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The Death Star Design Pattern

·1 min
Kristof Kovacs
Author
Kristof Kovacs
Software Architect & DevOps Consultant

Hello, I’m Kristof, a human being like you, and an easy to work with, friendly guy.

I've been a programmer, a consultant, CIO in startups, head of software development in government, and built two software companies.

Some days I’m coding Golang in the guts of a system and other days I'm wearing a suit to help clients with their DevOps practices.

Experienced people in our industry will be familiar with the following popular anti-pattern:

  • The system is built in secret, from unbelievable money.
  • Only few are allowed to use it; others can only watch, if at all.
  • Its power might be demonstrated once on a low-value target; but right after, a few punx0rs arrive in crappy crafts and frack it up.
  • A less dramatic outcome is that the money runs out and the project is simply abandoned.
  • After the tragic failure of the original version, "2.0" gets executed basically the same way, with basically the same result.
  • The whole thing costs much more than any profit it could ever have achieved.
  • It's also hellishly slow – the Millenium Falcon beat it with a day, over just one lightyear distance :)

Now it has a name.

(NOTE: english translation of @kozka's "A Halálcsillag Design Pattern".)

Death Star