You Don’t Need to Rebuild the Cache: How TanStack Query Actually Works

Why useEffect + fetch is quietly a cache you’re rebuilding by hand, and how TanStack Query’s shared, time-aware cache fixes it — keys, staleTime vs gcTime, and the parts people get wrong.

You Don’t Always Need Elasticsearch: How PostgreSQL Full-Text Search Works Under the Hood

Why ILIKE %query% doesn’t scale, how PostgreSQL’s tsvector, GIN, and tsquery turn plain text into a real lexical search engine, and when it’s a genuine Elasticsearch alternative.

gRPC: Why It Exists and How It Actually Works

A from-first-principles guide to gRPC: why we needed it beyond REST, how Protocol Buffers and HTTP/2 fit together, and what the four RPC patterns look like in real microservices.