Hi, I'm Shub - a backend developer building the parts of the internet nobody sees.
Four years shipping production systems in Python, Django, FastAPI, and Node - with the Linux boxes, Postgres schemas, and small automations that quietly do a person's job.
Four things I believe about backends.
- 01
The system is the product.
The endpoint is a byproduct. What ships is the queue behind it, the retries, the migrations, the runbook. Design the boring parts first and the interesting parts arrange themselves.
- 02
Boring stack, sharp taste.
Postgres, Redis, a Linux box, a reverse proxy in front. Boring on purpose, so taste can live in the schema, the error messages, and the shape of the code six months from now.
- 03
Automate the second time.
If a person does it twice on the same day, it becomes a script by the third - bots, headless browsers, scrapers that still run after being handed off.
- 04
Handoff-ready, or unfinished.
A project ends when someone else can run it: readmes a person wrote, environment samples that work, deploys that fit on an index card. Otherwise you didn't finish, you stopped.
What's on the workbench.
- BuildingA Django + FastAPI split - heavy writes on one, admin on the other, sharing a Postgres.
- ReadingDesigning Data-Intensive Applications - actually finishing chapter eleven this time.
- LearningGo, slowly - for the fewer moving parts of it.
What I keep coming back to.
Books
- Designing Data-Intensive Applications
- The Pragmatic Programmer
- A Philosophy of Software Design
- Two Scoops of Django
Daily tools
- Neovim
- tmux + Alacritty
- Fish shell
- httpie & jq
- Docker Compose
- Caddy
Longer notes, when they're ready.
- Nº 01Nothing published yet.
Have a system that needs building, or one that needs fixing?
The fastest way is to put a slot on my calendar. Otherwise, email works too.