Our insights

On a Limb: The risk of poor quality software with Professor Herb Krasner

The Iceberg Model: towards unraveling our patriarchal legacy

On Confidence

In last month's newsletter, we discussed the difficulty of getting started with modernization projects despite the empirically low confidence level for success.

Incremental vs All-At-Once? You don't get to choose.

Manufactured certainty

Mechanical Orchard: Our Approach

Mechanical Orchard's low-risk legacy modernization approach is unorthodox but highly effective.

LLM Toolkit: Validation is all you need

Building confidence as a competency

The $520 billion obstacle to AI nirvana

Mechanical Orchard appoints Edward Hieatt to lead customer experience

Following our successful Series A round, we’re proud to announce that we’ve appointed Edward Hieatt as Mechanical Orchard’s Chief Customer Officer.

Making an AI Sandwich

Old School, New Rules: A Milestone

Mechanical Orchard Raises $24M in Series A Round to Solve the Legacy IT Modernization Challenge

How to Make Your AI Less Flaky

“Here” Means Longitude

Is Extreme Collaboration Remotely Possible?

After a COVID-induced kumbaya moment, not all is harmonious between employers and employees at big tech companies.

“Friction” >> “Debt”

How to Eat an Elephant?

“There is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.” Attributed to notables ranging from St. Francis of Assisi (whose elephant-related credentials are a bit suspect, tbh), to Desmond Tutu, the meaning is obvious: any task, no matter how challenging, can be tackled bit by bit.

The AI Robots are (Not) Coming 
for Our Jobs

You’ve seen the demo videos that start with a prompt describing an application, followed by a stream of LLM generated code. Are we at the holy grail of no code development? And how will that impact our jobs as software builders?

$13 Trillion of the US GDP Rides on Mainframes

Mainframe computers are still widely deployed. At the time of their adoption (in some cases over half a century ago), mainframes were cutting edge technology.

Can Two AIs Play the TDD Pairing Game?

Four Risks of Vintage Systems

Securely Connect All of Your GCP Cloud SQL Clients in 15 Minutes

Features And Design: Why Not Both?

Mechanical Orchard: Responsible Development

$1.14 Trillion to Keep the Lights on: Legacy’s Drag on Productivity

Mechanical Orchard: A New Company With a Long History

Creating Process Continuity in Distributed Elixir

The Seeds of Mechanical Orchard

Mechanical Orchard traces its origins to the beginnings of the agile movement.