About Modern Digital Applications with Lee Atchison
Your system worked fine at a thousand users. Then it didn't.
Software Architecture Insights is Lee Atchison's podcast about building software that holds up. Scaling, availability, cloud cost, and what AI is doing to how we build.
Most episodes run about 15 minutes. Lee takes an idea from his weekly newsletter and goes further than the article could. Sometimes he revisits an old call to see how it aged. Sometimes he talks with someone doing the work.
Lee Atchison is a software architect and author who helps companies architect and operate AI-powered SaaS at scale. He wrote Architecting for Scale (O'Reilly) and The Software Conductor, and writes for architects, engineers, and the leaders who depend on them.
Get the newsletter at softwarearchitectureinsights.com.
GitHub published five incidents for August 2026. Three of them are the same failure.
On the 17th, seven and a half hours of degraded service: 29,000 organizations, 4.8 million requests failed or slow, 56% of front-door requests failing at the peak. Three weeks, three incidents, one blind spot — capacity ran out in places nobody was graphing.
Your autoscaler scales the thing you are observing. Saturation happens in the thing you don't.
In this episode:
The August 17th outage, and the two beside it on the 6th and the 26th
Sidecar concurrency, network flow tables, database primary headroom: limits with no dashboard
Why these limits are dangerous: someone else's layer, hard rather than soft, invisible
Retry amplification, and how one data center's capacity problem became an authentication outage everywhere
Protective throttles set so high they engaged after the damage was done
Two lists to build this week: your real hard limits, and your retry code
Links:
GitHub Availability Report: August 2026 (https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/github-availability-report-august-2026/)
Get the SAI newsletter (https://softwarearchitectureinsights.com/subscribe/?utm_source=sai-podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=teardown-limits-nobody-graphed&utm_content=subscribe)
Atchison Academy courses (https://atchisonacademy.com/?utm_source=sai-podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=teardown-limits-nobody-graphed&utm_content=cta)
29 Sept 2026
When Everything Is Critical, Nothing Is
It's 3am and a payment service is failing. The engineer who answers has never touched it, and the next hour goes to finding someone who can fix it.
In this episode, Lee goes further than his article "When Everything Is Critical, Nothing Is." The article named the two missing decisions. This episode is about how to make them: which services matter most, and which one team owns each of them.
In this episode:
The four service tiers, in plain terms
Three questions that keep everything from landing in Tier 1
Why every tier is a budget decision, and why you should cap Tier 1
The dependency trap: a Tier 1 service is only as reliable as the lower-tier service it can't live without
What "owner" means: paged, planned, permitted
Inherited services, and an exercise to run this week
Links:
Read the original article (https://softwarearchitectureinsights.com/posts/when-everything-is-critical-nothing-is/?utm_source=sai-podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=when-everything-is-critical-nothing-is&utm_content=hero)
The ownership-gap diagnostic (https://softwarearchitectureinsights.com/service-ownership-diagnostic?utm_source=sai-podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=when-everything-is-critical-nothing-is&utm_content=cta)
STOSA (https://stosa.org/?utm_source=sai-podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=when-everything-is-critical-nothing-is&utm_content=body)
Get the SAI newsletter (https://softwarearchitectureinsights.com/subscribe/?utm_source=sai-podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=when-everything-is-critical-nothing-is&utm_content=subscribe)
Atchison Academy courses (https://atchisonacademy.com/?utm_source=sai-podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=when-everything-is-critical-nothing-is&utm_content=cta)
28 Apr 2026
The Role of AI in Modern Software Development with Burke Holland
Today, we discuss the significant impact of AI on software development, particularly the use of AI assistants like GitHub Copilot. Our guest, Burke Holland, a principal developer advocate at Microsoft, shares insights on how developers are increasingly integrating AI into their workflows. We explore the current spectrum of AI usage, from code completion to AI agents that can write code autonomously. Burke emphasizes the need for developers to adapt to these changes while maintaining a critical perspective on AI-generated code. This conversation sheds light on the evolving role of software developers in an AI-enhanced landscape.
In this insightful episode, Burke Holland, a principal developer advocate at Microsoft for the Visual Studio Code team, discusses the transformative role of artificial intelligence (AI) in software development. The conversation starts with the observation that developers have shifted from skepticism about AI's capabilities in coding to a more supportive stance, with many now using AI tools like GitHub Copilot to assist in their work. Burke explains how these AI tools can provide significant assistance through 'completions'—intelligent suggestions that understand the context of what the developer is working on, effectively acting as a cognitive partner in the coding process.
The discussion further explores the concept of AI 'agents,' which represent a cutting-edge approach to automating aspects of coding. Burke acknowledges the potential of these agents to undertake more complex tasks but also expresses concern about the implications for developers' roles. He emphasizes the importance of human oversight, suggesting that while AI can enhance efficiency, developers must remain engaged with the code they produce to ensure quality and comprehensibility. The episode highlights the balance between leveraging AI's strengths and maintaining the critical thinking skills that are essential in programming.
As the episode wraps up, Burke encourages developers to adopt an exploratory mindset toward AI tools. He notes that the landscape of software development is rapidly evolving, and by integrating AI thoughtfully, developers can enhance their productivity while still preserving their essential skills and understanding of coding. The conversation underscores a future where AI and human collaboration can lead to better software outcomes, emphasizing the need for a nuanced approach to AI integration.
Takeaways:
In the podcast, we discussed how AI is changing the software development landscape significantly.
Burke Holland highlighted that the use of AI in coding has seen a dramatic increase recently.
We talked about the importance of understanding the code produced by AI to maintain quality.
Completions in AI tools like GitHub Copilot can enhance a developer's workflow remarkably.
Burke shared insights on the difference between completions and agents in AI coding practices.
We concluded that while AI can write code, developers still play a crucial role in ensuring its accuracy.
Links referenced in this episode:
softwarearchitectureinsights.com (https://softwarearchitectureinsights.com)
Companies mentioned in this episode:
Microsoft
VS Code
GitHub Copilot
JetBrains
Speckit
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
3.0 / 5
6 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 35 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
58
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
30
Contact Modern Digital Applications with Lee Atchison
Guest appearances
Books guests
Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.
Host of Modern Digital Applications with Lee Atchison?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
