Payment integrations
Built and shipped several production payment integrations this year — checkout flows, webhook handling, and signature verification.
read moreWRITING
Notes from production.
Specific bugs, the code that caused them, and the fix — pulled straight from real work, not tutorials.
TypeScript in practice, not just in theory
A year of writing TypeScript across several real codebases taught me that a green compiler is not the same thing as correct code.
read moreThe two lines that separate a webhook demo from a webhook that survives production
Payment webhooks fire more than once for the same event. Design for it, or your customer gets charged and your order gets duplicated.
read moreFirestore and NoSQL data modeling
Spent time this year working with Firestore in production — transactions, security rules, and staying consistent under concurrent writes.
read moreReusing one component across three business lines — and where that stops being free
A payment component built for a nonprofit client's donation campaign ended up handling checkout for two unrelated business lines, through a single new prop.
read moreNext.js and the App Router
Shipped several production apps on Next.js's App Router this year — server components, route handlers, and a new mental model.
read moreas object didn't fix my type error — it just hid it
The function's declared signature and its actual runtime behavior had quietly diverged, and nothing caught it until a test exercised the string branch.
read moreCI/CD pipeline hardening
A good chunk of this year went into hardening GitLab CI pipelines that touch real infrastructure.
read moreTwo mobile bugs, one root cause: designed for a viewport that's always tall enough
A checkout modal shipped looking complete on desktop. Two separate bugs only showed up on an actual phone.
read moreKubernetes disaster recovery
Got deep into Kubernetes backup and recovery this year — Velero, MinIO, and restore automation triggered through CI.
read moredeclare global means global — even across files that don't import each other
A route rename looked complete the moment every file moved. Two commits later, CI failed on a file that had nothing to do with the rename.
read moreAnsible for real infrastructure, not just demos
Spent time this year writing Ansible for tasks with real consequences — remote account management and service restarts on live boxes.
read morerm deletes a file. It does not delete it from git.
The live site showed the framework's default starter page. Nothing to do with the framework, the host, or environment variables.
read moreHashiCorp Vault as a secrets backbone
Spent real time with HashiCorp Vault this year — dynamic secrets, KV engines, and CI pipelines pulling credentials at runtime.
read moreWhy my auth guard worked for months, then warned on logout
A router redirect sitting inside a normal-looking auth check violated React's render rules — and only surfaced on the one flow that hit it live.
read moreEnterprise infrastructure automation
Spent time this year building automation that rotates privileged credentials across enterprise infrastructure platforms, including NSX-T.
read moreFirestore transactions don't tell you the rule you just broke
A stock-decrement function passed code review and every single-item test. It only broke once a real customer put two items in their cart.
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