Backend
104 articles · all categories
I've been building web backends since ~2004 when they were just called websites. With these essays I want to share the hard lessons learned about serverless, databases, APIs, and the ops that keep them alive.
Backend articles
6 articles from 2024 · show all
November 2024
Why you need observability more than tests
Here's a short and sweet story about a Friday deploy. I love Friday deploys.
October 2024
Make mistakes easy to fix
You can't prevent bugs. You'll burn out. Instead focus on making them quick to fix.
August 2024
Why SQL is Forever followup
Yes SQL is super flexible. That is its strenght and its weakness
July 2024
Why SQL is Forever
Never underestimate the power of good marketing for bad products. NoSQL was fun but SQL is here to stay.
90% of performance is data access patterns
Removing a single line of code slashed database CPU usage by 66% 🤘
January 2024
How I Added a Related Articles Feature on Swizec.com Using GPT-4 Embeddings
Making 15 years of blog archives easier to navigate with AI and cosine similarity to build a related articles featur