On Phabricator
Phabricator changed what code review means to me. A note from a few months in.
Writing
2013
Zero-downtime deploys
A bash deploy script and a Node.js process monitor -- SSH, pull, touch a file, the cluster reloads. No CI, no dashboard. The terminal.
Sorting by multiple fields
A composable predicate function for sorting arrays of objects by multiple fields -- with reverse, primers, and short-circuit evaluation.
Running Node.js in production
Upstart, clustering, zero-downtime deploys, heartbeat monitoring, and an embedded REPL -- what it takes to keep Node.js running in production in 2013.
MySQL on XFS
Using bind mounts to move MySQL data, config, and logs to an XFS volume without changing a single MySQL setting.
Node.js style guide
Our team's Node.js conventions -- error-first callbacks, early returns, callback alignment, and the formatting rules we drilled into every new developer.
History as communication
Commit history isn't a log of what happened -- it's a narrative you author. Rebase, atomic commits, and the discipline of writing history for the person reading it six months from now.
Just Another Brick in the Wall
Some days you build the wall. Some days you notice you're in it.
Starting over
Ditching WordPress for a custom Node.js blog engine powered by libgit2 -- git as the content store, markdown as the writing format, npm for everything else.
2012
Running two systems at once
Replacing an e-commerce frontend without turning off the old one -- carving over layer by layer while the store takes orders.
The dispatch desk
A basement, a barcode scanner, and the moment the dispatch desk stopped waiting.
A fifty-line rate limiter
In-memory rate limiting as Express middleware. No Redis, no external service. Fifty lines, one file.
Connection pooling
The Node.js MySQL driver doesn't pool connections. Under load, you run out. Fifty lines with generic-pool fixes it.
URL mapping in Redis
Loading every product, category, and brand URL into a Redis hash at startup, and a middleware that rewrites requests before Express sees them.
Rolling your own search
Building catalog search with flattened MongoDB documents and application-side scoring when the proper tools don't exist yet.
2011
Flying Thru the Motions
Three months into the startup. From the outside, chaos. From the inside, flight.
Tangled Up in Blue
Dylan, and the artists who orbit him.
Naagin
Decibel made Indian rock that sounds Indian. That shouldn't be rare, but it is.
Chandigarh
Chandigarh was beautiful. I couldn't feel it. I don't know why.
Ping from Noida
An arrival note. The cold, the office, the exhale that took five days.