One real problem per post: what broke, why, and the fix. Backend, databases, security and system design.
· 12 min read
One container restarted 116 times and took 30 others down with it. Here's what Kubernetes actually does, explained from scratch, plus 5 things most cheat sheets still get wrong.
· 10 min read
Two new categories, SSRF folded into access control, and misconfiguration jumping to number 2. Here's the 2025 list explained, mapped to what actually turns up when you audit a production system.
· 4 min read
I created configuration drift in a live Kubernetes cluster on purpose and watched ArgoCD undo it within seconds. Here's why deployment should be a loop, not a command.
· 7 min read
Broken access control showed up more than 318,000 times in the data behind the OWASP Top 10. A walk through all ten risks in the 2021 edition, with a code example for preventing each one.
· 5 min read
Any developer can make an endpoint return data. Designing one that other developers can guess, debug and depend on for years is a different skill. Here's what separates the two.
· 5 min read
Duplicate rows, update anomalies, data that disagrees with itself: most of it traces back to how tables are organised. A practical guide to normalization, from 1NF to 3NF.
· 4 min read
Most scaling problems are decided in the first weeks, long before the traffic arrives. Three rules for the foundation, and the order to scale in when growth comes.
· 4 min read
Most web servers slow down when connections pile up. NGINX was built so they don't. How its event-driven design works, and how to use it as a reverse proxy, cache, TLS terminator and load balancer.