The IT Blog

Category: Recommended Read

All kinds of posts mainly to Arctiles or other blog posts that I find worth reading

  • AI vs. the Legacy Black Box Codebase

    If you want to see a cool example of how Generative AI can be used to tackle one of the nastiest problems in enterprise IT, you might want to invest some minutes in reading “From Black Box to Blueprint.”

    What it’s about: Large organizations often have to rely on systems that are both business-critical and poorly understood due to lots of legacy. The article describes how Thoughtworks approached such a case: combining a multi-lens strategy (UI reconstruction, logic inference, change data capture, etc.) with AI-assisted “binary archaeology.”

    I really like the idea as it’s not about replacing humans, not hype but solving a real problem: complex — legacy — codebases. Something no one of us likes to lay their hands on.

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  • What Mountaineering and Teams have in Common

    In business, it’s trust. Aki Kärkkäinen’s piece “From Rope Teams to Remote Teams” asks the real question: would you trust your team enough to share a rope?

    I really liked this paragraph: “I’m reminded of the pandemic when social distancing was introduced—an unfortunate term, because what was meant was actually physical distancing. Most companies obsess over physical proximity when the real challenge is connection distance.”

    And further on, Aki also draws the line to AI tooling. Give it a read!

    (Well okay, and I liked the parallels of teamwork and hiking ;-))

    Oh and I just noticed that Aki is on Mastodon as well: @akikoo@mastodon.social!

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  • The Future is Federated – but not necessarily (fully) Self Hosted

    It’s not a secret that I am quite a fan of the and getting more independent of a few Big Tech Companies and getting control back.

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  • When Vibe Coding backfires: AI deletes company’s Database

    AI agents “cannot be trusted [and] you need to 100% understand what data they can touch. Because — they will touch it. And you cannot predict what they will do with it.”

    Sounds like the statement of an AI hater — but in fact it’s from Jason Lemkin who was using Replit (an AI powered software development platform) — after it deleted the complete production database.

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  • Martin Fowler on “Expert Generalists”

    For a while, I kept asking myself: What’s my technical profile, really?

    I’m not a specialist in one narrow field. But I go deeper in several areas than a typical generalist. So … is that good or bad? Is that a strength – or a flaw, because I’m not “deep enough” in one single thing?

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  • Is it finally over for Developers?!

    We’ve heard it all a couple of times: “GenAI is replacing Software Developers”, Vibe Coding, … A C-Levels dream to (finally) get rid of expensive software developers by using AI.

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  • Why “Open” may not Always be Enough

    If you care about open source, open data, or open standards, you should read “What we in the open world are messing up in trying to compete with big tech“.

    I found it a good critique on Open Source and why “technology” and an OpenSource Licence may not be enough to compete with BigTech players. The author doesn’t argue against OpenSource but he points some quite valid points.

    You might say “look at your own GitHub repo first” but wait: The difference in my view is: Do you open-source something just to make it available for others as well or do you make an OpenSource project to compete with a commercial product / to position yourself as a valid alternative …

    Anyways, give it a read – and maybe follow his Blog as well!

  • Buchempfehlung: Die Logik des Mißlingens

    Eine Kollegin hat mir neulich ein Buch empfohlen: “Die Logik des Mißlingens, Strategisches Denken in komplexen Situationen” von Dietrich Dörner. Klang ja wie eine Anleitung für Projektleitung. Kurz darauf lag also eine leicht vergilbte second-hand Ausgabe davon auf meinem Tisch.

    “Die Logik des Mißlingens” ist kein neues Buch – es ist von 1989, aber ein Thema, das zeitlos bleibt. Weil menschliches Verhalten zeitlos fehlbar ist und – wie ich glaube – sich die generelle Denkweise in nur 30 Jahren vermutlich kaum geändert hat.

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  • Podcast: Warum Arbeit häufig Zeitverschwendung ist

    Gerade von Kollegen empfohlen bekommen: eine Podcast Folge über Arbeit und Meetings. – Wird irgendwie nie alt.

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  • Recommended talk: Digital Sovereignty Is the New Influencer Status

    This week I came across a post recommending the talk from Molly White (@molly0xff) at SXSW, talking about “Digital Sovereignty Is the New Influencer Status“.

    The abstract of the talk is: “The real power move for creators is ownership and control of their work and livelihoods. This freedom is actually closer for more people than ever before! Learn from two fediverse futurists how decentralized social media facilitates better publishing, community, and business models. These speakers will cover the theoretical and the practical, including how the landscape is evolving in 2025, where creators should focus their energies, and how they might thrive with or without “walled garden” social platforms.”

    It’s an interesting talk, where she’s talking about how (and WHY) she keeps her content mainly on her website and federates it to some social networks for discovery.