Chris.

I code. Sometimes, I write about code.

Published: December 31, 2025

Why most plugin systems fail quietly

Plugin systems rarely fail in ways that are easy to diagnose. They do not crash outright. This article explores how weak boundaries, shared responsibility, and unconstrained extension lead to such systems remaining functional while becoming increasingly difficult to reason about, change, or trust. The focus is on structural failure modes rather than specific frameworks or implementations.

About

I’ve spent two decades working on VoIP, real-time systems, and backend architecture, building systems that scale and exploring the trade-offs behind them. I care about clarity in code, restraint in design, and deep technology that doesn’t announce itself.

This site is a record of thinking in public, written carefully. More

📌 Foundational Essay

On building software that deserves to last

Software rarely fails because it was incorrect. More often, it fails because it was written without regard for how it would be read, modified, and defended years later. This essay examines longevity as a design constraint, arguing that systems which age well do so through conservative promises, explicit trade-offs, and respect for future readers. It treats embarrassment as a practical metric, and time as the only non-negotiable evaluator.

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📌 Foundational Essay

On restraint, boundaries, and systems thinking

Most systems do not fail suddenly or dramatically. They fail through the gradual erosion of constraints that were never made explicit. This essay examines how complexity accumulates as systems grow, why local reasoning collapses under uncontrolled interaction, and how restraint and well-defined boundaries act as structural necessities rather than stylistic preferences. Drawing on systems theory and software engineering literature, it argues that long-lived systems survive not by absorbing complexity, but by constraining it deliberately and honestly.

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Architecture;

On boundaries, interfaces, failure modes …

Foundational;

First principles and long-term constraints