Building Universes from Code: When the Laws of a World Change

Series: The Journey from Legacy to Modern APIs - Part 1

In physics, the laws of the universe feel immutable. Gravity does not deprecate itself. Time does not announce a new major version. The cosmos moves forward without regard for compatibility.

Software, however, does.

Deep within many systems lies a quiet dependency - an API written years ago, stable, familiar, and deeply woven into the fabric of a product. It has its own logic, its own assumptions, its own way of interpreting the world.

Then one day, it disappears.

Support ends. Documentation fades. The universe it governed no longer exists - at least not officially. And yet the system built upon it still relies on its laws to function.

Upgrading is not simply a matter of swapping one call for another. There is no neat translation table. No one-to-one replacement.

The new API speaks a different language. It assumes different models, different abstractions, different philosophies entirely.

What once felt like a stable foundation is suddenly revealed as a historical artifact - a snapshot of how the world used to work.

In the next post, we’ll explore why this kind of upgrade feels less like refactoring… and more like rewriting the laws of physics mid-flight.

Continue the Journey

This post is the first entry in this week's three-part exploration of 'When the Laws of the World Change'.

Coming Next:

• Part 2 The Space Between What Was and What Is (coming this Wednesday)

• Part 3 Translating Intent Across Time (coming this Friday)

Explore the full archive

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Tim Ellis

15th December 2025