Writing

Notes on architecture, backend systems, databases and AI features, written when a problem taught me something worth writing down.

The Humble Form Still Does the Heavy LiftingOct 16, 2026Full-Stack & SSR · 3 min readMost business software is still people putting information into boxes and expecting it to be saved correctly. A server-rendered form with honest validation does that job with almost no moving parts.

Building AI Features That Survive Production: Start With Evals, Not PromptsOct 12, 2026AI Engineering · 3 min readThe teams I see struggling with AI features usually have the same problem: they can show you a great demo, but they cannot tell you whether last Tuesday's prompt change made anything better or worse.

Practical Software Architecture: Turning Messy Business Needs into Scalable SystemsSep 28, 2026Software Architecture · 2 min readAfter 10+ years building enterprise systems, I’ve learned that great architecture starts by questioning assumptions before writing a single line of code.

RAG Is a Data Engineering Problem Wearing a Trench CoatSep 8, 2026AI Engineering · 3 min readMost broken RAG systems I have debugged were not model failures. They were document pipelines that fed the model stale, duplicated, or badly sliced text and then blamed the answers.

Designing Maintainable Backend APIs That Survive Decade-Long LifecyclesAug 14, 2026Backend & Databases · 3 min readFrameworks change every few years, but relational data models and API contracts stay in production for a decade. Here is how to keep them clean.

PostgreSQL Patterns I Reach For in ProductionJul 22, 2026Backend & Databases · 3 min readConstraints before cleverness, indexes with receipts, and migrations you can roll back. The PostgreSQL habits that have saved me more often than any framework feature.

Critical Thinking and Code Review as High-Leverage Engineering HabitsJun 19, 2026Engineering Craft · 3 min readGood code review isn't about nitpicking indentation—our linters handle that. It's about asking how a change behaves when the network stalls or requirements shift.

AI Coding Assistants Made Review the BottleneckMay 27, 2026AI Engineering · 3 min readAssistants made first drafts nearly free, and pull requests quietly doubled in size. The constraint in software delivery was never typing speed, and now everyone can see it.

The Pragmatic Return of Server-Rendered Web ArchitectureApr 5, 2026Full-Stack & SSR · 2 min readFull-stack engineering is at its best when the server and browser each do what they were built for. Streaming clean HTML from the server keeps products fast and maintainable.

Designing APIs for Retries: Idempotency, Timeouts, and Honest ErrorsMar 11, 2026Backend & Databases · 3 min readClients will retry your API whether you designed for it or not. The only choice is whether a retry creates a duplicate order or a calm, identical response.

The Monolith Is Not the EnemyFeb 9, 2026Software Architecture · 3 min readSplitting a tangled monolith into services gives you a tangled distributed system with network latency. Boundaries first, deployment units later, if ever.

Observability for LLM Features Without Drowning in LogsNov 18, 2025AI Engineering · 3 min readThe useful question is never what the model said word for word. It is which version answered, how long it took, what it cost, and whether the user got what they came for.

Keeping Production Boring: Migrations, Rollbacks, and Small ReleasesOct 6, 2025Engineering Craft · 4 min readThe best production systems I have worked on shared a trait that sounds like an insult: nothing interesting ever happened during a release.