One of the recurring challenges I worked on in mid-2013 was breaking apart a tightly coupled backend system that had organically grown over time. Introducing event-driven design principles, even incrementally, allowed us to reduce dependencies and improve scalability.
We started with domain events and simple messaging via a persistent log system (at the time, Kafka was gaining popularity). The architecture wasn't perfect, but it introduced a powerful contract-first approach: producers didn’t need to know who was listening.
Key takeaways:
- Event schemas should be versioned like APIs.
- Start with async for non-critical paths—metrics, audit, or user activity.
- Visibility into event flow is vital (we used a combination of logging and dead-letter queues).
Looking back, this work was foundational for how I later approached distributed ownership in large-scale services.