Writing · Nº 041065 essays
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Ideas from inside the work. Explore technology, entrepreneurship, and the practice of building things that last.
19 essays found · Page 2 of 2
Clear filtersEngineeringSelf-Host Search vs Algolia: When to Own ItSelf-host search vs Algolia: when owning your search index with Meilisearch or Typesense beats renting per-query search, and when the hosted API still wins.StrategyThe Hidden Cost of Running Too Many SaaS ToolsThe hidden cost of too many SaaS tools is not the subscriptions. It is the reconciliation labor and sync failures nobody counts. Here is how to see it.EngineeringIncremental Crawl vs Full Recrawl: How to DecideAn incremental crawl only fetches what changed since last time. A full recrawl refetches everything. Here is how to choose and cut most sites' cost by 90 percent.EngineeringSelf-Host Redis vs Managed: What a Side Project NeedsManaged Redis costs more than your whole VPS for a side project. Here is when self-hosting Redis wins and when a managed cache is worth paying for.EngineeringHow to Calculate the True Cost Per Page of ScrapingYour cost per page of scraping is not the proxy bill. It is proxies plus compute plus retries plus parsing plus storage. Here is how to compute the real number.EngineeringWhen to Render JavaScript for Scraping (and When Not To)Rendering JavaScript for scraping costs ten times more than an HTTP fetch. Here is how to tell when a site actually needs a browser and when it does not.EngineeringSelf-Hosted CI Runners vs Paying for Cloud MinutesSelf-hosted CI runners vs cloud minutes: when owning your build machines beats paying per-minute, and the real cost math across a portfolio of repos.