// Blog

Writings & Notes

Articles on engineering, systems design, startups, and lessons from the trenches.

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Backend Engineering·

Why I Standardised on Pydantic for All Data Validation

Pydantic is not just for FastAPI. It is the most ergonomic data validation library in Python — and I now use it everywhere.

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Cloud Engineering·

Understanding DynamoDB: When to Use It and When to Run

DynamoDB is exceptional for specific access patterns. It is painful for everything else. A practical guide from SellTrove's production usage.

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Backend Engineering·

FastAPI Is the Best Python Web Framework for APIs.

Flask is elegant. Django is batteries-included. FastAPI is the right answer for modern Python API development.

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AI & Machine Learning·

The 28% Conversion Uplift Nobody Asked About

SellTrove's ML pricing engine delivered a 28% conversion uplift in 60 days. Nobody attributed it to the AI.

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Engineering Philosophy·

Writing Code That Future-You Will Thank Present-You For

Future-you will maintain the code present-you writes. Future-you has forgotten what present-you was thinking.

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AI & Machine Learning·

Prompt Engineering Is Software Engineering

Building production LLM applications requires the same discipline as any other software engineering.

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Engineering Philosophy·

The Economics of Technical Debt

Technical debt is not inherently bad. Unacknowledged, unmanaged technical debt is.

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Backend Engineering·

Caching Strategy Is Architecture, Not Optimisation

Caching is not something you add when performance becomes a problem. It is an architectural decision.

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Cloud Engineering·

AWS Lambda Is Not Free. Measure Before You Scale.

Serverless is not magic. A Lambda running 10 million times per month is not cheap.