Working with Couchbase for the past year and a half has been more than just learning a database. It has been an exercise in system thinking: seeing how indexes, queries, consistency, and durability interact, and how small design choices ripple through performance and reliability. This essay is my personal notebook from that journey. It is technically dense because Couchbase demands precision, but it is also reflective because the lessons extend beyond one database. Understanding how array indexes multiply entries, why compound index order matters, or how query consistency flags change latency is not just about Couchbase, it is about learning to think in terms of systems, trade‑offs, and consequences.
What Couchbase Taught Me About System Thinking
I Built My Own Google Drive
My journey to build my own cloud storage from scratch with nextcloudflare and the lessons I learned along the way
Understanding Private-Public Key Encryption
Understanding Private-Public Key Encryption - The Backbone of Modern Security.
The 5-Minute Refactor
Learn how to refactor your code in 5 minutes.
Introducing Quark
A Minimal Note-Taking System for Thoughts, Ideas, Questions, and Actions
Why Your Password Habits Will Get You Hacked
Practical, unsentimental steps to lock down your passwords, devices, and online identity before someone else owns them.
Stealth VPN with Outline over HTTPS
Running Outline VPN over HTTPS (port 443) to slip past censorship. Learn how to blend in with HTTPS traffic and what it actually takes to stay invisible.
How to Resolve Huge Git Merge Conflicts Without Losing Your Mind
A no-fluff, step-by-step guide for software engineers dealing with massive Git merge conflicts during migrations or long-lived branches. Includes real anecdotes and ASCII diagrams.
What Facebook's Memcache Taught Me About Systems Thinking
A deep dive into Facebook's memcache architecture and the hard lessons it teaches about real-world system design, performance, and failure.
Bitmasking In Go
Bitmasking is one of those computer science tricks that feels like wizardry, until you realize it’s just some clever shifting and binary math. This blog explores the idea, shows how we use it in Go, and why it's surprisingly useful when working with databases like Couchbase.
How to Backup and Restore Docker Volumes
When working with Docker, persistent data is often stored in volumes. Unlike container filesystems, volumes survive restarts and recreations. But what if you need to move this data from one machine to another? Here's a quick and reliable way to back up a Docker volume on one computer and restore it on another.
Testing Types
Understanding different types of software testing is crucial for delivering a reliable application. Smoke Testing checks basic stability after a new build, while Sanity Testing verifies specific bug fixes or minor updates. Functional Testing ensures that features work as expected based on business requirements. Regression Testing prevents new changes from breaking existing functionality. End-to-End (E2E) Testing simulates real-world user workflows, and Performance Testing checks system speed, load handling capacity, and responsiveness. Implementing these (some or all) test types helps maintain software quality and prevent critical failures.
