Hello World - Building in Public, One Commit at a Time

For the past several years, I've been deep in the backend trenches - building microservices in Go, wrangling Kafka streams, optimizing database queries, and orchestrating containers with Kubernetes. But here's the thing: I've realized that some of my best learning happens when I'm forced to articulate what I know. Writing code is one thing. Explaining why that code exists, what problems it solves, and what I learned along the way - that's where the real understanding crystallizes.

Why This Blog?

I've been deliberately pushing myself outside my comfort zone lately. After years of exclusively backend work, I'm learning TypeScript and Next.js from scratch. Not because I need to for work, but because I believe in being a well-rounded engineer. Plus, I have this nagging entrepreneurial itch - someday I want to build something of my own, and I can't do that if I'm only comfortable on one side of the stack.

This blog serves a few purposes:

Documentation - A record of what I'm learning, mistakes I'm making, and solutions I'm discovering.
Accountability - Building in public keeps me honest and consistent.
Community - Maybe someone else is on a similar journey and we can learn together

What You Can Expect:

I'm not interested in superficial tutorials or clickbait. If you're looking for "10 Tips to Become a Senior Engineer," you're in the wrong place.

What I will write about:

Deep dives into Go concepts - interfaces, concurrency patterns, testing strategies.
System design thinking - the architectural decisions that matter (and the ones that don't).
Learning new things - my journey into frontend, mistakes and all.
Real-world problems - things I encounter at work (anonymized, of course)
Reflections on engineering - career growth, fundamentals vs. trends, building vs. shipping.

I won't publish on a schedule. I'll write when I have something worth saying.

A Quick Note on How I Work

I'm detail-oriented to a fault. Even for hobby projects, I find myself validating architectural decisions, writing tests, thinking about scalability. Some people might call this over-engineering. I call it practice.

Because here's what I've learned: the habits you build in side projects become the instincts you rely on when the stakes are high. If you always take shortcuts in your personal work, you'll reach for shortcuts when it matters.

That said, I'm also learning to balance this with pragmatism. Perfect is the enemy of shipped. This blog itself is proof - it's built with Next.js and Supabase, technologies I'm still learning. It's not perfect, but it's live.

Let's Connect

If you're a backend engineer curious about the frontend, a Go enthusiast, or just someone who appreciates thoughtful engineering - welcome. I'd love to hear from you.

Here's to the first post of many.

- Shahzad