Articles

Posts to read for fun, like taking everything apart over a coffee to see what's inside, down to the deepest bolt. Come away understanding more, judging more clearly and deciding with a steadier hand.

Oct 17, 2026 · 26 min read · Part 5 · Software design from the inside out

Designing a multi-service ticketing system whose code AI writes: what people decide, what AI needs to read

A concert ticketing system: seat selection, holds, payment, tickets, notifications, gate check-in, an on-sale waiting room. What people decide, how to split services, measuring double-sold seats and repeated payment webhooks, and writing docs AI can extend features from.
Oct 17, 2026 · 10 min read · Part 4 · Software design from the inside out

The building blocks of system design: estimates, caches, databases, queues

System design starts with numbers, not diagrams. A table of measured latencies, quick estimates, Little's law, why a server at 90% load is 5 times slower than at 50%, caching under a Zipf distribution, an index 4,700 times faster, replication, sharding, and handling failure.

Designing a multi-service ticketing system whose code AI writes: what people decide, what AI needs to read

The building blocks of system design: estimates, caches, databases, queues