Articles & Notes
Observations and technical thoughts on systems thinking and engineering.
Systems Thinking: Why Code and Physical Supply Chains Are the Same Problem
When software engineers discuss asynchronous message queues, backpressure, and throughput bottlenecks, they are using the exact mathematical concepts that industrial engineers developed decades ago under queuing theory and Little's Law.
A microservice pipeline is fundamentally no different from a physical manufacturing conveyor line. In both cases, introducing a buffer between two processes with unequal cycle times prevents upstream blockage and downstream starvation. If task variance spikes without adequate buffer capacity, the entire system collapses into compounding latency.
Drafting from First Principles: Lessons from CAD to Clean UI
A mechanical engineering drawing sheet never contains arbitrary lines. Every boundary line defines a physical surface, every dimension callout specifies a functional mating tolerance, and every datum reference provides an unambiguous origin for machining.
If a draftsman added decorative flourishes or extraneous hatching to an engineering print, the drawing would be rejected immediately by the machine shop. Extraneous elements produce ambiguity, and ambiguity in manufacturing creates costly scrap.