Articles.

The platform everyone called obsolete can still tell you what it did yesterday

Mainframe and AI: legacy is missing logs and owners, not age

CIO Dive reports AI agents helped sustain confidence in the mainframe. Three checks that tell you whether your system is legacy, and what to do about each one.

Sep 2

The rule that decides commission usually lives in three places at once, with different values

Thousands of IF/THEN/ELSE rules: code, engine or spreadsheet

Rules that change weekly belong in versioned data with an owner. Rare rules stay as ifs. When a rules engine pays off, and what the finance spreadsheet really costs.

Aug 31

8min read

Before the first member goes up, the structure already has stamped drawings and a signature behind it

Why can't IT deliver big projects on time like construction?

Construction slips too. Three contract devices explain the gap: a paid design phase, signed change orders with measurement, and one named engineer of record.

Aug 28

8min read

The most expensive rule in the company usually lives in two places: this whiteboard and one person's head

Technical debt you cannot see: measuring cognitive debt

The most expensive technical debt is the rule only one person can explain. A 40 minute test to find that concentration, and what to do once it shows up.

Aug 26

Old code is usually the only living documentation of the rules your revenue depends on

PHP 5.6 to PHP 8 or full rewrite: how to decide

Upgrading PHP 5.6 to PHP 8 usually costs less than a rewrite. Three measurements (compatibility, dead dependencies, revenue flows without tests) tell you if your case is the

Aug 24

8min read

No contractor prices a foundation before the soil test. In software, the drill is opening the piece nobody has looked at.

How to respond when you are asked for an estimate

Answer with a range, the part nobody has measured yet, and the date you tighten the number. Why the deadline question fails and what to measure first.

Aug 21

PR volume went up and the review queue is where the AI gain disappears.

AI teams ship more code and deliver less: what to measure

PR volume is up and the product hasn't moved. Four measurements that expose where AI turns into debt: review queue, 30-day rework, mutation score and real customer use.

Aug 19

One line in the rate table can hold three completely different deliveries

Brazil software development hourly rates 2026: ranges by model

Freelance, dev shop and embedded squad rates out of Brazil in 2026, plus what disappears from the delivery when a vendor agrees to match a lower price.

Aug 17

Inheriting an undocumented system starts with understanding what already runs in production

Inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code? The first two weeks

The first two weeks on an undocumented legacy codebase: boot it from scratch, instrument production, map the five revenue paths. And why the day-4 rewrite call backfires.

Aug 14

A laptop, financial reports, and cash on a desk: the numbers a deal gets weighed by.

The code that passes the pitch and fails due diligence

I talked to founders who went through technical diligence and watched the term sheet shrink — not over the product, but over the paperwork, the code's ownership, and everything nobody had read with a buyer's eyes. Why the time to fix it is long before the round.

Aug 12

5min read

The lock is solid. That counts for nothing when the key was left in the door and anyone can turn it.

I changed one number in the URL and saw another customer's orders

A client asked me for a second opinion on the app another shop had shipped. Twenty minutes in, changing one number in the address bar, I was reading another company's order on his platform. Login worked; authorization didn't. On the cheapest hole to prevent and the most expensive to find late.

Aug 10

5min read

A screen full of passing test files never tells you, on its own, whether any of them actually checks a result.

High test coverage is where production bugs hide best

A founder sent me a 92% coverage badge the same night his checkout was down. Coverage counts lines that ran, not results anyone checked, and it is the easiest number for a vendor to inflate. What a senior squad reads before it trusts the green.

Aug 7

5min read

A crowd with hands in the air at a concert: the demand spike your product meets the day it works.

It was fast in the demo. Then the data grew.

At launch the app flew; six months later every screen crawls. It is almost never a server problem, it is code that talks to the database the wrong way. What a senior squad checks before you throw money at bigger infrastructure.

Aug 5

The pen sliding across the desk with the proposal: the date is the part of the document written to get your signature.

The estimate that wins the deal is the one that slips the most

Every software quote that promises an exact date is selling, not estimating. I have lost deals for quoting the honest number and watched the cheap one arrive later and half-built. Why the lowest timeline is usually the one that slips most, and what to check before you sign.

Aug 3

A desk in the dark, lit only by a monitor with code open and a sticky note that reads "DO IT": the product keeps running while no one is watching.

Who Found the Outage First — You or Your Customer?

The vendor dashboard was green while checkout was down. The problem is not that systems fail, it is the order people find out: the customer before the vendor you pay to watch it. On why real monitoring measures symptoms, not CPU.

Jul 31

A building being torn down. The urge to level everything and start clean is real, and almost always pricier than it looks.

Why I almost never approve a full rewrite of your product

A logistics founder called me set on throwing three years of product in the bin and starting over. I spent the whole call talking him out of it. A full rewrite is the decision that looks most like courage and most often turns out expensive, and there is almost always a duller path that ships better.

Jul 29

A handshake closes the deal; the team shaking hands is not always the one that delivers.

The team they sold you isn't the team that ships your code

Every portfolio is an edit, and every pitch stars the seniors you will never see again. I keep watching founders sign an international vendor on a slide deck, then meet the real authors of their code in the git history ten months later. Here is how to check who ships before you sign.

Jul 27

A monitoring terminal mid-audit, the kind of screen where a secret scan lights up.

Your last vendor is still logged into your production

Every time we take over a product that ran with another vendor, one finding repeats itself: production keys held by people who left months ago, secrets committed to the repo, a root account shared by five people. A field note on the access cleanup almost nobody does, and why skipping it gets expensive.

Jul 24

A complete team, managed by the vendor: the model behind the buzzword

Squad as a service: what it is and when it makes sense

Squad as a service means a complete engineering team on a flat monthly fee: defined seniority, technical leadership, and delivery managed by the vendor. In this guide: what the model really is, what gets disguised under the name, what it costs in 2026, and how to decide if it fits your stage.

Jul 23