Why Full-Stack Developers Don't Really Exist (and Why We Pretend They Do)

Why Full-Stack Developers Don't Really Exist (and Why We Pretend They Do)

The Job Posting That Started It All You’ve seen it a thousand times. A company posts a job listing with the following requirements: “We’re looking for an experienced Full-Stack Developer! You should be proficient in React, Vue, Angular, Node.js, Python, Java, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, GraphQL, REST APIs, microservices architecture, DevOps practices, and ideally have some experience with machine learning. Must be comfortable working independently and leading a team....

February 3, 2026 · 9 min · 1742 words · Maxim Zhirnov
The Art of Boring Logging: How Your Most Tedious Code Prevents Production Disasters

The Art of Boring Logging: How Your Most Tedious Code Prevents Production Disasters

The Unglamorous Hero Nobody Talks About You know what’s not exciting? Logging. It’s the equivalent of maintaining dental floss habits—nobody throws parties about it, but your future self will thank you when everything hits the fan at 3 AM on a Sunday. Yet here’s the paradox: the most successful engineering teams I’ve encountered obsess over something most developers treat as a afterthought. They’ve discovered that meticulous, structured logging isn’t a chore—it’s your production system’s black box flight recorder....

February 2, 2026 · 8 min · 1623 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Digital Nomad Engineer: Freedom Lifestyle or Career Dead End?

Digital Nomad Engineer: Freedom Lifestyle or Career Dead End?

I’m going to say something controversial: the “digital nomad engineer” narrative we’ve been fed for the past five years is incomplete. Not wrong—incomplete. Like explaining quantum mechanics without mentioning Planck’s constant. You know the story. It’s been told a thousand times on Y Combinator threads and Medium posts by 25-year-olds with a laptop, a ring light, and the maturity of a golden retriever. “I left the Bay Area rat race, now I code from Bali for $2/day and my productivity has never been higher!...

February 2, 2026 · 10 min · 2083 words · Maxim Zhirnov
How to Review and Harden AI-Generated Code Before It Hits Production

How to Review and Harden AI-Generated Code Before It Hits Production

The future is here, and it’s generating code faster than your coffee maker brews espresso. But here’s the catch: just because an AI can write code in milliseconds doesn’t mean that code is production-ready. In fact, treating AI-generated code as gospel truth is like trusting a GPS that sometimes decides roads don’t exist anymore. You can do it, but you’ll probably end up in a lake. If you’re integrating AI into your development workflow—and let’s be honest, most of us are—you need a bulletproof strategy to ensure that what lands in production is robust, secure, and doesn’t make your future self want to flip a table....

February 1, 2026 · 15 min · 3008 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Coding Bootcamps: Democratizing Tech or Creating Disposable Talent?

Coding Bootcamps: Democratizing Tech or Creating Disposable Talent?

There’s a peculiar moment that happens every few weeks in the tech industry: someone discovers coding bootcamps and declares them either a revolutionary pathway to meritocracy or an elaborate Ponzi scheme wrapped in motivational posters. The truth, as with most things that matter, lives uncomfortably in the middle—but the middle is where the interesting questions live. The Great Democratization Narrative Let me start with what looks like an unambiguous success story....

February 1, 2026 · 8 min · 1684 words · Maxim Zhirnov