/Engineering
The N+1 you can't see, and a cache that must never lie
A twelve-second report caused by a database call hiding inside an innocent-looking helper, the test that stops it coming back, and a few rules for caches that fail safe.
// writing
From the workshop
Page 8 of 8
/EngineeringMoney, time, and a database that lied to me
Three data bugs that are small, plausible, and expensive to notice: money stored as floats, month boundaries computed in the wrong timezone, and a test database quietly disagreeing with the real one.
/EngineeringMaking peace with at-least-once: field notes from a message queue
A durable queue will hand you the same message twice, and one bad message can wedge the whole worker. Four things I changed once I stopped fighting that and designed for it.
/EngineeringGit worktrees, or how I stopped my parallel work colliding
When you run several streams of work against one repo at once, sharing a working tree turns into a branch-checkout collision storm. Worktrees, and partitioning by the files you touch, fix it.
/ProjectsA factory of one: building a software studio solo with AI agents
I have more projects on the go than one person has any business running. Here is the system that makes that ambitious instead of insane, and the honest catch in it.
/AIWhat I actually use AI for as an engineer (and what I don't)
Past the hype and the doom, the honest daily reality of building with AI: where it genuinely earns its place in my workflow, and where I keep it well away.
/AIThe defender's pivot: why security is an unfair advantage in AI engineering
People treat moving from cybersecurity into AI engineering like a leap. It felt more like turning the same habits around to face the other way.
/LearningLearning in public before you feel ready
Waiting until you're an expert to write anything is a great way to write nothing. A case for posting the honest, half-finished version, from someone still doing it.