SQL gives us rows and columns, while APIs usually need nested JSON. That mismatch is small, but it creates a lot of repetitive code. Most backends choose one of two strategies: use a join and transform the resulting rows into nested JSON, or run multiple queries (often one per table) and then match each result set back to its parent. That code is not hard, but it is everywhere. And as Robert C. Martin reminds us in Clean Code, duplication is a design smell, even when each copy is “small”. PathQL is my attempt to remove that duplication while keeping SQL in the center. ...

I wrote phpfilemerger, a small CLI tool that takes a PHP entry point and all of its class dependencies and produces a single self-contained PHP file. It uses an AST parser to resolve dependencies properly, so the output is ordered and ready to run. Use case: PHP-CRUD-API I maintain a PHP project that is distributes as a single file (PHP-CRUD-API) and phpfilemerger automates the process of building. It produces that one-file distribution, keeping class order and namespaces intact so the merged file works just like the original project. It statically analyzes your codebase using PSR-4/PSR-0 mappings and inlines all dependencies in the correct order. ...

I’ve built TQDBProxy to handle heavy read loads by caching SELECT queries with a TTL hint. The proxy worked well for reads. Each application server could keep a local cache and avoid trips to the database. The cache reduced pressure on primary databases and gave predictable latency under heavy read traffic. But what if not the reads, but the writes are the bottleneck? Each small insert or update creates its own transaction and its own fsync on the database. The database CPU and I/O become saturated. Adding more machines does not help as you cannot easily shard hot tables over multiple database servers. ...

I recently evaluated the Cytrence Kiwi Plus, a USB KVM solution that enables remote access to machines via HDMI and USB. The product was provided for free for evaluation. It retails for around 100 dollars. In the past 6 weeks, I’ve tested it daily (every evening) with two real-world scenarios: Linux controlling Mac and Linux controlling Windows. In this blog I will share my extensive experience with the product. It feels just like working on another virtual machine, but this machine is real and on your desk. ...

Recently Patrick Akil (of Beyond Coding) interviewed legendary architect Gregor Hohpe, author of “Enterprise Integration Patterns” and former architect at Google Cloud and AWS. What follows is a masterclass in thoughtful questioning and profound answers. I highly recommend you to watch it. This post lists the top 3 take-aways. 1. The Art of Amplification Patrick’s pointed questions draw out decades of wisdom. When asked what separates great architects from mediocre ones, Gregor’s answer reframes the entire role: ...

In software engineering, thinking is the expensive part. It always has been. Writing code? That’s the cheap bit. Typing fast is great, but don’t let that speed fool you. Here’s something to remember: code is read many times but written only once (ref: Robert C. Martin). The real cost comes later, when you have to fix bad design. That’s when you pay, and you pay a lot. The real work is in the judgment calls, the choices, and the structure you set up at the start. That’s what makes an engineer valuable. ...

There are excellent database proxies out there. pgpool-II, MaxScale, and ProxySQL are battle-tested, feature-rich, and used in production by thousands of companies. I’ve built TQDBProxy as a learning project to explore a different approach: what if caching decisions lived in the application code itself? Custom client libraries for PHP, TypeScript, and Go allow you to (optionally) specify a cache time-to-live (TTL) as an extra argument to a query method. Queries with a TTL are cached for the specified duration. After expiry, the first request refreshes the cache (blocking), while others briefly get stale data until the refresh completes. ...

I have built TQMemory as a high-performance, in-memory cache that can be used as a drop-in replacement for Memcached. It uses the same CLI flags, speaks the same protocol, and under some conditions it exceeds Memcached performance. When used as a Go package, it circumvents network, and can handle over 2.5 million GET requests per second (about 9x faster than Memcached over sockets). See: https://github.com/mevdschee/tqmemory What is TQMemory? TQMemory is implemented in Go, and can be used as both as an embedded library and as a standalone server. It speaks the Memcached protocol (both text and binary), meaning that in server mode it works out-of-the-box with existing clients. ...

I have built TQCache as a fast and simple key-value store that can be used as a drop-in replacement for Memcached or as an alternative to Redis. While surely not as mature, it does offer a specific set of trade-offs that may interest you. It is designed for workloads where both memory efficiency and persistence are priorities, such as session storage. See: https://github.com/mevdschee/tqcache What is TQCache? Implemented in Go, TQCache works as both an embeddable library and a standalone server. It speaks the Memcached protocol (both text and binary), meaning it works out-of-the-box with existing clients, including PHP’s native memcached session handler. ...

PHP has built-in templating, but mixing PHP and HTML gets messy quickly. Separate template engines like Twig or Smarty add dependencies and complexity. I wanted a small implementation with Jinja-like syntax that’s easy to understand and modify. So I wrote MintyPHP Template. It allows you to write things like: <h1>{{ title }}</h1> {% if user.is_admin %} <span class="badge">Admin</span> {% endif %} <ul> {% for item in items %} <li>{{ item.name }}</li> {% endfor %} </ul> All output is HTML-escaped by default. Variables use {{ }}, control structures use {% %}, and comments use {# #}. ...