Why You Should Sometimes Avoid Cross-Platform Development

Why You Should Sometimes Avoid Cross-Platform Development

Picture this: you’re building a digital product that needs to run on both iOS and Android. Your brain screams “Cross-platform! One codebase! Half the work!” – but hold that thought. While frameworks like Flutter and React Native have their charms, there are times when this approach becomes the development equivalent of wearing swim fins to a ballet. Let’s dive into why cross-platform development isn’t always the golden ticket. When Performance Takes Center Stage Cross-platform apps often suffer from the “translator problem” – your code gets interpreted through an abstraction layer before reaching native hardware....

June 30, 2025 · 4 min · 735 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Hopping into Messaging Queues: Building a RabbitMQ System with Spring Boot

Hopping into Messaging Queues: Building a RabbitMQ System with Spring Boot

Picture this: your application is humming along when suddenly, 10,000 users simultaneously hit the “Sign Up” button. Without messaging queues, your servers would crumble like a cookie dunked too long in milk. Enter RabbitMQ – the postal service of the digital world where messages never get lost (and no angry dogs chase our delivery agents). Today we’ll build a robust messaging system using RabbitMQ and Spring Boot that’ll make your apps bounce with resilience....

June 29, 2025 · 3 min · 588 words · Maxim Zhirnov
The Art of Breaking Things: Learning from Controlled Failures

The Art of Breaking Things: Learning from Controlled Failures

Embrace the Glorious Crash Picture this: you’re sipping coffee, code flowing like poetry, when suddenly—poof—your application nosedives into the digital abyss. Heart-stopping? Absolutely. But what if I told you these fiery crashes are your secret weapon? Welcome to controlled demolition for software, where we break things strategically to build indestructible systems. Failures aren’t disasters; they’re free lessons wrapped in error messages. As one industry analysis notes, most catastrophic software failures stem from tiny, preventable glitches....

June 29, 2025 · 4 min · 646 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Building a WiFi Touch Screen Thermostat with ESP8266 and Arduino IDE

Building a WiFi Touch Screen Thermostat with ESP8266 and Arduino IDE

Picture this: You’re sipping cocoa in pajamas while remotely adjusting your home’s temperature because your thermostat suddenly developed a PhD in laziness. That’s the dream we’re chasing today as we build a touchscreen WiFi thermostat using ESP8266 and Arduino IDE – no soldering iron PhD required! 🔧 Hardware Ingredients List Let’s raid the digital pantry: ESP8266 NodeMCU (The WiFi wizard) 3.2" TFT Touch Screen (Your finger’s new dance floor) DS18B20 Temperature Sensor (The snitch that tells on cold rooms) 5V Relay Module (The HVAC bouncer) Breadboard & Jumper Wires (The messy love story) MicroUSB Cable (For caffeinating your circuit) flowchart LR A[ESP8266] --> B[TFT Touch Screen] A --> C[DS18B20 Sensor] A --> D[5V Relay] D --> E[HVAC System] 🚀 Firmware Flashing Party Time to teach our ESP8266 some new tricks:...

June 28, 2025 · 4 min · 730 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Why Cloud-Native Isn't Always the Answer: A Pragmatic Perspective

Why Cloud-Native Isn't Always the Answer: A Pragmatic Perspective

The Cloud-Native Hype Train: Time for a Reality Check We’ve all heard the siren song: “Go cloud-native or get left behind!” While cloud-native architectures offer undeniable benefits—scalability, resilience, and developer velocity—they’re not a universal cure-all. Blindly adopting this paradigm can lead to architectural overkill, runaway costs, and operational nightmares. Let’s dissect why the cloud-native hammer isn’t the right tool for every nail. 1. Complexity: When Simple Becomes Byzantine Cloud-native stacks (Kubernetes, service meshes, CI/CD pipelines) turn simple deployments into Rube Goldberg machines....

June 28, 2025 · 3 min · 614 words · Maxim Zhirnov