing a modern approach focused on outcomes, continuous evolution, and socio-technical alignment. He outlines five key tenets: Aligning Value, People & Technology; achieving Better Value Sooner, Safer, Happier; implementing Continuous Conversational & Automated Governance; scaling DevOps across the enterprise; and fostering Evolutionary Enterprise Architecture.

Gadgets: Personal app vibe coding that is actually safe — Kenton Varda, Cloudflare

Gadgets: Personal app vibe coding that is actually safe — Kenton Varda, Cloudflare

Kenton Varda introduces "Gadgets," a new architecture built on Cloudflare Workers, addressing the challenge of user-driven AI customization in a world where traditional cloud infrastructure restricts personalization. He demonstrates how AI agents can add features directly to applications, while a unique security model, leveraging `null origin iframes` and isolated server-side sandboxes, renders XSS vulnerabilities irrelevant. The entire system operates without containers or traditional databases, running efficiently on the `workerd` runtime.