Switched On Sytems

07/07/2026

Europe trains some of the best software engineers and cloud architects in the world. Then watches them build their companies in San Francisco.
Former Italian PM Enrico Letta just published a sharp piece arguing Europe needs a "Fifth Freedom" — the free movement of knowledge, research, and innovation. He frames it around biotech, but the argument applies just as forcefully to IT, software engineering, and cloud technology.
We don't lack talent. We lack the conditions to turn that talent into scalable companies.
Two things I'd add to Letta's agenda:
Simpler startup formation across borders
More accessible bankruptcy options — because the fear of lasting financial ruin is one of the biggest reasons European founders don't take the leap in the first place
"We love Europe, but if we want to grow, we have to leave." That quote should sting for every policymaker on this continent.
The link to Letta's full piece is in the comments — worth the read. What structural changes do you think would make the biggest difference for European tech entrepreneurship? Drop your thoughts below.

13/06/2026

Your database mock just passed a test that would fail in production.

That CHECK constraint? Not in the mock. That audit trigger? Not in the mock. That SERIALIZABLE transaction catching a write skew? Definitely not in the mock.

We mock HTTP clients and message queues because they're external and stateless. But a database isn't just a dependency — it's a co-author of your application's behaviour. Mock it away and you're testing half the system.

The alternative isn't painful. A Docker container gives you a disposable PostgreSQL in seconds. Automated lifecycle management rebuilds the schema before every test. Your tests call services, assert on business outcomes, and run in any order with the same result.

I wrote about why mocks fall short for the data layer and how containers + test framework integration make real database testing painless.

Link in comments 👇

22/04/2026

We're building a microservices platform in C++ on AWS Lambda. Every service ships with the same set of shared libraries — and we were packaging all of them, every single time. 30 services meant 1.5GB of nearly identical files on every release.

It was slow, wasteful, and honestly a bit embarrassing once we did the maths.

So we split it: one shared layer that all services reference, and a lightweight packager that only ships what's unique to each service. The whole thing works because every build comes from the same Docker image — so the shared parts are guaranteed to be identical.

A couple of scripts and a manifest file later — deployments dropped by 99%. Wrote up the full approach 👇

When you build AWS Lambda functions in C++ using the custom runtime (provided.al2), every deployment zip ships the compiled binary alongside every shared library it depends on — the AWS SDK, libcurl, zlib, libstdc++, and dozens of transitive system libraries. For a single function, the ~50MB zip i...

02/02/2026

Users rarely say they are confused. More often, they continue clicking, scrolling, and attempting to make progress while quietly compensating for an interface that no longer supports their intent. They hesitate, backtrack, rely on search, or abandon tasks without clearly articulating why. These beha...

27/01/2026

It's easy to prototype and so everyone is prototyping, without really knowing why they are doing it. The resultant noise drowns out thoughtful work.

14/08/2023

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18/12/2022

Cloud-based business software infrastructure solutions can provide organizations with a modern, cost-effective solution to their operational needs. Some of the advantages associated with cloud-based CRM, ERP and other enterprise solutions include superior scalability, enhanced data backup and redundancy capabilities, an increase in efficiency from concurrent access by multiple users and 24/7 availability from anywhere with an Internet connection. With the rapid growth of cloud technology, these solutions are becoming increasingly feature rich at very competitive pricing. When researching your business software infrastructure needs for the future, it is worth considering the sophisticated capabilities of a quality cloud-based system to ensure you will maximize your teams' performance and exceed customer expectations.

https://www.switchedonsystems.com/harnessing-the-power-of-cloud-applications/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/harnessing-power-cloud-applications-your-business-roland-welker/