Engineering Principle
8 min read
Feb 2024
Pragmatism Over Dogma
Prioritizing business logic over infrastructure for long-term maintainability.
The Problem
"Architecture is about the big decisions, but pragmatism is knowing when to delay them."
Many architects fall into the Golden Hammer trap-applying a complex tool (like Microservices or K8s) because it is the industry standard, even when the business case requires simple, fast validation. This Resume Driven Development leads to systems that are too expensive to maintain and too rigid to pivot.
The Philosophy
Architecture is the art of making reversible decisions. Dogma says You must use a Clean Architecture for everything. Pragmatism says Use Clean Architecture for the core domain where business rules live, but keep the UI and DB layers thin and replaceable.
Implementation Strategy
I implement this via Tactical DDD. We isolate the volatile parts of the system. If we aren't sure if we need a Graph database yet, we code against an interface. We don't build a complex sync engine until the data volume actually breaks the simple one.
Technical Pivot
Decoupled Domain
Logic remains infrastructure-agnostic, ensuring business rules outlive the tech stack.
Dogmatic Anti-Patterns
Resume Driven Development (RDD)
Premature Abstraction
Tool-first decision making
Ignoring the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)