The three new fallacies of distributed computing

Thoughtworks Technology Podcast

Thoughtworks

Careers, Business, 907234, Technology

4.7 • 53 Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Back in 1994, Peter Deutsch and his colleagues at Sun Microsystems identified what they described as the "eight fallacies of distributed computing" — flawed assumptions that often get made when teams move from monolithic to distributed software architectures. In recent years, software architecture experts and regular writing partners Neal Ford and Mark Richards have identified a further three new fallacies of distributed computing: versioning is easy; compensating updates always work; and observability is optional.

In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Neal and Mark join host Prem Chandrasekaran to talk through these three new fallacies, before digging deeper into other important issues in software architecture, including modular monoliths and governing architectural characteristics. Listen for a fresh perspective on software architecture and to explore key ideas shaping the discipline in 2025.

Learn more about the second edition of Neal and Mark's Fundamentals of Software Architecture: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/fundamentals-of-software/9781098175504/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome, everyone to yet another exciting episode of the ThoughtWorks Technology podcast.
0:13.2	I'm Prame.
0:14.2	I'm one of the regular hosts on the podcast.
0:17.9	And today I've got with me two of our almost regular guests now, Neil Ford and Mark Richards.
0:25.3	Do you folks want to quickly introduce yourselves again, please?
0:29.9	Sure, I'll go first. I'm one of the regular hosts as well, but I'm also a frequent guest,
0:34.8	and that's the role I'm playing today. And Prim's putting a lot of
0:38.1	pressure on us, claiming up front that it's going to be an exciting podcast. And we'll see if we can
0:42.8	deliver on that. And I'm joined as I often am on the podcast with my co-author and frequent collaborator,
0:50.3	Mark Richards. Well, hello, everyone. My name is Mark Richards and I am in fact a seems like now
0:57.8	a frequent guest on the ThoughtWorks podcast. Thank you so much again for having me on yet another
1:05.0	podcast. Excellent. So what are we talking about today? So you folks are writing yet another book, and this time
1:13.5	it's the second edition of your Software Architecture Fundamentals book. So what's the motivation
1:19.1	for you folks to write the second edition? Well, in fact, it's already published. We did
1:26.2	finish that up at the beginning of the year, and it was released in, I believe it was April.
1:32.3	Neil, is that correct?
1:33.3	That's correct.
1:34.2	Just a couple of months ago as we record this.
1:38.7	Software architecture does remain more stable, I will say, than, at least as a field, than other areas of technology.
1:49.2	However, that said, it does change. And Neil and I were reviewing our book, the fundamentals of
1:57.5	software architecture, the first edition, that we published in February of
2:02.2	2020 and realized there actually were some things that changed in software architecture
	...

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