category
Engineering
Protocols, databases, compilers and tools: how systems actually work, at the level where the details matter.
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I deleted ten thousand lines of my own tool rx became a good tool by subtraction: forty commands removed, the cleverest feature deleted for being quietly wrong, and an artifact cache that ships switched off because its fingerprint is incomplete. -
Reassembling Postgres from the wire Decoding a protocol as a passive observer rather than an endpoint: userspace TCP reassembly with holes you can never fill, a decoder that has to be a state machine, and a typed filter language that evaluates without allocating. -
Why Go for the service, Rust for the tool Third in the Why this over that series: I write both daily. The split that emerged isn't about language quality, it's about what each artifact is for. - Why SSE over WebSockets Second in the Why this over that series: most realtime features are one-way, and server-sent events give you reconnection, proxy-friendliness, and plain HTTP for free.
- Why SQLite over Postgres (sometimes) First in the Why this over that series: for single-user and single-box systems, the world's most deployed database in one copyable file is not the compromise. It's the correct choice.
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A flight recorder for Postgres Why database incidents stay unexplained, what aviation figured out about that decades ago, and the design thinking behind Tracegres: incidents should be reconstructable, not anecdotal. -
Prepared statements vs connection pools Part three of speaking fluent PostgreSQL: why the query that works locally dies behind pgbouncer, explained from the wire up, and every fix ranked. -
Faking pg_catalog Part two of speaking fluent PostgreSQL: the system catalog is the real compatibility surface. What psql and every GUI tool actually ask, the five tables that carry the load, and how to build a catalog shim from captured traffic instead of guesswork. -
Speaking fluent PostgreSQL What implementing the Postgres wire protocol from three directions taught me: the startup dance, the two protocols hiding inside it, why transactions are the hard part, and the compatibility lies every Postgres-compatible database must tell. -
The engineering behind Aevu How a calm, comment-free social app gets built: interest-first ranking, a media pipeline that is really a state machine, and moderation that fails closed. -
In defence of boring technology The most productive stack is the one you stop thinking about.