Archive
Writing
5 articles on how systems work underneath, the books behind them, and the occasional detour into philosophy.
- Engineering
Causality in collaborative editors, part 2
Yjs Internals: Origins, YATA and State Vectors
How Yjs orders concurrent edits without trusting a single clock: item origins, the YATA tie-break, state vectors, the sync handshake and the rules you have to respect in production.
11 min read
- Engineering
Causality in collaborative editors, part 1
No Effect Before Its Cause: From Einstein to Yjs
How a 2,500-year-old idea, Einstein's moving train, Leslie Lamport's clocks and leaderless replication all converge on one rule: no effect before its cause.
15 min read
- Engineering
Frankenstein's Data Architecture: Why Your App is Built on Duct Tape
A highly caffeinated summary of Chapter 1 from Designing Data-Intensive Applications (2nd Edition, 2026) — why modern applications are just six different data systems standing in a trench coat
20 min read
- Essays
Does Life Have a Purpose?
A short and simple look at why biology talks about purpose — and whether life itself really has one.
2 min read
- Books
Timshel: The One Word That Explains Your Entire Life
An exploration of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and the profound meaning of ‘Timshel’—the idea that human greatness lies in the power to choose.
6 min read