Series · Systems

Systems at Scale

Field notes from production: where the latency went, why the cache lied, and what the postmortem left out.

2 of 4 parts published · 2 still to come

Systems5 Aug 2026

The latency was in the serialiser (it usually is)

A tail-latency investigation that went through the network stack, the scheduler, and the garbage collector before finding the answer in the least interesting layer in the system.

Editorial8 min read

Systems29 Jul 2026

Cache invalidation is a naming problem

The joke says there are two hard problems. There is really only one, and the second is the first wearing a different hat.

Editorial6 min read

In preparation

2 further parts are planned for this series. Subscribe for updates.