Notes on system reliability
Performance optimization is a tempting distraction. Every line of code that exists to optimize one specific case is a line that must be maintained and understood forever.
Recent posts
- Lessons from legacy codebases · 13 days ago · 52,310 reads
- Patterns in distributed systems · 3 days ago
- Why defaults matter more · 19 days ago
Why constraints breed creativity
Distributed systems fail in ways that are hard to predict. After years of debugging production incidents, certain patterns keep recurring. This post explores a few.
From the archive
Naming is one of the hardest problems in software, yet we spend less time on it than we should. Let's talk about why it matters and how to get better at it.
About this site
These are my notes on building reliable, readable, maintainable systems. Interested in clarity over cleverness.
Thoughts on craft. Updated sporadically.
Elsewhere
Occasional notes on design topics. Past essays here.