Modern Engineering Insights
Articles covering modern software development, AWS, cloud architecture, distributed systems, backend engineering and AI.
Latency vs Throughput (Why p99 Collapses Long Before Your System Runs Out of Capacity)
How queueing, utilization, concurrency, and fan-out shape p50, p95, p99, and sustainable request capacity.
Latest Articles
Availability vs Reliability vs Durability (Why a System Can Be Up and Still Lose Your Data)
How availability, reliability, and durability differ, how each is measured, which architectural mechanisms improve them, and why a system can be highly available yet unreliable or nondurable.
Functional vs Non-functional Requirements (Why "Fast and Reliable" Is Not an Architectural Requirement)
How to quantify availability and latency, expose hidden constraints, and make requirements testable.
System Design Tradeoffs Start With Constraints, Not Technology (Turning Product Requirements Into Architecture)
How system design tradeoffs follow from requirements, including the latency, consistency, availability, durability, and cost constraints that shape backend architecture.
Why GitOps Deployments Actually Change Team Velocity (It's Not the Automation)
GitOps doesn't speed up deploys it removes the coordination tax that slows teams down. Here's how declarative deployments actually change velocity.
The Hidden Operational Cost of Kubernetes Nobody Puts in the Budget
The EKS bill isn't where Kubernetes costs you. It's the ongoing engineering hours nobody budgeted for. Here's the real TCO breakdown.
What Platform Engineers Actually Build, A Breakdown of a Real Internal Developer Platform
An internal developer platform isn't a tool you buy it's five specific systems you build. Here's what platform engineers actually ship.
Platform Engineering on Kubernetes, Why Your Developers Shouldn't Know EKS Exists
If your developers still write YAML to deploy, your platform engineering effort has failed. Here's how to make Kubernetes disappear on AWS.
ECS vs EKS, When Choosing "Boring" Beats Choosing Kubernetes
ECS vs EKS isn't about which is "better", it's about which failure modes you're willing to own. A practitioner's decision framework.