Blog

Thoughts, tutorials, and insights on software architecture, AI, and engineering.

PostgreSQL Internals: WAL, Replication, and Scaling
Data

PostgreSQL Internals: WAL, Replication, and Scaling

Trace PostgreSQL writes through WAL, standby replay, and failover. Understand read replicas, synchronous modes, multi-writer limits, and infrastructure scaling.

·23 min read
PostgresReplicationHigh Availability
Kafka Internals: Why It Is Fast and How It Scales
Data

Kafka Internals: Why It Is Fast and How It Scales

Follow a Kafka record through storage, replication, and consumption. Learn why Kafka is fast, how partitions scale, and when its design beats alternatives.

·21 min read
KafkaDistributed SystemsStreaming
The ELIZA Effect: A Story About Believing Machines That Don't Believe You Back
AI

The ELIZA Effect: A Story About Believing Machines That Don't Believe You Back

In 1966, a secretary asked her boss to leave the room so she could speak privately with a 200-line program. Sixty years later, the same illusion is shaping how we trust LLMs.

·8 min read
AILLMHistory of Computing
Designing for Observability from Day One
Engineering

Designing for Observability from Day One

Observability is not something you bolt on after an incident. This is the practical guide to treating logs, metrics, and traces as first-class design concerns — with the instrumentation patterns that make systems debuggable in production.

·9 min read
EngineeringObservabilityMonitoring
The Cost of an Outage, Broken Down
Reliability

The Cost of an Outage, Broken Down

MTTR and uptime nines are engineer metrics — here is how to translate the real cost of downtime into the spreadsheet that engineering leadership and finance actually read.

·10 min read
ReliabilityIncident ManagementEngineering Management
Technical Debt You Should Actually Pay Down (and What to Leave)
Engineering

Technical Debt You Should Actually Pay Down (and What to Leave)

Not all technical debt is worth addressing. A practical framework for classifying debt by urgency and delivery impact — and the honest case for leaving most of it alone.

·8 min read
EngineeringTechnical DebtArchitecture
Java Performance Tuning
Java

Java Performance Tuning

A practical guide to JVM performance tuning — profiling methodology, GC algorithm selection, heap sizing, JIT compilation hints, and the flags that actually matter in production.

·8 min read
JavaPerformanceJVM
Virtual Threads vs Reactive: When to Pick Each
Java

Virtual Threads vs Reactive: When to Pick Each

Java 21's virtual threads and Project Reactor both solve the I/O concurrency problem. Here is the practical guide to choosing between them — performance trade-offs, migration paths, and where each genuinely excels.

·7 min read
JavaVirtual ThreadsReactive
Chaos Engineering for Backend Teams Without an SRE Org
Reliability

Chaos Engineering for Backend Teams Without an SRE Org

You do not need a dedicated SRE team or Netflix-scale infrastructure to practice chaos engineering — here is the minimum viable version that ships real findings.

·10 min read
ReliabilityChaos EngineeringTesting
AI-Assisted Code Review: What Works, What Doesn't
AI

AI-Assisted Code Review: What Works, What Doesn't

An honest assessment of AI code review tools after two years in production — where they catch real bugs, where they produce noise, and how to integrate them without destroying reviewer trust.

·8 min read
AICode ReviewEngineering