Game Changers in the Data Engineering Space
The full interactive story — fifteen tools reshaping how we ingest, transform, stream, orchestrate, and serve data. A standalone microsite experience.
Interactive Story
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The Trenches
Practical engineering insights from the frontlines. Deep dives into data architecture, infrastructure economics, and system design.
Latest Articles
View allpg_textsearch: BM25 Comes to Postgres in February
pg_textsearch brings BM25 ranking, 29+ languages, and blazing-fast full-text search to PostgreSQL. A deep dive into what this extension offers.
AI systems VS Context Rot
Every AI coding session starts from zero. Architecture decisions, progress, and hard-won lessons disappear between conversations. The Agentic Context System fixes this with a structured file approach that gives AI persistent memory across sessions.
Kubernetes Fundamentals
A complete hands-on guide to Kubernetes covering 18 essential concepts. Follow along step-by-step on your own computer. Every command works, every example runs.
The Art of System Decomposition
Decomposition is a tool, not a goal. This guide examines why boundaries exist, what they cost, when they pay off, and how to think about system design from first principles rather than best-practice cargo culting.
Building The Trenches
How we built this blog using Astro, TypeScript, and open-source tools. A comprehensive look at our layout architecture, responsive design system, CSS tokens, and the engineering decisions behind every pixel.
Topics
Data Architecture
Streaming vs batch processing, modern data stacks, and architectural patterns.
Infrastructure Economics
Cost analysis, vendor comparisons, and build-vs-buy decisions.
System Design
Practical patterns, operational complexity, and real-world trade-offs.
About
I'm Boyan Balev, a software engineer focused on data infrastructure and distributed systems. This blog shares practical insights from building and operating data platforms at scale.
Every article comes from real experience in the trenches - no ivory tower architectures, just patterns that work in production.