https://tsymbal.dev/en Writing about development, architecture, databases, and practical decisions that survive contact with production. en Sat, 26 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/dhh-and-industry-influence https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/dhh-and-industry-influence In a year DHH went from fearing AI would drain his skill to refusing to write code by hand. Why one engineer's reversal changes which tools others accept. Industry AI tools Opinion Sat, 26 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/postgres-timezones-three-clocks https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/postgres-timezones-three-clocks A 30-minute reservation expired after only five minutes because the application and PostgreSQL wrote timestamps in different time zones to the same table. How we found it, why staging stayed green, and why the application now verifies the session time zone at startup. Development PostgreSQL Go GORM Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/priority-inflation https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/priority-inflation Why a high-priority label loses its meaning when almost every ticket is marked urgent, and how to restore a clear order of work for the team. Management Leadership Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/apm-sql-spans https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/apm-sql-spans Three silent defaults across Gin, GORM, pgx, and Elastic APM: why SQL spans disappeared and why the same context bug also broke request cancellation. Development Go Elastic APM Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/ringelmann-effect https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/ringelmann-effect The larger the group, the smaller the average contribution of each person in it. Leadership Leadership Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/transactions-via-context https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/transactions-via-context How to open a transaction at the use-case level, pass it to repositories without coupling business logic to an ORM, and handle nested calls correctly. Development Go Architecture PostgreSQL GORM Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/sentinel-errors-go https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/sentinel-errors-go Why a shared ErrNotFound conflates distinct failures, where sentinel errors belong, and how to translate GORM or database/sql errors at the repository boundary. Development Go Architecture Errors Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/river-background-jobs https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/river-background-jobs How to enqueue a River job in the same transaction as a business record in PostgreSQL, then run it safely in a separate worker. Development Go River GORM Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/projects-in-onplate https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/projects-in-onplate A project is a folder, and what the agent receives in it depends on scope, precedence, instruction files, and the directory the session starts in. How to see all four and compare two repositories. Products Onplate AI tools Projects Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/onplate-ai-tools https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/onplate-ai-tools What accumulates in Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GLM, and OpenCode over a year, and how to audit it: where each file came from, what the scanner finds, what it costs per request, and whether a skill fires at all. Products Onplate AI tools Developer Tools Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/simple-by-design https://tsymbal.dev/en/writing/simple-by-design An engineering blog with no CMS and no database: an article is a file in the repository, local and production builds run the same code, and only nginx runs in production. Development Astro Deployment Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT