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My name is Max. I’m a software engineer and a writer. I love building things and sharing my knowledge with others.
HTTP/2: Turning Web Speedrun Records Into Child's Play

HTTP/2: Turning Web Speedrun Records Into Child's Play

Picture this: you’re at a coffee shop with 15 friends trying to order, but there’s only one barista taking orders one-by-one while everyone’s macchiatos get colder. That’s HTTP/1.1 in a nutshell. Now imagine a squad of baristas handling all orders simultaneously while composing latte art - that’s HTTP/2 saying “hold my espresso”. Let’s optimize your web apps like we’re overclocking a DeLorean. The Need for Speed: HTTP/2’s Secret Sauce Multiplexing: The end of fork() nightmares...

April 28, 2025 · 3 min · 617 words · Maxim Zhirnov
The Great Documentation Collapse: When AI Hallucinations Eat Your Knowledge Base

The Great Documentation Collapse: When AI Hallucinations Eat Your Knowledge Base

Picture this: you’ve built the perfect documentation system. It’s beautiful, interconnected, and then… your AI assistant starts claiming Python lists have .emplace() methods. Congratulations - you’ve just witnessed the Great Documentation Collapse, where synthetic stupidity meets synthetic data in a perfect storm of nonsense. Why Your Documentation Is Hallucinating More Than a Psychedelic Sloth AI doesn’t “lie” - it “confidently imagines” alternative facts. As IBM puts it, these hallucinations occur when patterns are perceived in nonexistent data....

April 28, 2025 · 3 min · 552 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Database Caching in Go: Making Your App Fly While Avoiding Cache-amolishments

Database Caching in Go: Making Your App Fly While Avoiding Cache-amolishments

Ah, caching - the developer’s equivalent of hiding snacks in your desk drawer. But instead of emergency chocolate, we’re stashing frequently accessed data to save those precious database roundtrips. Let’s roll up our sleeves and implement some database-level caching in Go, complete with code samples and battle-tested patterns. The Cache Conundrum: To Store or Not to Store? Database caching works like your brain’s muscle memory for frequent tasks. As Prisma’s guide notes, it’s all about keeping hot data ready-to-serve....

April 27, 2025 · 3 min · 629 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Why Writing Your Own Operating System Is Like Baking a Cake With a Flamethrower

Why Writing Your Own Operating System Is Like Baking a Cake With a Flamethrower

Picture this: It’s 2 AM, you’re hyped up on cold brew, and you just finished reading Linus Torvalds’ biography. Suddenly it hits you - “I should write my own operating system! How hard could it be?” My friend, let me stop you right there before you rm -rf / your entire existence. The Siren Song of Kernel Development graph TD A[Developer Ego] --> B("I'll make everything better!") B --> C[Write bootloader] C --> D[Panic about memory management] D --> E[Abandon project] E --> F[Blame hardware manufacturers] We’ve all been there....

April 27, 2025 · 3 min · 582 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Building a Time Series Forecasting System with GRU Networks: From Data to Predictions

Building a Time Series Forecasting System with GRU Networks: From Data to Predictions

Picture this: You’re trying to predict the future like a modern-day Nostradamus, but instead of crystal balls, you’ve got gated recurrent units. Don’t worry if your last prediction was guessing tomorrow’s weather (spoiler: it rained… again), we’re about to make you look competent! 1. Why GRUs Are Your New Best Friend Gated Recurrent Units (GRUs) are like the younger, faster sibling of LSTMs that didn’t get stuck in the family’s “memory gate” drama....

April 26, 2025 · 4 min · 703 words · Maxim Zhirnov