1.7 Why are we making this so hard?
Most software is business records with lipstick—and the industry sells cathedrals to serve them.
Why are we making this so hard?
Strip the keynote slides. Most Enterprise “platforms” are glorified Excel tables with a nice UI.
The actual business stack
Section titled “The actual business stack”| What marketing says | What you maintain |
|---|---|
| Digital transformation | CRUD + workflows |
| AI-powered insights | SQL + a chart |
| Event-sourced mesh | status column + outbox table |
| Microservices | One service per tab on the admin panel |
| Platform team | Kubernetes YAML and a broken staging env |
The hard part is rarely algorithms. It is:
- Permissions nobody documented
- State machines spread across three handlers
- Reports that must match finance’s spreadsheet (the real source of truth)
- Integrations with vendors who treat webhooks as optional
Why we still build cathedrals
Section titled “Why we still build cathedrals”Because complexity sells:
- Consultancies bill by transformation.
- Vendors bill by seat and tier.
- Hiring managers signal maturity with buzzwords.
- Developers protect craft pride with patterns (see 1.3 SOLID, DRY, and DDD).
Quick realization times do not favor deleting layers. They favor adding another service so this quarter’s roadmap turns green.
Engineering theatre vs shipping rows
Section titled “Engineering theatre vs shipping rows”Theatre: eighteen interfaces to save one row.
Shipping: one transaction, one audit log, one email, go home.
Beskid is not anti-structure. It is anti-structure you cannot see in the build artifact. If your architecture only exists in PowerPoint, it is not architecture—it is fan fiction.
The boring bar Beskid sets
Section titled “The boring bar Beskid sets”- Make common business software expressible without importing a religion.
- Prefer compile-time clarity over runtime mystery.
- Keep tooling fast enough that CI and local dev stay honest.
If your problem is genuinely novel—finite element solvers, game engines, codecs—use Rust, C++, or Zig and be happy. Beskid is not auditioning for that job.
Next: 1.8 Conclusion.