I'm @brandur, a software engineer, and dabbler in writing and photography.
This site is where I publish words and photos. The section that's most updated most often is atoms, small multimedia particles reminiscent of a Twitter feed. I update my now page monthly according to what I'm working on and thinking about. I publish a newsletter as often as I can.
Once in a while, I write longer form articles on technical subjects like APIs, Go, or Postgres:
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Eradicating N+1s: The Two-phase Data Load and Render Pattern in Go
May 28, 2024
Using a two-phase data load and render pattern to prevent N+1 queries in a generalized way. Especially useful in Go, but applicable in any language.
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The Notifier Pattern for Applications That Use Postgres
May 5, 2024
Maximizing Postgres connection economy by using a single connection per program to receive and distribute all listen/notify notifications.
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Web APIs: Enriched DX By Disallowing Unknown Fields
May 4, 2024
Using Go’s
DisallowUnknownFieldsoption to improve an API’s integration experience by making paramter naming mistakes faster to resolve.
I put short stream of consciousness thoughts into tiny posts called fragments:
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Go's bytes.Buffer vs. strings.Builder
January 2, 2025
Taking five minutes to write a benchmark so I know which of these I should be reaching for first.
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Postgres UUIDv7 + per-backend monotonicity
December 31, 2024
How Postgres’ v7 UUIDs are made monotonic, and why that’s a great feature.
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Stripe V2
December 28, 2024
Stripe’s API got a new major version, and no one noticed.
I write a newsletter about the philosophy of software called Nanoglyph:
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041 — 15, 16
November 17, 2023
Upgrading to Postgres 16,
NULLS NOT DISTINCT, the iPhone 15 + its new battery option, and San Francisco under the shadow of APEC. -
040 — Rails World, 7.1, Amsterdam
October 14, 2023
Attending Rails World in Amsterdam (finally a conference to get excited about). Solid Cache and Solid Queue. CTEs in Rails 7.1.
- 039 — Trails, Charleston, `t.Parallel()` October 7, 2023
