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Software Architecture: After Infatuation Comes the Shock

June 29, 2026

Latest Posts

Development Practice November 16, 2023

ChatGPT Killed my Blog

Hi, My work methods have changed more in the past year than ever before. A year ago, OpenAI released ChatGPT. At the time, I thought the technology was cool, but I didn’t realize how much it would impact my work. And that in less than 12 months. Today, I use AI for so many things: I no longer Google questions; I ask ChatGPT GitHub Copilot writes code before I even know what I want to write My content (including this one) is proofread by ChatGPT I have stock images generated by Midjourney My recent presentations were created with ChatGPT Even the pirate puzzle for the children’s birthday party is generated by ChatGPT And this list is far from complete.

Marcus Held

Development Practice November 13, 2023

@Transaction Around Test

Hi, My fingers were tingling at the start of Thorben Janssen’s session “The Big Java Persistence Q&A”. The first question was roughly: “In the previous talk (something with JPA), it was said that one should annotate every test with @Transactional. This will automatically roll back the data after the test. We’ve had a discussion and can’t agree. What’s your recommendation?” Thorben’s answer made me nervous. He countered with a question of his own, also paraphrased:

Marcus Held

SME Software Development November 9, 2023

Panic

Hi, Nervousness sliced through the room. I saw it in the eyes of all attendees. It was supposed to be just a routine meeting. Once a week, the development team meets with the admins to discuss current topics. This meeting has been held for years. Same time, same people, (almost) the same topics. But something was different this time. A new colleague participated for the first time. An external. We brought him in to work on “DevOps”. Mainly automation. CI/CD, provisioning, tooling, compile-time optimizations. Everything that improves the developer experience.

Marcus Held

Development Practice November 6, 2023

Kids Treasure Hunt

Hi, For a treasure hunt for a 5-year-old, I want to write a text. The text should be written by a pirate, describing a riddle where the pirate’s treasure is hidden. It should be hidden in a place where creepy trees are. Can you write the text for me and make it rhyme? With this prompt, I fed ChatGPT. I had just returned from Berlin from the RabbitMQ Summit .

Marcus Held

Development Practice October 31, 2023

Is Scrum Democratic?

Hi, Is Scrum democratic? This question keeps coming up. Time and time again, I find myself in teams where this question becomes the focal point. The keyword that often comes up is “self-organized team.” How much autonomy does a self-organized team have? Undoubtedly: The team organizes its work on its own. The Product Owner decides which tasks are to be tackled and in which order. And he is a part of the team.

Marcus Held