Writing
Notes from building and running systems — backend design, DevOps, applied AI, and the occasional book that changed how I work.
- 6 min read
Designing Data-Intensive Applications, on the third attempt
I stalled on this book twice before it landed. A review of what it actually teaches, the chapter that changed my defaults, and who should wait before picking it up.
- Backend
- Book Review
- 7 min read
Shrinking a container image from 1GB to 180MB
Multi-stage builds, layer ordering, and a .dockerignore that earns its keep. Same features, a sixth of the size, and a CI pipeline that stops being the bottleneck.
- DevOps
- Backend
- 8 min readFeatured
The Postgres index that took 9 seconds off a query
A query that ran in 4ms locally took 9 seconds in production. The fix was one composite index — but the useful part is how to read the plan that tells you which one.
- Backend
- Software Engineering
- 3 min read
Why I started writing things down
Every engineer I admire keeps some kind of notebook. This is mine, made public — systems that had to hold up, infrastructure that stopped being scary, and books worth the hours.
- Software Engineering
