Software Architecture: The Bad Parts

In this talk, I will demonstrate how so-called good practices, when combined with a shallow understanding of the domain, can create a dangerous illusion of control. Using a real-world example from the Connected Health domain—specifically liver cancer risk alerting—I will show how a noun-driven design approach leads to excessive coupling and brittle systems.

The talk explores common architectural pitfalls such as context violations, database coupling, domain leakage, and mixing read and write models. I will also challenge a popular industry belief by explaining why Clean / Hexagonal Architecture is not an architecture.

Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how design decisions shape system behavior—and how easily “best practices” can fail when the domain is misunderstood.

The talk is based on this article: 👉 https://www.knowhowcode.dev/articles/architecture-the-bad-parts/

I will be presenting using Miro boards and Visual Studio Code. Tech stack: Node.js / TypeScript / PostgreSQL