Episode Summary
Martin and Adam recap an intensive advanced workshop that pushed beyond basic patterns into sophisticated event modeling techniques. The workshop revealed how event modeling sessions expose hidden system complexity that organizations didn’t realize existed. Topics included advanced to-do list patterns, dynamic consistency boundaries, and leveraging AI for code generation.
Main Discussion Points
- Advanced To-Do Lists: Sophisticated patterns for complex workflow orchestration using event-driven processors
- Dynamic Consistency Boundaries: Hands-on exploration of flexible transactional boundaries in event sourcing
- AI Integration: Practical techniques for using AI tools to generate code from event models
- Simplicity as Goal: Why even advanced patterns should prioritize simplicity over cleverness
- Exposing Complexity: How event modeling workshops reveal system complexity that organizations underestimated
- Workshop Intensity: Managing the cognitive load of advanced topics while maintaining engagement
Key Takeaways
Advanced workshops expose the gap between what organizations think their systems do and what they actually need to do. Event modeling sessions force explicit discussions about edge cases, error handling, and workflow complexity that requirements documents gloss over. Even advanced patterns should prioritize simplicity - sophisticated doesn’t mean complicated. To-do list processors, when properly designed, handle complex orchestration without framework overhead. Dynamic consistency boundaries open new architectural possibilities while maintaining event sourcing benefits. AI code generation works remarkably well when fed precise event model specifications.
Memorable Quotes
- “Almost anything is a to-do list” - Adam
- “Did you ever try to explain a saga to a business person? Good luck.” - Martin
- “If you look at an event model I can very quickly see you know the value stream analysis analogy and the equivalency of that because I know each step you know to change it or adjust it is replacing it” - Adam
- “I just feel so happy to see so many different environments and um what works, what doesn’t and be able to adjust um the the practices uh as we as we move forward.” - Adam
- “The to-do list makes a simple format for communicating the same thing and therefore it bridges the the two sides because you don’t you know you don’t have to not that they people are not smart enough but it’s just you know unnecessary skills to do their job every day from the business side and vice versa” - Adam
Key Learnings
- To-do list patterns can replace complex distributed systems architecture - most automation is actually just a to-do list that controls processes
- Event modeling allows you to overlay SLAs without worrying about implementation details, releasing developers from showing complex solutions to business people
- Dynamic consistency boundaries allow sparse events and different indexing strategies - you can handle indexes manually when scope is limited to a single slice
- The slice-based approach in event modeling makes AB testing simpler by allowing you to toggle slices on and off independently
- Event modeling works well with value stream analysis, giving you immediate insight into development costs and bottlenecks without specialized tools
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