big ball of mud

programmingops culture

A system with no discernible architecture - haphazardly structured, sprawling, and held together by expedience.

Foote and Yoder named it as the de facto most common architecture: not designed but accreted, patch upon patch, until structure is whatever survived. The uncomfortable insight is that it often wins in the short term, which is exactly why it is so widespread.

Also known as: big ball of mud, BBoM

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