architecture Postel’s Law: Why Being Liberal in What You Accept Usually Backfires josedacruz, September 24, 2026September 24, 2026 TL;DR: Postel’s Law — “be conservative in what you send, liberal in what you accept” — gets quoted as an excuse to skip validation on your API inputs. In practice, that habit doesn’t make your system more resilient; it just moves the failure further downstream, where it’s harder to trace… Continue Reading
architecture One-Way Doors vs Two-Way Doors: A Heuristic for How Much Analysis a Decision Deserves josedacruz, August 23, 2026August 23, 2026 TL;DR: Not every decision deserves the same amount of debate. Some choices are easy to undo if you’re wrong, and some are almost impossible to take back. Sorting a decision into one of those two buckets before you argue about it tells you how much process it actually needs —… Continue Reading
architecture Hyrum’s Law: Why Every Observable Behavior of Your API Becomes Someone’s Dependency josedacruz, August 17, 2026August 17, 2026 TL;DR: Hyrum’s Law says that if enough people use your software, every observable behavior of it — not just the parts you documented and promised — will eventually become something someone depends on. That means “we never promised that” is not the same as “it’s safe to change.” This post… Continue Reading