About

Hi, I’m Sue, an application architect based in Belgium with a particular interest in maintainable software systems, domain-driven design and living documentation.

I enjoy turning implicit knowledge into explicit models and using automation to keep architecture understandable and sustainable over time.

I see good software engineering as something that is discovered more than built. It’s like solving a puzzle where the picture slowly emerges. Sometimes you realize you’ve been forcing the wrong pieces together: they fit, but the image doesn’t make sense. Going back, challenging your assumptions and finally finding the right place for a piece is one of the most rewarding parts of the job.

Over my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work on aging and complex applications that gradually evolved into tangled systems. Trying to rescue them feels a bit like software archaeology. Why was this implemented this way? What constraints shaped these decisions? How can we untangle the code without breaking everything around it?

These experiences taught me that software naturally drifts toward complexity. Tight deadlines, multiple contributors and changing requirements make that almost inevitable.

We try to slow that process through conventions, reviews, migrations and documentation. Yet many of these practices rely on people remembering rules or maintaining documents that quickly fall out of sync with reality.

Coming back to a project only a few months later often means reconstructing an entire mental model:

• How is the application structured?
• How does it fit into the larger system?
• What conventions does it follow?
• How outdated are its dependencies?

This is why I believe software should explain itself as much as possible. Architecture should be enforced by executable rules rather than informal agreements. Documentation should stay close to the code and evolve with it, instead of becoming a disconnected artifact that slowly loses its value.

This doesn’t mean external documentation is useless. On the contrary, I believe it is most valuable when it is derived from the system itself or maintained as a living part of it, rather than as a separate source of truth.

This site is where I explore those ideas. Expect articles about software architecture, domain-driven design, living documentation, testing, platform engineering and the occasional tooling experiment.