Software writing is most useful when it preserves the reasoning that code alone cannot: the constraint that shaped a boundary, the failure that invalidated an assumption, the trade-off hidden behind a clean interface, or the operational detail that made a design survive production.
I’m Ayush Basak, a CTO and systems architect in Kolkata. These essays cover backend engineering, databases, distributed systems, infrastructure, and production AI.
Start with a problem you are solving:
- A dependency keeps failing: bounded retries in TypeScript and deadline budgets.
- A database needs to change safely: zero-downtime PostgreSQL migrations.
- A cross-region workflow needs ordering: external consistency and TrueTime.
- Multiple AI agents need to coordinate: Kiro Flock and shared-state coordination.
Hardware #
How devices communicate, how firmware meets software, and how to diagnose the boundary when it fails. Explore the hardware knowledge base, starting with USB from plug-in to data transfer.
All engineering essays #
1–12 of 109 articles
- 2026