Topics
Practical engineering notes from Benjamin Cane, organized by subject.
Practical patterns for building systems that keep working when things go wrong — retries, timeouts, circuit breakers, graceful degradation, compensating transactions, and the operational habits that separate stable platforms from fragile ones.
How systems are designed, documented, and evolved — from component-level decisions and Architecture Decision Records to modernization strategies, glue services, and the architecture context that helps both engineers and coding agents make better choices.
Making systems faster and more efficient under real-world load — latency reduction, load balancing strategies, caching trade-offs, throughput optimization, and the measurement practices that turn guesswork into confident decisions.
Getting more out of AI coding agents — giving them the architectural context, skills, and documentation they need to produce output that fits your system rather than output that looks right but breaks your constraints.
The craft and practice of software engineering beyond the code — team workflow, technical decision-making, developer experience, testing strategy, and the habits that distinguish good engineers from great ones.