Linux Swap and OOM Killer Behavior on Memory Constrained Servers
On a memory constrained Linux server, swap gives the kernel breathing room by moving rarely used pages to disk, while the OOM killer is the last resort that...
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Bash Strict Mode Pitfalls With Set E and Pipefail in Production Scripts
Bash strict mode, usually written as set -euo pipefail, makes scripts stop on errors, unset variables, and failed pipeline stages. It catches many mistakes,...
Docker Secrets Mounts vs Environment Variables in CI Deployments
Secrets in environment variables can leak through diagnostics and process inspection. Production workloads require a defined contract for latency, correctness,...
Nginx Proxy Timeouts and Retry Behavior for Upstream APIs
Nginx has separate timeouts for connecting to an upstream, sending a request, and reading a response, and each one applies to a different stage. Its retry...
Nginx Gzip vs Brotli Compression for JSON APIs
For JSON APIs, gzip is the safe, universally supported default, while Brotli often compresses slightly better at comparable levels but needs an extra Nginx...
Nginx Rate Limiting Zones vs Application Level Throttling
Nginx rate limiting is best for cheap, coarse protection at the edge, such as limiting requests per IP address before they reach your application. Application...
Git Squash Merge vs Merge Commit for Clean Release History
Squash merges produce one commit per pull request, giving a clean, linear history that is easy to read and revert. Merge commits preserve every individual...
Git Monorepo vs Polyrepo Trade Offs for Small Engineering Teams
For most small engineering teams, a monorepo is the simpler default, because it makes code sharing, atomic changes, and consistent tooling easy. A polyrepo...
Python Dataclasses vs Pydantic Models for Internal Domain Objects
Use Pydantic models at the edges of your system, where untrusted data enters and needs validation, and use plain dataclasses for internal domain objects whose...