Writing · Nº 041065 essays
The writing
Ideas from inside the work. Explore technology, entrepreneurship, and the practice of building things that last.
343 essays found · Page 1 of 29
Clear filtersEngineeringWhat a Deploy You Actually Control Looks LikeMost teams cannot explain what happens between git push and live. That gap is where the outages and the vendor lock-in hide. Here is the version I run.EngineeringWhen Scraping Breaks at Scale, and How to Design Around ItSmall scrapers work until they do not. The failures at scale are predictable, and you can design for them up front instead of firefighting later.EngineeringSpec-Driven Development, and Why I Build That WayWriting the spec before the code sounds slow. With AI in the loop it is the opposite: the spec is what makes fast building not turn into fast mess.EngineeringCode Review Misses Architectural DecayCode review catches line-level bugs but misses architectural decay entirely. Learn why your repo rots one approved pull request at a time and how to catch it.EngineeringHow to Build Multiplayer Cursors and SelectionsMultiplayer cursors and selections are high-frequency ephemeral state. Throttle them, never persist them, and broadcast only to the room to keep editing feel live.EngineeringHow to Read Google Postmaster Tools for App EmailGoogle Postmaster Tools shows how Gmail sees your app email: domain reputation, spam rate, and authentication. Here is how to read it and act on what it says.EngineeringHow Much RAM Does Postgres Need on a Small VPS?How much RAM does Postgres actually need? Here is how to size and tune Postgres memory on a small VPS so it runs fast without starving your app.EngineeringServer-Sent Events vs WebSockets: Which to UseServer-sent events vs WebSockets is a question of direction. Here is when one-way SSE beats a full socket, and when you actually need bidirectional real-time.EngineeringThe Cost-of-Downtime Math Before You Over-Build DRDo the cost-of-downtime math before you buy redundancy. For most self-hosted apps, a simple restore beats an expensive hot standby you will never need.EngineeringLLM Parsing vs CSS Selectors for Scraping: When to Use EachShould you parse scraped pages with an LLM or CSS selectors? Selectors are cheap and exact; LLMs handle chaos. Here is how to choose without blowing your cost per page.EngineeringHow to Handle Merge Variables in Email Templates SafelyA null merge variable sends 'Hi ,' to a real customer. Here is how to handle merge variables in email templates safely with defaults, guards, and escaping.EngineeringData Lineage: Trace Every AI Output to Its SourceData lineage lets you trace any AI output back to the exact data that produced it. Why buyers demand it and how to build lineage into an AI product.