Introduction Someone on r/dataengineering asked if there’s a standard for modern data architecture. With 20 years of experience, they had a batch pipeline pulling 200MB files into a data lake and a new source as a serialized Kafka stream. They wondered if streaming was the new paradigm or if they were becoming dinosaurs. The best answer cut to the confusion: the question asked about architecture, but the follow-up discussed tools. They are on different levels. Data architecture has little to do with tool selection.