AI Tech
Type-Safe LLM Tool Calling in C#: 6 Months in Production
How discriminated unions, JSON Schema validation, and a 4-retry loop cut hallucinated tool arguments from 18% to 0.3% in a real Claude + GPT-5 production stack.
Issue 2026.08 · 22 articles
The Art of Writing Code
A working journal of software engineering, AI tooling, and the craft of building things that last.
Topics
ASP.NET
.NET, C#, Blazor, ASP.NET Core, EF Core — production engineering on the .NET stack.
5 articles →
Flutter
Cross-platform mobile, Dart, widgets, performance, and shipping apps to iOS and Android.
6 articles →
AI Tech
LLMs, agents, MCP, RAG, fine-tuning, and the new shape of software work.
6 articles →
Hosting
Cloud, Docker, CI/CD, edge, static sites, and the actual cost of running things.
5 articles →
Featured this week
Latest articles
2026.08.13
AI Tech
RAG Evaluation in 2026: Stop Guessing, Start Measuring
Six months into production, RAG failure is silent. Here is what to measure, how to measure it, and the LLM-as-judge tradeoffs nobody tells you about in 2026.
16 min
2026.08.10
ASP.NET
EF Core 10: Compiled Models and Query Splitting Done Right
EF Core 10 compiled models, batched query splitting, raw SQL with tracking — what works in production after months of real use, and what the docs skip.
10 min
2026.08.06
Flutter
Custom Flutter RenderObjects: Layout, Paint, and Hit-Test
A working engineer's deep dive into Flutter's custom RenderObject: how layout, paint, and hit-testing really work, with production code from a 50K-user app.
12 min
2026.08.03
Hosting
Caddy 2.8 in Production: Lessons From 12 Services
Two years running Caddy in front of 12 production services: what 2.8 got right, what the docs skip, and the gotchas I wish I'd known on day one.
13 min
2026.07.30
ASP.NET
NativeAOT in .NET 9: A Six-Month Production Report
I shipped a NativeAOT ASP.NET Core 9 service in February. After 4M requests, here's what changed: cold start, memory, image size, and trimming traps.
14 min
2026.07.27
Flutter
Dart FFI in Production: A Pragmatic Guide for Flutter 4.0
Dart FFI lets Flutter call C, Rust, and C++ directly. After shipping it in production, here is what works, what breaks, and the patterns I now use by default.
13 min
2026.07.24
AI Tech
Build a Custom AI Skill in 37 Lines (with working code)
A working engineer's guide to building a custom AI skill for your codebase in 37 lines of code — the skill reviews a git diff and returns a structured critique covering bugs, security, style, and performance.
11 min
2026.07.24
AI Tech
OpenCode: The Free, Open-Source Alternative to Claude Code That You Actually Control
A working engineer's hands-on look at OpenCode — the open-source, AI-assisted coding tool that does most of what Claude Code does, ships with free models out of the box, and lets you wire up your own API providers without selling a kidney.
11 min
2026.07.23
AI Tech
Agentic Coding in 2026: How MCP, Sub-Agents, and Long-Horizon Tools Are Reshaping the Developer's Loop
A working engineer's field guide to the new shape of AI-assisted development in mid-2026: the Model Context Protocol, the agent loop, model selection, and the engineering practices that turn agents into production teammates.
10 min
2026.07.17
ASP.NET
Blazor United and the .NET 9 Renaissance: Writing Full-Stack Web Apps in 2026 Without Leaving C#
A working engineer's guide to the unified Blazor story in .NET 9 — what Blazor United actually changed, what stayed the same, where the framework wins in production, and where it still hurts.
9 min
2026.07.10
Flutter
The Impeller Engine and the State of Cross-Platform in 2026: What Flutter 3.27 Got Right
A working engineer's field guide to Flutter in mid-2026 — the Impeller rendering engine, the widget model, what actually shipped, and the engineering practices that make Flutter apps feel right on iOS, Android, and the web.
10 min
2026.07.03
Hosting
Self-Hosting a Static Site in 2026: A $4/Month Setup That Outperforms Netlify
A working engineer's guide to self-hosting a static site on a $4 VPS in 2026 — Caddy, Cloudflare, automated deploys, and the engineering practices that make a small site fast, reliable, and cheap to run.
10 min
2026.06.26
ASP.NET
Minimal APIs in .NET 9: The HTTP Framework You Already Had
A working engineer's guide to Minimal APIs in .NET 9 — when the endpoint-as-a-function model beats controllers, when it does not, and the small set of conventions that make a Minimal API codebase feel like one.
10 min
2026.06.19
Flutter
Flutter + Rust: When the Borrow Checker Meets the Widget Tree
A working engineer's guide to calling Rust from Flutter in 2026 — FFI, flutter_rust_bridge, the cases where the pairing wins, and the cases where you should reach for something simpler instead.
10 min
2026.06.12
AI Tech
Vector Databases Demystified: From Embeddings to Production Search in 2026
A working engineer's guide to vector databases in mid-2026 — embeddings, ANN indexes, the choices that matter in production, and when you do not need a vector DB at all.
10 min
2026.06.05
Hosting
Postgres as a Queue: Why Your Database Is Your Best Message Broker
A working engineer's defense of using Postgres for async work in 2026 — the operational story, the at-least-once delivery pattern, and the surprising places where a dedicated broker is the wrong answer.
10 min
2026.05.29
Hosting
Edge Compute in 2026: Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge, and the Death of the Region
A working engineer's guide to edge compute in mid-2026 — what the edge is good for, where the regional cloud still wins, and the engineering practices that make edge functions feel right in production.
11 min