MySQL Isolation Levels and the Problems They Solve
Dirty reads, non-repeatable reads, phantom reads — each one is a real bug waiting to happen. Here's what they are, when they occur, and which isolation level fixes each one.
// blog
Writing
Things I run into building production systems. Mostly backend, always practical.
- Database
- React
From Redux Saga to 5 Lines: A Honest Look at Modern React State Management
Staring at a saga with three levels of generator nesting just to handle login. Most of that complexity was self-inflicted. Here's what replaced it.
- Backend
Offset Pagination Will Kill Your Database
LIMIT and OFFSET look innocent. At scale they become one of the most expensive queries you can run. Here's why, and what to use instead.
- Node.js
Streaming MongoDB Data to GCS as CSV — Stop Loading It All Into Memory
A very common backend task that kills services with OOM errors. Here's the real way to export large MongoDB collections to Google Cloud Storage without blowing up your process.
- Architecture
The Irreversible Mistakes of Financial Systems Architecture
Some architectural decisions are expensive to fix. Others you simply can't undo. Data modeling, concurrency, event sourcing — the calls you need to get right before scale makes them permanent.
- Engineering
Overengineering Kills Projects
It usually starts with good intentions. A clean architecture, a scalable design, doing things the right way. And then the project never ships.
- React
You Don't Need Context for That
Why developers keep wrapping React Query in Context providers, and why the simpler approach — a custom hook — is faster, more testable, and easier to maintain.
- Security
PKCE, Wallet Auth, and the Challenge-Response Pattern
Two different auth flows, one shared idea. How PKCE protects OAuth public clients, how wallet-based sign-in works, and what they have in common.
- Backend
You Probably Don't Need WebSockets
WebSockets are the first thing people reach for when they need real-time updates. They're also usually overkill. SSE and polling exist, they're simpler, and they're often the better call.
- Testing
The Testing Pyramid Is Wrong (For Most Apps)
Thousands of unit tests, a handful of integration tests, and a prayer. Why the classic pyramid gives you false confidence, and what to test instead.
- TypeScript
TypeScript Is Not Java
A lot of TypeScript codebases are just Java with different syntax. Classes everywhere, DTOs for everything, layers of abstraction the language never asked for.