ENGINEERING NOTES
Engineering
Stories about the technology and people building understandable software.
Engineering articleCoding Tests Start with Input SizeInput size should eliminate impossible solutions before any algorithmic pattern is considered.
Engineering articleServer Monitoring Analysis GuideIncident diagnosis becomes faster through hypotheses grounded in user impact and correlated signals, not by adding more dashboard charts.
Engineering articleThe Browser's Main Thread Is ExpensivePerceived web performance improves more by deciding which work runs on the main thread and when than by making code locally faster.
Building from First PrinciplesBuilding a 3D Illusion GameA 3D illusion game does not cheat physics; it chooses screen space as truth and turns projection loss into rules.
Building from First PrinciplesBuilding a Coding AgentA coding agent's capability depends more on how its harness connects tools, context, and evaluation than on the model label alone.
Building from First PrinciplesBuilding an Email Relay SystemThe hard part of an email relay is not SMTP transport but preserving identity, thread, and authorization boundaries.
Engineering articleFrontend Caching StrategiesFrontend caching succeeds when freshness and invalidation ownership are explainable, not when more cache layers are added.
Building from First PrinciplesHamssun: Building a Python LispA small Lisp interpreter shows with minimal code that evaluation rules, not parsing, are the essence of a language.
Designing React UIBuilding Headless React ComponentsA headless component earns its abstraction cost only when one behavior contract must survive across multiple presentations.Loading more articles