Trapped By Our Tools
summary
Argues CRUD vocabulary narrows design and shows concrete alternatives: replaces REST verbs with Absinthe GraphQL mutations and subscriptions, records domain actions in a shipment_events table (type plus JSONB) and adds a last_event_id retry loop, uses Ecto.Multi and serializable Postgres transactions with automatic retry (ten attempts) to serialize per‑shipment processing, and drives downstream updates from events rather than ad hoc CRUD side effects so the system reasons in activity and avoids races without adding distributed process coordination.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Introduction and context
- 1:28Activity vs entity thinking
- 10:17Activity-oriented code strategies
- 16:14GraphQL subscriptions and events
- 18:27Event sourcing without full rewrite
- 23:24Implementing event logs in Postgres
- 27:59Serializable transactions for safety
- 33:37Incremental adoption approach
- 37:32Benefits of activity-driven systems
- 39:08Q&A on implementation and results
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