Sharding vs partitioning
Two words used interchangeably in meetings, and the operational difference that makes them not the same thing at all.
Where the depth lives
Notes from building backend systems: what I designed, what broke, and the reasoning I wish I had written down the first time.
Topics
Four threads I keep pulling on
Not tutorials. Working notes: what I tried, what it cost, and what I would tell myself before starting.
AI
Agents, LLMs, RAG and AI architecture — what I build, test and break.
System Design
Distributed systems, databases, messaging, caching and scaling.
Code & Snippets
Working references from Java, Spring, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Redis and Kubernetes.
Architecture Lab
Full write-ups from problem to trade-offs, with the diagrams to match.
Latest
Recent engineering notes
Newest first. Some are finished thoughts, others are still moving.
Designing a notification system
Fan-out, user preferences and the retry budget — sketched end to end before building any of it.
Next
Have a system worth arguing about?
I am always up for a conversation about architecture, trade-offs, or a bug that refuses to die.
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