Hi there 👋

My name is Maksim Zhirnov. I’m a Growth Marketing Expert & MarTech Engineer. I help tech companies scale through data-driven marketing strategies, powered by my engineering background. I love building marketing systems that drive growth and sharing insights on the intersection of technology and customer acquisition.
Why Most Developers Shouldn't Write Their Own Payment Systems

Why Most Developers Shouldn't Write Their Own Payment Systems

Listen, I get it. You’re a developer. You’ve built APIs, microservices, and probably some questionable side projects at 2 AM fueled by cold coffee and spite. Payment processing seems simple enough, right? It’s just moving money from point A to point B. How hard could it possibly be? Spoiler alert: It’s harder than you think, and you probably shouldn’t do it. I’m not saying this to gatekeep or sound like a jaded senior engineer who’s seen too much....

November 21, 2025 · 11 min · 2151 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Implementing Chaos Engineering Practices with Gremlin: Breaking Things to Build Better Systems

Implementing Chaos Engineering Practices with Gremlin: Breaking Things to Build Better Systems

Your infrastructure is probably fine. Until it isn’t. And when it breaks at 3 AM on a Saturday, you’ll wish you’d spent some time breaking it intentionally during business hours. Welcome to Chaos Engineering with Gremlin—where we play the role of responsible arsonists in your system architecture, lighting controlled fires to see which sprinklers actually work. Understanding the Chaos Engineering Philosophy If your systems haven’t failed in a controlled environment, they will fail in an uncontrolled one....

November 20, 2025 · 13 min · 2688 words · Maxim Zhirnov
The Fallacy of 'Always Use a Micro Frontend': When Monolith Wins

The Fallacy of 'Always Use a Micro Frontend': When Monolith Wins

There’s a peculiar phenomenon in tech: every few years, we collectively decide that the previous architectural pattern was basically hot garbage, and the new shiny approach is the answer to everything. We’re living through that moment with micro-frontends. The hype is real. Blog posts everywhere declare that monoliths are dead, that enterprise-scale applications must adopt micro-frontends, and that if you’re still building monoliths in 2025, you’re basically coding like it’s the year 2000....

November 20, 2025 · 10 min · 2028 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Automating Go SDK Generation: Building a Tool That Actually Saves You Time

Automating Go SDK Generation: Building a Tool That Actually Saves You Time

If you’ve ever had to manually write an SDK for your Go API, you know the feeling. It’s like being handed a massive spreadsheet and asked to transcribe it by hand while someone taps their pencil on the desk. Sure, you can do it, but why would you want to? This is exactly where SDK generation automation comes in—a lifeline for developers tired of maintaining boilerplate code. In this article, we’re going to dive deep into creating a tool that automates Go SDK generation from your REST APIs....

November 19, 2025 · 9 min · 1710 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Neuroprogramming: Brain-Computer Interfaces for Code Compilation

Neuroprogramming: Brain-Computer Interfaces for Code Compilation

Let me be honest with you: if I told you five years ago that I’d be writing about controlling code with my brain, I would’ve laughed. But here we are, and frankly, the technology is fascinating enough that we should stop dismissing it as science fiction. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have evolved from labs with prohibitively expensive equipment to accessible, developer-friendly platforms that actually work. The question isn’t if you should explore this space—it’s when....

November 19, 2025 · 11 min · 2299 words · Maxim Zhirnov