Compiled Conversations Thinking in Events: Principles of Event-Driven Architecture, Part 1 with James Eastham
Jul 23, 2025
James Eastham, a developer advocate at Datadog and former AWS expert, dives into the essentials of event-driven architecture. He unpacks how communication shapes software design and discusses the pros and cons of different architectures like microservices. Key topics include the importance of semantically meaningful events, managing idempotency, and employing standards like CloudEvents. With vivid pizza metaphors, James illustrates concepts such as eventual consistency and balancing loose and strong coupling, making complex ideas accessible and engaging.
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Communication Is The Core Of Software
- Software exists to do business work, so communication between stakeholders and code is critical.
- Good communication ensures the software actually achieves the intended business outcome.
Prefer Monoliths Until Teams Demand Microservices
- When moving from monoliths to distributed systems, prioritize low coupling to let teams evolve independently.
- Build a monolith first and split into microservices only when you have enough people and clear boundaries.
Coupling Has Multiple Dimensions
- Runtime and temporal coupling are the hardest problems in distributed systems.
- Event-driven architectures minimize those but still require managing data format and semantic coupling.
