Blog

Technical writing on software engineering, architecture, and lessons learned from building production systems.

March 2026·8 min

Auth Guards: Handling Authenticated, Public, and Unauthenticated

Redirect loops, users stuck on the wrong page, login forms for people already logged in. Getting guards right is mostly about one thing.

AuthReactRoutingSecurity

March 2026·9 min

Backend-Driven Configuration vs. Hardcoded Frontends

When the backend and the frontend each have their own copy of "the" config, they drift. One way to stop that.

ArchitectureFrontendAPI DesignMaintainability

March 2026·10 min

Building AI Features for Production

Shipping an AI feature that works in a demo is one thing. Keeping it consistent, bounded, and safe in production is another.

AIOpenAIProductionBackend

March 2026·8 min

Caching: When Read-Path and Write-Path Diverge

The cache was wrong after every update. The write path had no idea the read path was caching.

CachingArchitectureConsistencyBackend

March 2026·9 min

When to Move Business Rules into the Database

Some rules change often or vary by tenant or region. Keeping them in code means more deploys and harder configuration. Here is when and how to drive them from the database.

ArchitectureBackendConfigurationDatabases

March 2026·8 min

Stripe Webhooks and Idempotency

Stripe can send the same event more than once. If your handler is not idempotent, you risk double-provisioning, wrong usage, or duplicate emails. Here is how to handle it.

StripeWebhooksBillingBackend

March 2026·8 min

useEffect and Data Fetching: Avoiding the Effect Cascade

One user action, one fetch. Except when it wasn’t, and why that kept happening.

ReactuseEffectData FetchingPerformance

Looking for deeper technical narratives? Check out my engineering stories for detailed case studies from real production systems.