Articles.

Mainframe and AI: legacy modernization is about missing logs and owners, not age

CIO Dive reports AI agents helped sustain confidence in the mainframe. Three checks that tell you whether your system is legacy, and what to do about each one.

Victhor Araújo

Thousands of IF/THEN/ELSE rules: code, engine or spreadsheet

Rules that change weekly belong in versioned data with an owner. Rare rules stay as ifs. When a rules engine pays off, and what the finance spreadsheet really costs.

Victhor Araújo

Why can't IT deliver big projects on time like construction?

Construction slips too. Three contract devices explain the gap: a paid design phase, signed change orders with measurement, and one named engineer of record.

Victhor Araújo

Technical debt you cannot see: measuring cognitive debt

The most expensive technical debt is the rule only one person can explain. A 40 minute test to find that concentration, and what to do once it shows up.

Victhor Araújo

Legacy modernization: upgrade PHP 5.6 to PHP 8 or full rewrite?

Upgrading PHP 5.6 to PHP 8 usually costs less than a rewrite. Three measurements (compatibility, dead dependencies, revenue flows without tests) tell you if your case is the

Victhor Araújo

How to respond when you are asked for an estimate

Answer with a range, the part nobody has measured yet, and the date you tighten the number. Why the deadline question fails and what to measure first.

Victhor Araújo

AI software development: teams ship more code and deliver less. What to measure

PR volume is up and the product hasn't moved. Four measurements that expose where AI turns into debt: review queue, 30-day rework, mutation score and real customer use.

Victhor Araújo

Brazil software development hourly rates 2026: ranges by model

Freelance, dev shop and embedded squad rates out of Brazil in 2026, plus what disappears from the delivery when a vendor agrees to match a lower price.

Victhor Araújo

Legacy system modernization: the first two weeks with 200K lines of spaghetti code

The first two weeks on an undocumented legacy codebase: boot it from scratch, instrument production, map the five revenue paths. And why the day-4 rewrite call backfires.

Victhor Araújo

The code that passes the pitch and fails due diligence

I talked to founders who went through technical diligence and watched the term sheet shrink — not over the product, but over the paperwork, the code's ownership, and everything nobody had read with a buyer's eyes. Why the time to fix it is long before the round.

Raquel Reis

I changed one number in the URL and saw another customer's orders

A client asked me for a second opinion on the app another shop had shipped. Twenty minutes in, changing one number in the address bar, I was reading another company's order on his platform. Login worked; authorization didn't. On the cheapest hole to prevent and the most expensive to find late.

Victhor Araújo

High test coverage is where production bugs hide best

A founder sent me a 92% coverage badge the same night his checkout was down. Coverage counts lines that ran, not results anyone checked, and it is the easiest number for a vendor to inflate. What a senior squad reads before it trusts the green.

Raquel Reis