Systems Engineering Notes

Rust Error Handling Finally Clicked When I Stopped Using unwrap()

When I started writing real Rust code, my error handling looked like this:

I Stopped Writing match Everywhere in Rust. Here Is What I Write Instead.

The first few months of writing Rust, I reached for match on everything. An Option? Match on it. A Result? Match on it. A boolean check on…

Why Rust Will Not Let You Share This Across Threads

Auto traits, Arc, Mutex, and the thread-safety bugs Java lets you ship by accident

I Built a Hash Map in Rust. Here Is What the Standard Library Was Hiding From You

Part of the Data Structures in Rust series.

How I Learned Rust: The Exact Order I Used From Zero to Building a Redis Clone

I spent months writing this series. Fourteen articles, one CLI project, and a capstone where i built a working key-value store that handles…

I Stopped Writing For Loops in Rust. Here’s What I Write Instead.

Iterators, closures, and the chain that replaced every manual loop I used to write.

I Tried to Build a Graph in Rust. Rc and RefCell Were Waiting for Me.

How Rust’s ownership model pushes you toward index-based graph design

Rust Ownership Finally Clicked When I Stopped Thinking About Memory

I wrote an earlier version of this topic when I was first learning Rust. If you want the beginner-friendly introduction first, it is here…

I Built a Binary Tree in Rust. This Time the Borrow Checker Was on My Side

Part of the Data Structures in Rust series — and why trees work where linked lists fight you

Rust Closures Confused Me Until I Understood Fn, FnMut, and FnOnce

For a long time I wrote Rust closures the same way I wrote lambdas in Java or functions in Python: I defined them, passed them around, and…

Why Rust Felt So Hard Until I Unlearned These 5 Java Habits

Java builds habits. After enough years with it, certain patterns become automatic. You reach for them without thinking. Most of the time…

Part 1: Building a Redis Clone in Rust

A storage engine using Arc<Mutex<HashMap>>, a typed command parser, custom errors, and tests before a single TCP connection.

I Tried to Build a Linked List in Rust. The Borrow Checker Had Other Plans

Part of the Data Structures in Rust series.

I Built a Stack and a Queue in Rust. Then I Deleted Both and Used Vec.

Part of the Data Structures in Rust series.

Distributed Transactions in Microservices: 2PC, Saga Pattern, and the Transactional Outbox

Your payment service just charged a customer and also your inventory service went down as well. Neither of them knows about the other. The…

Redis Part 2: How to Build a Concurrent TCP Server in Rust With Tokio

Where We Left Off

I Stopped Writing if/else Chains in Rust. Here’s What I Write Instead.

Java trained me to think in if/else. Check the condition, branch left or right, nest another if inside if you need more cases. After years…

Testing in Rust Is Built Into the Language. No Framework Needed.

Write a function. Add #[test]. Run cargo test. That is genuinely all it takes to start.

Redis Part 3: How to Add Persistence to a Redis Clone in Rust

Snapshot saves every 30 seconds. Nine passing tests including a real expiry timing test. A CLI client that connects and types commands like

Java Concurrency: Each Tool Exists Because the Previous One Was Not Enough

Kafka is Just a Log. Once That Clicked, Everything Else Made Sense

The first time someone explained Kafka to me, they said “it’s a distributed messaging system with high throughput and fault tolerance.” I…

My Rust Program Crashed in Production in 40 Seconds (The Stack Was the Reason)

A stack overflow incident that only appeared under real traffic

Database Isolation Levels Explained: Dirty Reads, Phantom Reads, and Locking in PostgreSQL

Wrap something in a transaction and the database handles consistency. That assumption works fine until you have concurrent users, and then…

How To Build a Local AI Commit Message Generator in Rust.

No API Key Required.

You Probably Do Not Need the Saga Pattern

Last week I published a complete guide to distributed transactions. Two phase commit, Saga choreography, Saga orchestration, the…