Appendix
About This Manual
What This Is
A field manual for software engineers. Practical, reference-oriented, available when you need it.
The frameworks here (P-Cubed, Levels of Work, Architecture vs. Design) emerged from real projects, real failures, and the pattern recognition that comes from solving problems across different domains. They're not theory. They're tools that work.
What Informs It
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The canon: Sandi Metz, Kent Beck, the GOOS authors, Martin Fowler, John Ousterhout. The reading list in The Canon appendix represents books worth your time.
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Mistakes made: Every framework here came from getting it wrong first. Shipping too fast, shipping too slow, building the wrong abstraction, skipping the spike.
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Military discipline: Twenty years in the Air Force before software. The principles transfer: master your gear, train how you fight, you fall to your training.
Philosophy
Engineers are problem solvers first and coders second. The code is an artifact of the work, not the work itself.
There are no "best practices" for architecture. There are only tradeoffs. Every decision is choosing what you're willing to give up.
You fall to your training. The habits you build in calm are the habits you'll have in crisis.
Steel sharpens steel. The veterans invested in me. This manual pays it forward.
Colophon
The Engineer's Manual Volume I, First Edition December 2025
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Errata & Contributions
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License
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. Share it, adapt it, give credit and share alike.
Author
Tommy Caruso linkedin.com/in/tommycaruso