Combinant®
Software-design courses, tools, and materials for teams building long-lived systems. Because software shouldn't scream every time you change it.
Software-design courses, tools, and materials for teams building long-lived systems. Because software shouldn't scream every time you change it.
Software often becomes harder to change as it grows.
Combinant® offerings include courses, software tools, and reference products for teams building long-lived software systems. The materials use working code, tests, and software-development metrics to compare design choices and make cost-of-change considerations visible.
Build software. Measure change. Compare design decisions.
Three products. Three domains. Measured with the same metrics.
A complete Breakout game used to study design decisions, code structure, tests, and cost-of-change metrics in a working Python product. Learn More
A text-editor product used to study software-design decisions in a different domain and compare implementation choices using the same metrics. Learn More
A trading-alert product used to study design decisions, implementation choices, and cost-of-change metrics in another software domain. Learn More
Tuesday, September 22, 2026 —
4 PM (UTC+4)
Free
/3.5 hours
Francesco Cirillo builds the same Breakout game in three different ways — procedural, object-oriented, event-driven. Same features, same tests, completely different designs. Which one is easier to change? Which one is easier to measure? Learn More.
30+ Years in Software Design • Creator of the Pomodoro® Technique
Began programming in the early 1980s, primarily on the Apple ][.
Economics degree in Rome. Thesis on economies of scale and scope in banking — why producing more, and in different contexts, can cost less over time. The same question came back years later: why does software so often become more expensive to change instead of less?
Object mentor for Sun Microsystems. First continental European at the XP Immersion, 1999. Selected by Kent Beck to bring XP to Europe. Founded XPLabs in 2000 — the first company fully dedicated to developing, teaching, and mentoring eXtreme Programming. Editor, second edition of Extreme Programming Explained. Creator of the Anti-IF Campaign. Creator of the Pomodoro® Technique.
Started the work behind Combinant® in 2008. Full story coming soon.