Top all-time · #2036
Phil Calçado
Personal blog · philcalcado.comprogrammingcareer
Phil Calçado's personal blog at philcalcado.com covers programming and career. Since 2011, 35 different Hacker News readers have linked it 50 times, most often “How we ended up with microservices”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-03-14, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Phil Calçado's posts on how SoundCloud ended up with microservices, the BFF and service mesh patterns, identifiers in URLs, and shared patterns. Comments mostly cite them as sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Phil Calçado on software architecture, distributed systems, and engineering leadership — helping ambitious companies punch above their weight through pragmatic architecture.
Most-linked posts?
- How we ended up with microservices5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-09-09
- Some Thoughts on GraphQL vs. BFF4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-07-13
- The Back-End for Front-End Pattern (BFF)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-03-13
- A Structured RFC Process3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-02-07
- Pattern: Service Mesh3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-08-03
- Using Pseudo-URIs with Microservices2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-23
- Building AI Products–Part I: Back-End Architecture2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-12-23
- The Back-End for Front-End Pattern (BFF)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-28
- Attention Is All a Manager Needs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-07-24
- Some Thoughts on GraphQL vs. BFF2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-07-12
What Hacker News says?
At my company we have a bunch of content that's only archived on SoundCloud. The main barrier I've had to backing up original uploads (only available through the web interface) is the terrible reliability of all the AJAX calls. Even with browser automation, it requires a LOT of error-handling just to navigate between resources successfully. It seems that all these microservices[1] are there for the sake of blogging…
Comment linking /2015/09/08/how_we_ended_up_with_microservices.html
on “SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses”Submitted How we ended up with microservices as a story · 479 points
HN discussionPerhaps this? http://philcalcado.com/2015/09/08/how_we_ended_up_with_micro... ? (That question mark is part of the URL)
Comment linking /2015/09/08/how_we_ended_up_with_microservices.html
on “Google Is 2B Lines of Code, All in One Place”Submitted Takeaways from looking for a new senior role in tech as a story · 431 points
HN discussionfollow the money: http://philcalcado.com/2017/06/26/on_leaving_digitalocean.ht...
Comment linking /2017/06/26/on_leaving_digitalocean.html
on “SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices”Submitted On asking job candidates to code as a story · 361 points
HN discussionIdentifying changing "stuff" in the real world is for me a fundamental topic of any serious data modeling for any kind of software (be it an API, a traditional database stuff, etc). Identity is also at the center of the entity concept of Domain-Driven Design (see the seminal book of Eric Evans on that: https://www.amazon.com/Domain-Driven-Design-Tackling-Complex... ). I started changing my way of looking at identity…
Comment linking /2017/03/22/pattern_using_seudo-uris_with_microservices.html
on “Choosing between names and identifiers in URLs”Submitted Building AI Products–Part I: Back-End Architecture as a story · 162 points
HN discussionHaving read one of the success stories linked in the beginning ( http://philcalcado.com/2015/09/08/how_we_ended_up_with_micro... ) I think I am starting to get it. That was a rather candid article describing a team which after having got burned by a sprawling "monorail" architecture decided to split it up into services (nothing micro- there) based on organizational viewpoint (if there is some knowledge about a part…
Comment linking /2015/09/08/how_we_ended_up_with_microservices.html
on “The microservices cargo cult”Submitted Pattern: Service Mesh as a story · 69 points
HN discussionAgreed! A SPA using an RPC API usually makes the most sense. I've wasted so much time over my career trying to jam functional concepts into REST resources for little gain. I really like the idea of each app getting it's own specialized backend. Have you heard of the BFF pattern? https://philcalcado.com/2019/07/12/some_thoughts_graphql_bff...
Comment linking /2019/07/12/some_thoughts_graphql_bff.html
on “Roy Fielding's Misappropriated REST Dissertation”Submitted Using Pseudo-URIs with Microservices as a story · 62 points
HN discussionAnd this: Pattern: Service Mesh - http://philcalcado.com/2017/08/03/pattern_service_mesh.html
Comment linking /2017/08/03/pattern_service_mesh.html
on “Microservices Circuit-Breaker Pattern Implementation: Istio vs. Hystrix”Submitted On joining DigitalOcean as a story · 28 points
HN discussionThe article imo misuses the term BFF a bit, but perhaps its meaning has evolved over time. I was at SoundCloud when BFF was being introduced as an important piece of the microservice architecture--this post explains the purpose well[0]. BFFs can enable you to build more general-purpose and domain-specific services with few assumptions as to how they are used and their callers. BFFs then provide a composition layer y…
Comment linking /2019/07/12/some_thoughts_graphql_bff.html
on “Keycloak, Angular, and the BFF Pattern”Submitted Read The Dinossaurs as a story · 25 points
HN discussionThe author suggests a common opinion on patterns, that I have seen violated a billion times: > Two people with a common set of patterns find it easier to communicate [...] than those without one. > [...] writing down our shared context lowers the barrier to entry. In my experience this is often not the case. Patterns come along with labels and the labels will be put everywhere in a codebase. Assumptions get made and…
Comment linking /2010/12/23/how-to-write-a-repository/
on “A Quiet Defense of Patterns”Submitted Any Colour Will Do as a story · 21 points
HN discussionSubmitted Phil Calçado's Microservices Prerequisites as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted How we ended up with microservices as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Some Guiding Principles for Developer Tools as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Pattern: Service Mesh – Phil Calçado as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Back-End for Front-End Pattern (BFF) as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building AI Products–Part I: Back-End Architecture as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Some Thoughts on GraphQL vs. BFF as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Some Thoughts on GraphQL vs. BFF as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Structured RFC Process as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Attention Is All a Manager Needs as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Microservices and the First Law of Distributed Objects as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Copilotcalypse as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
