Technical Notes
Short things I've thought, written down so I don't forget them. Some are about systems. Some aren't. Updated when something feels worth keeping.
Scratchpad
A feed of technical notes, database observations, and project lessons updated in real time.
The best systems code looks like it was easy to write. It almost never was.
Whitespace is the part of a layout that does the most work and gets the least credit. Treat it like a first-class element, not what's left over.
Every premature abstraction is a love letter to a future you don't actually know. Wait until you've met them.
A good walk solves more bugs than a second monitor. I keep relearning this.
Database connection size is a budget, not a score. If you don't pool connections, your horizontally scaling serverless functions will exhaust database limits instantly.
Documentation that nobody reads is not a documentation problem. It's usually a naming problem upstream.
Polish is what's left after you stop adding things. Most products are 80% finished and 20% over-decorated.
The database schema you regret is rarely the one with too few tables. It's the one with too many polymorphic relationships.
I trust the engineer who can describe what their feature doesn't do almost more than the one who can describe what it does.
If a microservice architecture needs a distributed coordinator to perform simple database tasks, the coordinator is not the fix. It's an indicator of tight coupling.
Estimates are a story about confidence, not time. The team that admits when its confidence is low ships better software.
A good error message is a tiny act of respect. It tells the user you thought they might be standing here, alone, at 11pm.