Authentication vs Authorization (Trust Comes Before Permission)
A first-principles explanation of authentication vs authorization, using simple analogies and diagrams to clarify trust and permission.
Vivek Molkar
Event-Driven Architecture (When Time Matters)
A first-principles explanation of event-driven architecture, focusing on time, decoupling, and designing systems that react instead of block.
Synchronous vs Asynchronous Systems (Why Waiting Is a Design Choice)
A calm, first-principles explanation of synchronous vs asynchronous systems, focusing on waiting, time, and system design trade-offs.
API Design (Contracts Over Code)
A first-principles look at API design, why APIs are contracts not functions, and how broken expectations cause real outages.
Monolith vs Microservices (Why This Question Usually Shows Up at the Wrong Time)
A grounded, first-principles look at monoliths vs microservices, why the question appears too early, and how real-world pressure should drive architecture.
Graceful Degradation (Designing Useful Failure Instead of Total Collapse)
A first-principles explanation of graceful degradation and why designing systems to do less under failure is better than total collapse.
Circuit Breakers (Stopping Cascading Failure Before It Spreads)
A first-principles explanation of circuit breakers, how cascading failures happen, and why stopping calls is sometimes safer than retrying.
Timeouts, Retries, and Backpressure (Why Slow Failures Are More Dangerous Than Crashes)
A first-principles explanation of timeouts, retries, and backpressure, and why slow failures cause more outages than hard crashes in distributed systems.
Sharding (How Systems Split Data — and Why It’s Harder Than It Looks)
A first-principles explanation of sharding, why systems split data to scale writes, and the trade-offs that make sharding powerful but dangerous.
Replication (Why Copying Data Improves Resilience — and Introduces Disagreement)
A first-principles explanation of replication, why systems copy data for resilience, and how multiple copies inevitably introduce disagreement.