Current state & writing

Blog

What I'm currently building, reading, and learning, plus chapter-by-chapter notes from the books I'm working through.

Reading Notes

Notes from the books, chapter by chapter

Detailed summaries and diagrams I write while reading. They now live in Blueprint, my study app, with a Markdown and a designed view for every chapter.

Designing Data-Intensive Applications

Chapter-by-chapter notes on the 2nd edition: storage engines, replication, sharding, transactions, consensus, and batch and stream processing. Each chapter has diagrams and a designed reading view, plus a master revision sheet for whole-book review.

14 chaptersOpen in Blueprint

Deep Dives

Long-form write-ups

Original articles where I unpack how something is built, with diagrams, real code, and the reasoning behind each decision. They live in Blueprint now.

The Complete Authentication Guide: From Sessions to JWT and OAuth

Sessions vs tokens, JWT structure and claims, access and refresh tokens, logout, the attacks that matter, and how it all scales.

AuthenticationSecurityJWT

Open in Blueprint

Why HTTP Finally Got a QUERY Method (After 16 Years)

A safe, idempotent, cacheable way to send a request body for read-only queries: the middle ground between GET and POST.

HTTPAPI DesignBackend

Open in Blueprint

The CAP Theorem

How consistency, availability, and partition tolerance trade off, with real database examples and the PACELC follow-up.

Distributed SystemsDatabases

Open in Blueprint

Building a Clean, Domain-Driven Backend

A diagram-first walkthrough of Clean Architecture and DDD in a real NestJS, TypeORM, and PostgreSQL project.

NestJSDDDPostgreSQL

Open in Blueprint

Learning apps

Apps I built to study a subject

When notes are not enough, I build the tool: structured paths, progress, and revision schedules for the topics I want to master.

Blueprint

SOLID, design patterns, system design, and book notes, with spaced revision

A study app I built for software design: 93 topics in eight stages, from Java basics to DDIA notes and deep dives, with progress tracking, bookmarks, and a revision schedule so the material sticks.

Java & OOP basicsSOLID principlesDesign patternsObject-oriented designLow-level designHigh-level designForward deployed engineeringBook notesDeep dives

93 topicsLive app

Courses

Courses I've worked through, episode by episode

Handwritten notes and the code I wrote following along. Each episode links out to the PDF and the GitHub folder.

Namaste React (Akshay Saini)

13 episodes

Handwritten PDF notes + the code I wrote for each chapter.

Inception

Introduction to foundational tools and frameworks in web development.

Visual code setupHello world in HTML/JSCDN, React Hello World

Open PDF View code

Igniting our App

Essential package managers and module bundlers for React projects.

npm, ParcelNode modulesReact app file structure

Open PDF View code

Laying the Foundation

Understanding JSX, React components, and their composition.

JSX, React componentsClass-based vs Functional components

Open PDF View code

Talk is Cheap, Show me the Code

Implementing React's core features, managing state, and working with UI data.

React app buildingprops/statefunction mapping

Open PDF View code

Lets get Hooked

Exploring React Hooks and understanding their importance.

File structureImport/exportReact Hooks (useState)

Open PDF View code

Exploring the World

Architecture insights, the useEffect hook, and working with APIs.

Architecture, useEffectConditional RenderingAPI usage

Open PDF View code

Now

What I'm building, reading, and learning right now

A living snapshot of where my time and attention are going, refreshed whenever the focus shifts.

Updated Apr 4, 20262 building1 reading5 learning

Building

2 items

The production work and experiments taking most of the keyboard time right now.

Day job: full-stack applications

Production work

Shipping production features end to end: React/Next.js on the front, NestJS services, TypeORM, and PostgreSQL.

Next.jsNestJSTypeORMPostgreSQL

ElevateSDE: AI interview prep platform

Side project

Enterprise-grade, AI-driven interview preparation platform built as a SaaS product, with timed assessments, real-time AI-driven mock interviews, and personalized learning plans.

SaaSAI-driven

View on GitHub