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59 posts so far.
April 15, 2026Database7 min read
1.2s → 85ms. The LATERAL join 90% of devs have never written.
Four nested Python loops. One slow endpoint. I replaced all of it with one Postgres LATERAL join. Most backend devs don't know it exists.
March 16, 2026Database9 min read
ECS Autoscaling Fought Our Postgres max_connections at 2AM and Postgres Won
We scaled to 38 ECS tasks during a flash sale. Each task held 10 Postgres connections. Our RDS instance allowed 170. The math was never going to work.
March 15, 2026Database10 min read
How a NOT NULL Column Migration Locked Our Users Table for 14 Minutes
A routine schema migration to add a NOT NULL column with a default value triggered a full table rewrite in Postgres, holding an exclusive lock on 2.4 million rows and taking our entire platform offline for 14 minutes at 10 AM on a Monday.
March 7, 2026Database12 min read
The Friday Deploy That Taught Me to Respect PostgreSQL
A four-line SQL query worked perfectly in development — in production, with 8 million rows, it held the database hostage for 47 minutes and took down an entire SaaS platform on a Friday afternoon.