Elena on Softwarehttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/Essays and field notes on backend systems.en Rate Limiting With Nothing but Redishttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/rate-limiting-with-nothing-but-redis.htmlhttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/rate-limiting-with-nothing-but-redis.htmlThu, 01 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000This post started as a note to my future self. Every few months I relearn the same lessons about rate limiting, so this time I'm writing them down. Designing APIs You Won't Have to Versionhttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/designing-apis-you-won-t-have-to-version.htmlhttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/designing-apis-you-won-t-have-to-version.htmlMon, 13 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000A colleague asked me last week why our team cares so much about background jobs. I gave a rambling answer, so here is the longer, more organized version. Zero-Downtime Schema Migrations in Practicehttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/zero-downtime-schema-migrations-in-practice.htmlhttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/zero-downtime-schema-migrations-in-practice.htmlThu, 18 Jun 2026 09:00:00 +0000For a long time I treated schema migrations as something to worry about later. Then a small change to our Django setup turned into a week of debugging, and "later" arrived all at once. Structured Logging Is the Cheapest Observability You'll Buyhttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/structured-logging-is-the-cheapest-observability-you-ll-buy.htmlhttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/structured-logging-is-the-cheapest-observability-you-ll-buy.htmlSat, 06 Jun 2026 09:00:00 +0000Every codebase has one area everyone is a little afraid to touch. On our team, it was everything related to observability. Postgres Is Probably Enough for Your Job Queuehttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/postgres-is-probably-enough-for-your-job-queue.htmlhttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/postgres-is-probably-enough-for-your-job-queue.htmlTue, 19 May 2026 09:00:00 +0000Every codebase has one area everyone is a little afraid to touch. On our team, it was everything related to observability. Idempotency Keys: The Boring Feature That Saved Ushttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/idempotency-keys-the-boring-feature-that-saved-us.htmlhttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/idempotency-keys-the-boring-feature-that-saved-us.htmlMon, 20 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000This post started as a note to my future self. Every few months I relearn the same lessons about idempotency, so this time I'm writing them down. What I Learned Writing My First gRPC Servicehttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/what-i-learned-writing-my-first-grpc-service.htmlhttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/what-i-learned-writing-my-first-grpc-service.htmlTue, 31 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000There is no shortage of articles about gRPC. Most of them cover the happy path. This one is about what happened after the happy path ended. The Case for Boring Background Jobshttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/the-case-for-boring-background-jobs.htmlhttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/the-case-for-boring-background-jobs.htmlWed, 11 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000Every codebase has one area everyone is a little afraid to touch. On our team, it was everything related to background jobs. Timeouts Everywhere: A Field Guidehttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/timeouts-everywhere-a-field-guide.htmlhttps://us1001qz.jp2haozu-naookg-okak.cc/posts/timeouts-everywhere-a-field-guide.htmlMon, 14 Jul 2025 09:00:00 +0000This post started as a note to my future self. Every few months I relearn the same lessons about API versioning, so this time I'm writing them down.