Author: Andrew Baker
Vibe Coding Risks: Why AI Cannot Own Architectural Decisions
AI is a powerful accelerator when problems are well defined and bounded, but in complex greenfield systems vague intent hardens into architecture and creates long term risk that no amount of automation can undo. 1. What Vibe Coding Really Is Vibe coding is the practice of describing intent in natural language and allowing AI to […]
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Domain Isolation: How It Creates Better Software Architecture
Darwinian Architecture Philosophy How Domain Isolation Creates Evolutionary Pressure for Better Software After two decades building trading platforms and banking systems, I’ve watched the same pattern repeat itself countless times. A production incident occurs. The war room fills. And then the finger pointing begins. “It’s the database team’s problem.” “No, it’s that batch job from […]
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AI vs Salesforce: The True Cost of Enterprise CRM in 2025
When a $3 API call can replace a $165 per user per month platform, the financial mathematics of enterprise software fundamentally change. 1. The New Economics of Customer Engagement Something fundamental shifted in 2024. The capabilities that once justified six and seven figure enterprise software contracts became commoditised overnight. Not gradually, through slow competitive erosion, […]
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Corporate Humility: Why It’s a Leadership Survival Trait
Most organisations don’t fail because they lack intelligence, capital, or ambition. They fail because leadership becomes arrogant, distant, and insulated from reality. What Is Humility? Humility is the quality of having a modest view of one’s own importance. It is an accurate assessment of one’s strengths and limitations, combined with an openness to learning and […]
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Aurora PostgreSQL: Archive Partitions to S3 Iceberg & Parquet
A Complete Guide to Archiving, Restoring, and Querying Large Table Partitions When dealing with multi-terabyte tables in Aurora PostgreSQL, keeping historical partitions online becomes increasingly expensive and operationally burdensome. This guide presents a complete solution for archiving partitions to S3 in Iceberg/Parquet format, restoring them when needed, and querying archived data directly via a Spring […]
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South Africa Banking Consolidation: Costs, Pressure & Trends
I wanted to write about the trends we can see playing out, both in South Africa and globally with respect to: Large Retailers, Mobile Networks, Banking, Insurance and Technology. These thoughts are my own and I am often wrong, so dont get too excited if you dont agree with me 🙂 South Africa is experiencing […]
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Java 25 AOT Cache: How Ahead-of-Time Compilation Works
1. Introduction Java 25 introduces a significant enhancement to application startup performance through the AOT (Ahead of Time) cache feature, part of JEP 483. This capability allows the JVM to cache the results of class loading, bytecode parsing, verification, and method compilation, dramatically reducing startup times for subsequent application runs. For enterprise applications, particularly those […]
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ESB vs Kafka: Why Microservices Are Replacing Enterprise Buses
1. Introduction The Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) once promised to be the silver bullet for enterprise integration. Organizations invested millions in platforms like MuleSoft, IBM Integration Bus, Oracle Service Bus, and TIBCO BusinessWorks, believing they would solve all their integration challenges. Today, these same organizations are discovering that their ESB has become their biggest architectural […]
Read more →Model Context Protocol: Enterprise Implementation Guide
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) represents a fundamental shift in how we integrate Large Language Models (LLMs) with external data sources and tools. As enterprises increasingly adopt AI powered applications, understanding MCP’s architecture, operational characteristics, and practical implementation becomes critical for technical leaders building production systems. 1. What is Model Context Protocol? Model Context Protocol […]
Read more →CVE-2024-3094: Detecting the XZ Utils SSH Backdoor
Executive Summary CVE-2024-3094 represents one of the most sophisticated supply chain attacks in recent history. Discovered in March 2024, this vulnerability embedded a backdoor into XZ Utils versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1, allowing attackers to compromise SSH authentication on Linux systems. With a CVSS score of 10.0 (Critical), this attack demonstrates the extreme risks inherent in […]
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