Checkpoints, and What the Benchmark Wasn't Measuring
A 2.55x speedup that was real, produced by a mechanism that doesn't exist, hiding a bug that resurrects deleted keys.
#performance
8 posts
Group Commit, or Refusing to Pay for fsync Alone
Getting from 255 writes a second to nearly ten thousand, without weakening a single durability guarantee.
The Load Test That Was Supposed to Fail
173,000 requests with zero errors told me nothing useful. The test that broke its own thresholds told me everything.
What Happens When One Client Can't Keep Up
Every broadcast loop contains an assumption that send() works. Backpressure is what you build when it doesn't.
Cursors Are Not Part of the Document
Presence looks like the easiest feature in a collaborative app. It has the tightest constraints of anything in the system.
Why Freehand Drawing Becomes a Bottleneck
Freehand input looks simple, but the amount of data it generates can quickly overwhelm your rendering system.
Inside the Rendering Engine of a Canvas App
Rendering isn’t just about drawing shapes. It’s about controlling how much work happens per frame.
What Building a Drawing App Taught Me About Performance
Performance issues don’t show up immediately, they build up quietly until your assumptions stop working.