HOW I THINKABOUT SYSTEMS.
Principles and patterns that guide my architectural decisions.
Event-Driven Architecture
Building systems where services communicate through events, not direct calls. RabbitMQ consumers, dead-letter queues, and eventual consistency patterns.
Caching Philosophy
Multi-layer caching with intelligent invalidation. Not just Redis GET/SET — understanding cache stampedes, write-through vs write-behind, and TTL strategies.
PostgreSQL Internals
Beyond basic queries — understanding MVCC, query planner behavior, index strategies, and connection pooling for high-throughput writes.
Scaling Challenges
Horizontal vs vertical, stateless services, database connection limits, queue backpressure, and knowing when NOT to scale.
Feature Flags
Runtime feature control without deployments. Progressive rollouts, A/B testing infrastructure, and kill switches for safe experimentation.
Distributed Systems
CAP theorem tradeoffs, consensus patterns, idempotency, and the reality of network partitions in production systems.
Realtime Dashboards
Server-sent events, WebSocket connections, efficient DOM updates, and the architecture behind live-updating analytics views.
Why Architecture Matters
Architecture isn't about diagrams — it's about encoding decisions that compound. Good architecture makes the next 100 features cheaper to build.