A Curated Collection of Articles That Will Stand the Test of Time
Every month, Nibbles attempts something simple and deceptively hard:
to curate articles that are worth your time.
Not trending.
Not loud.
Not driven by the algorithm of the week.
As the year comes to a close, we found ourselves asking a harder question:
If someone were to read only a handful of articles from this entire year,
which ones would still matter five or ten years from now?
The result is this Hall of Fame – This Year.
These five articles were not chosen because they were popular, controversial, or technically flashy. They were chosen because they address first principles—how we think, how we build, how we sustain careers, and how we navigate change without losing our bearings.
You will notice a pattern:
- Fewer tools, more thinking
- Less hype, more judgment
- More emphasis on why than how
If Nibbles has ever been useful to you, this is the edition we hope you’ll return to—quietly, repeatedly, and without urgency.
Happy reading and Wish you a happy and Prosperous 2026
— Team Nibbles
Hall of Fame – Top 5 Articles
Classic Software Engineering — Multi-Tenant Architecture Patterns
Themes: Architecture · Systems · Scalability
Multi-tenancy is one of those problems that looks simple—until it isn’t.
This article stands out because it does not rush to prescribe solutions. Instead, it walks through trade-offs, isolation strategies, and operational realities that apply regardless of cloud provider, database, or framework.
A genuinely timeless systems-engineering read.
What Went Wrong with the AWS Outage
Themes: Architecture · Reliability · Engineering Judgment
Every large outage eventually becomes a lesson in humility.
This article belongs to the lineage of classic post-mortems that engineers revisit whenever systems fail at scale.
Beyond the technical details, it reinforces an enduring truth:
automation without restraint amplifies risk.
Software Is Changing (Again) — Key Takeaways from Andrej Karpathy
Themes: AI · Architecture · Software Evolution
Few talks manage to give language to a shift that many feel but cannot yet articulate.
Karpathy’s framing of Software 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 does exactly that.
This piece will likely be referenced for years as engineers recalibrate what it means to “write software” in an AI-first world.
We Need to Start Thinking of AI as “Normal”
Themes: AI · Engineering Philosophy · Judgment
This article performs a rare but necessary function: deflating both hype and fear.
By treating AI as a general-purpose technology—rather than something mystical or existential—it helps engineers return to sober thinking, responsibility, and practical integration. A grounding read that will age well.
Plato’s Cave and the Stubborn Persistence of Ignorance
Themes: Philosophy · Judgment · Craft
Using Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, this article explores how people remain attached to familiar illusions—even when better explanations exist.
Its relevance to modern engineering is subtle but profound:
abstractions, tools, metrics, and even AI can keep us comfortable in the cave unless we actively question what we are seeing.
A rare philosophical piece that quietly sharpens technical judgment
Closing Note
This year’s Hall of Fame reflects a shift.
Less obsession with tools.
More emphasis on judgment.
A renewed respect for fundamentals—even as the surface of software continues to change.
If you keep just five articles from this year, we believe these will repay repeated reading.
That, for us, is the quiet promise of Nibbles.
