Field notes

Principles I build by.

Not a blog. Just the short, hard-earned lessons that actually changed how I write software — added one at a time, as I earn them.

Principle 01

Fault Tolerance

No system is 100% reliable — not even AWS. I can't predict every way something will break, so I build assuming failure is coming: graceful degradation, retries, and a clear recovery path, not a system that just stops when one piece goes down.

Designing Data-Intensive Applications, Chapter 1