Andrew Hunter
Systems Theory

Systems Theory

Essays on architecture as a constraint discipline. Read in order — each builds on the last.

Reading Spine
Read in order
  1. 01
    Knowability
    Knowability is the preserved ability of a system to justify its behavior through enforceable constraints across time and composition.
  2. 02
    Architecture as Practiced Constraint
    Architecture is the disciplined preservation of invariant space under pressure.
  3. 03
    Dependency Management as Constraint Discipline
    Dependency management is the preservation of invariant space across time and external constraint surfaces.
  4. 04
    Reproducibility
    Reproducibility preserves the relationship between invariant space and outcome across time.
  5. 05
    Testability as Epistemic Authority
    What Tests Are Commonly Believed to Be Most teams think they know what tests are for. Tests are described as quality gates, regression …
  6. 06
    The Additive Fallacy
    0. Composition Is Not Neutral Modern systems are not monoliths. They are assemblies. We compose services, libraries, teams, platforms, …
  7. 07
    Systems That Lie
    How software systems can appear correct while losing the ability to justify their behavior in domain terms.
  8. 08
    Distributed Truth
    Distributed systems permit multiple evaluation contexts to exist simultaneously. Each context may enforce the same invariant space yet …
  9. 09
    Inference as Governance — Planned
  10. 10
    The Economics of Correction — Planned
Reference
  1. Taxonomy
    Formal vocabulary for the corpus. Defines constraint, invariant space, enforcement, knowability, translation surfaces, composition, and …
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