PinnedMember-onlyThe Journey of a Request to the BackendFrom the frontend through the kernel to the backend process — When we send a request to a backend most of us focus on the processing aspect of the request which is really just the last step. There is so much more happening before a request is ready to be processed. I break this into 6 steps, each step can theoretically…Backend Development5 min readBackend Development5 min read
PinnedMember-onlyPostgres vs MySQLThe main differences with examples — One of my udemy students asked a question about the difference between Postgres and MySQL. The answer turned out too long I thought I’ll make it into a post. In a nutshell, the main difference between the two databases really boils down to the implementation of primary and secondary indexes…Database9 min readDatabase9 min read
Nov 27Google is deprecating 3rd party cookiesGoogle is deprecating 3rd party cookies. What does that mean? I’ll try to break it down: Those are cookies that are sent for sites other than the one you are currently in. Say you went to facebook dot com and logged in. Your browser stores a cookie for the facebook…Web Development3 min readWeb Development3 min read
Nov 19Member-onlyIf you are nervous about a presentationWhen one has a presentation they get nervous and worried. It is not exactly a pleasant feeling, So they think about ways. to get rid of this feeling and give themselves temporary solutions to get rid of the worry. here are few: “it’s just a presentation” “picture everyone naked” “get…Productivity2 min readProductivity2 min read
Nov 18What happens when databases crash?Databases have tables and indexes stored in files. As you create rows, the database system writes to data pages in memory which is then written to data files on disk. There is a problem though, what happens if you lose power half-way through writing to the file? As the database…Database Administration3 min readDatabase Administration3 min read
Nov 14Let’s design this backendThis screenshot has become viral meme recently in Twitter, showing a very rudimentary frontend supposedly written by a backend engineer. But how would the backend actually look like for this weather app? I’ll take a shot at the backend design. Assuming there is a 3rd party API that retrieves the…Software Engineering4 min readSoftware Engineering4 min read
Nov 12Code Fast or Produce Fast CodeThe Trade-off in Modern Software Development — You can either code fast or produce fast code. You cannot do both. All frameworks, libraries, ORMs, no code movement aim to allow you to code fast, not necessarily produce fast code. Understandably so, we live in an age where we are expected to ship fast, we have stakeholders to…Software Development2 min readSoftware Development2 min read
Nov 12The Problem with GraphQLGraphQL was invented by Facebook (meta) mainly because their frontend evolved very quickly and needed various data views. Creating a new REST end point for each request was too much work. It started harmless, I really just want fields A and B, no need for REST to return all those…GraphQL2 min readGraphQL2 min read
Oct 2How VPNs really workUnder the hood — I got asked an interesting question on X and I thought I’ll explore it here VPN is often explained as this magical encrypted tunnel that “protects” your identity. But these descriptions are very abstract and often sometimes misleading. I’m not an expert in networking but I know enough to…VPN4 min readVPN4 min read
Sep 13The Postgres replication dilemmaTruth about hot_standby_feedback — You see when you have postgres replication you have a dilemma. In one hand someone is querying standby with long running query, pinning a snapshot at t7. On the other hand the primary has deleted some rows and vacuum is about to purge deleted tuples on t7 as no query…Postgres2 min readPostgres2 min read
