The Irony of Modernity: Design vs Technology

Published on: 2025-04-23 09:30:44 • Updated on: 2025-04-23 09:37:23 • 1 min read

Image by Growtika on Unsplash

INTERIOR DESIGN

Classical Style

Image 1: Classical Style - Photo by Cemrecan Yurtman on Unsplash

Typical Reaction:

"Too ornate! So outdated! Nobody wants this old-fashioned stuff full of frills anymore!"

"Look at all these useless objects! It's so... maximalist!"

"Impossible to keep clean! Who has time to dust all those details?"

Minimalist Style

Image 2: Minimalist Style - Photo by Visual Laurence on Unsplash

Typical Reaction:

"So elegant! Modern and functional!"

"True beauty lies in simplicity!"

"Finally a space where the mind can breathe!"

WEB ARCHITECTURE

Simple Traditional Stack

┌───────────────┐
│    Browser    │
└───────┬───────┘
        │
        ▼
┌───────────────┐
│    Firewall   │
└───────┬───────┘
        │
        ▼
┌───────────────┐
│   Web server  │
└───────┬───────┘
        │
        ▼
┌───────────────┐
│   HTML/CSS    │
│     Files     │
└───────────────┘

Typical Reaction:

"Too simple! That's so 2010!"

"Not scalable! How do you handle thousands of users?"

"Where's the DevOps? And CI/CD? What about serverless?"

"It's not resilient/reliable/cloud-native enough!"

Complex Modern Stack

┌─────────────────┐    ┌─────────────┐    ┌──────────────────┐
│    CDN Edge     │◄───┤ DNS Manager ├────┤ DDOS Protection  │
└────────┬────────┘    └─────────────┘    └──────────────────┘
         │
         ▼
┌────────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐
│  Load Balancer ├────┤ Auto-scaling │
└────────┬───────┘    └──────────────┘
         │
         ▼
┌────────────────┐
│     Proxy      │
└────────┬───────┘
         │
         ▼
┌────────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────────┐
│   Kubernetes   ├────┤ Service Mesh ├────┤ Circuit Breaker  │
└────────┬───────┘    └──────────────┘    └──────────────────┘
         │
         ▼
┌────────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────────┐
│  Microservices ├────┤Message Queue ├────┤   Redis Cache    │
└────────┬───────┘    └──────────────┘    └──────────────────┘
         │
         ▼
┌────────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────────┐
│      API       ├────┤ Auth Service ├────┤  User Service    │
└────────┬───────┘    └──────────────┘    └──────────────────┘
         │
         ▼
┌────────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────────┐
│    Database    ├────┤   Sharding   ├────┤  Backup System   │
└────────┬───────┘    └──────────────┘    └──────────────────┘
         │
         ▼
┌────────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────────┐
│   Monitoring   ├────┤   Logging    ├────┤    Alerting      │
└────────────────┘    └──────────────┘    └──────────────────┘

                * To serve a text page with 5 users per day *

Typical Reaction:

"Such an elegant architecture! So professional!"

"Finally a modern, well-designed approach!"

"This is the right way to do things today!"

"Excellent cloud-native implementation! Beautiful diagram!"

The Contradiction

In interior design: "Less is more! Simplify!"
In web development: "More is better! Complicate!"

Does a simple landing page really need Kubernetes?

Conclusion

Perhaps it's time to reassess what "modernity" truly means and consider the real purpose of what we're creating.