>_ the/dev
thedev — technical blog

Not your traditional developer. the developer.

Field notes on AWS, software engineering, and the unglamorous tooling that makes shipping fun. Long enough to be useful, short enough to finish with one coffee.

10 // articles
5 // topics
2019 // writing since
~/thedev — zsh click to run ❯
whoami the developer. writes things down so you don't have to. ls ~/posts | tail -3 killing-cold-starts.md choose-boring-architecture.md type-safe-env.md cat status ● shipping

Latest writing

9 posts
AWS

One year as an AWS Community Builder — the honest recap

What the program actually is, what you get, and whether it's worth the application.

May 14, 2026 6 min #aws #community
Software Engineering {}

Choose boring architecture (and other expensive lessons)

We replaced a Kafka pipeline with a Postgres table and a cron job. Nobody noticed. That's the point.

Apr 30, 2026 9 min #architecture #postgres
Software Engineering TS

Type-safe environment variables in TypeScript, end to end

Stop reading process.env like it's 2015. A small schema turns config into a compile-time contract.

Apr 18, 2026 7 min #typescript #config
DevTools >_

Designing a CLI people actually keep using

Good flags, sane defaults, helpful errors. The unglamorous craft of command-line tools.

Apr 2, 2026 6 min #devtools #cli
DevTools

My Neovim setup, rebuilt from zero in 2026

LSP, treesitter, and a config I can actually explain. No 4,000-line init files.

Mar 20, 2026 10 min #devtools #neovim
Projects 🜂

Shipping a side project in a weekend without burning out

Scope ruthlessly, fake the hard parts, deploy on Friday. A playbook from five finished projects.

Mar 5, 2026 5 min #projects #shipping
Projects

Rolling my own feature flags before reaching for a SaaS

200 lines, one database table, zero monthly bill. When DIY beats the vendor.

Feb 19, 2026 7 min #projects #feature-flags
Notes

What I learned reading 50 public postmortems

Patterns in how systems fail — and the boring fixes that keep showing up.

Feb 4, 2026 8 min #notes #reliability
Notes ¬

Notes: the rubber duck is a real debugging tool

A short field note on why explaining the bug out loud fixes it before you finish the sentence.

Jan 22, 2026 3 min #notes #debugging