Notes between commits.
Essays on distributed systems, the economics of abstraction, on-call sanity and writing software that lasts.
Posts
The cost of a clever abstraction
Every abstraction is a loan against future understanding. Here's how I decide when the interest rate is worth paying.
Backpressure is a feature, not a failure
Why the systems I trust most are the ones that know how to say "not right now" — gracefully, and on purpose.
Writing logs your future self will thank you for
A small set of habits that turn 3 a.m. debugging from archaeology into a quick read.
On-call without the dread: a small playbook
Runbooks, blast radius, and the cultural choices that make being paged feel survivable.
The migration that ran for six months
A long, dull, boringly-successful database migration — and why "boring" was the whole point.
Tests I actually keep
Not all coverage is equal. The handful of test shapes that have earned a permanent place in my projects.
Reading code is the job
We optimize relentlessly for writing code and almost never for reading it. A case for flipping that.
Off the clock
What keeps me curious away from the keyboard.
Film photography
Slow, deliberate frames on a 35mm rangefinder.
/02Long-distance cycling
Weekend century rides and a soft spot for steel frames.
/03Mechanical keyboards
Tactile switches, custom layouts, far too many keycaps.
/04Specialty coffee
Dialing in pour-overs with a scale and a stubborn streak.
/05Trail running
Quiet early-morning miles on whatever singletrack I can find.