Bounded Contexts: Clarity through Limits
I once went all in on Domain-Driven Design (DDD). I believed every project needed rich entities, value objects, and repositories. Over time, I realized that the real power of DDD is not in its tactical patterns. The strategic side is what keeps projects aligned with business goals. It sets the boundaries between services or modules and gives everyone a shared language. That shared understanding prevents confusion and wasted effort.
That big-picture thinking keeps teams from mixing unrelated concerns and stops them from building “just-in-case” structures.
Repositories, for instance, introduced extra layers for data access, so even simple queries involved multiple abstractions. Factories buried creation logic behind another layer that did not always match the real business needs. Instead of making the domain clearer, these patterns created a maze of indirection.