5 min read
New Year, Same Foundation: Why I Don't Do Resolutions
Why I stopped making New Year's resolutions, what I'm building on in 2026, and the four questions I'll use to judge the year as a father and practitioner.
Blog
Thoughts on data engineering, cloud architecture, and technology. 2205 articles and counting.
Showing 24 of 2205 posts — page 8 of 92
1 min read
New Year's Eve 2025: Setting Technical Goals That Actually Work
Consider your current level and career direction: Break annual goals into quarters: The best technical goals are: 1. Connected to your career Not just…
1 min read
Preparing Your Codebase for 2026: A Technical Debt Audit Guide
Technical debt compounds like financial debt. Regular audits and systematic paydown keep your codebase healthy and your team productive.
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API Design Patterns That Stood the Test of Time in 2025
Good API design is timeless. These patterns work because they prioritize developer experience and operational reliability.
1 min read
Infrastructure as Code Best Practices: Lessons from 100+ Deployments
IaC is a skill that compounds. These practices become second nature and save countless hours of debugging and recovery.
1 min read
Building a Custom GPT for Your Documentation with Azure OpenAI
This pattern works for any documentation. The key is good chunking, quality embeddings, and a well-crafted system prompt that keeps the bot focused on your…
1 min read
Boxing Day Deep Dive: Understanding Transformer Architecture
Transformers solve a key problem: how do you process sequences while understanding relationships between all elements, not just adjacent ones?
2 min read
Christmas Day Reflection: The Joy of Building Things That Help People
Merry Christmas! Today, as we celebrate with family and friends, I want to share some thoughts on why we do what we do as technologists.
1 min read
Christmas Eve Automation: Building a Holiday Light Controller with Azure IoT
A fun project that combines cloud, IoT, and holiday spirit. Merry Christmas Eve!
2 min read
Holiday Tech Gift Guide 2025: Tools That Made Me More Productive
Looking for last-minute gifts for the developers in your life? Here are the tools and subscriptions that genuinely improved my productivity in 2025.
1 min read
Building Real-Time Dashboards with Azure SignalR and React
Real-time dashboards are now straightforward with Azure SignalR. The serverless model means you only pay for messages, making it cost-effective for most…
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Winter Solstice Code Review: My Most Impactful Refactors of 2025
On the longest night of the year, let's reflect on code improvements. Here are the refactoring patterns that delivered the biggest impact in my projects…
1 min read
Building a Personal AI Assistant with Semantic Kernel
This foundation can be extended with calendar integration, email access, and more plugins. Perfect for a holiday coding project!
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The Ultimate Azure Cost Optimization Checklist for 2026
Start the new year with optimized cloud spend. These changes compound over time into significant savings.
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Implementing Zero-Trust Security for AI Workloads on Azure
Zero-trust isn't optional for AI workloads handling sensitive data. Implement these patterns from day one to avoid costly retrofitting.
2 min read
Data Engineering Career Retrospective: What Changed in 2025
The data engineering profession evolved dramatically in 2025. As the year ends, here's my retrospective on the skills, tools, and mindsets that defined…
1 min read
Building Resilient Microservices with Azure Service Bus
Reliable messaging is the backbone of microservices architecture. Azure Service Bus provides enterprise-grade messaging, but using it effectively requires…
1 min read
The Complete Guide to AI Model Fine-Tuning on Azure
Fine-tuning is powerful but expensive. Validate the ROI before investing in training infrastructure.
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Azure Container Apps vs Azure Kubernetes Service: When to Use Each
Choose Container Apps when: You want managed infrastructure Your team lacks Kubernetes expertise You have event driven or HTTP workloads You need rapid time…
1 min read
Implementing Observability for AI Applications with OpenTelemetry
Observability is essential for AI applications. Without it, you're flying blind on costs, performance, and quality. Implement these patterns early and…
2 min read
GitHub Copilot vs Cursor vs Claude Code: Developer AI Tools Compared
AI coding assistants transformed developer productivity in 2025. After extensively using all three major tools, here's my detailed comparison to help you…
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Building Event-Driven Architectures with Azure Event Grid and Functions
Event-driven architecture requires careful design but delivers superior scalability and resilience for distributed systems.
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Securing AI Applications: A Comprehensive 2025 Checklist
AI security is not optional. Implement these measures before going to production, and review them quarterly as threats evolve.
1 min read
Comparing Vector Databases: Azure AI Search vs Pinecone vs Weaviate
Choosing the right vector database is crucial for RAG applications. After implementing production systems with all three major options in 2025, here's my…