Apr 07, 2026
What Is a Mainframe?
Mainframes handle 70% of the world's production IT workloads. Most engineers have never seen one. Here is what they are, how they work, and why they are still running.
Journal
Notes on backend architecture, data engineering, and product-aware system design.
Apr 07, 2026
Mainframes handle 70% of the world's production IT workloads. Most engineers have never seen one. Here is what they are, how they work, and why they are still running.
Apr 05, 2026
A single database node handling millions of reads eventually saturates. Replication copies data across multiple nodes, distributes read load, and introduces consistency trade-offs that every engineer must understand.
Apr 04, 2026
An open API receives requests from anyone. Authentication, authorization, rate limiting, and attack pattern defenses are four distinct layers. Failing any one of them compromises the others.
Apr 03, 2026
Caching compressed the database load. But components still need a contract for communication. Three styles dominate modern API design, and each makes different trade-offs on flexibility, performance, and tooling.
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