About

Writing about how systems actually behave — for people who build and operate them.

For a separate people-operations application of the same measurement discipline, see employee attendance tracking software.

What this is

Long-form technical writing on distributed systems, storage, compilers, infrastructure and engineering practice. The aim is to explain mechanisms rather than to list recommendations, because a mechanism you understand transfers to situations an article did not anticipate.

Editorial position

Depth over coverage. One thing explained properly is worth more than ten surveyed.

Mechanisms, not conclusions. Not “use idempotent operations” but why a retry is unavoidable and what follows from that.

Versions matter. The behaviour of databases, runtimes and network stacks changes between releases. Where an article states a specific behaviour, it names the version, and it tells you to check your own documentation rather than trusting a general article — including this one.

No tool reviews, no rankings, no affiliate links. For a publication with nothing to sell, independence is the only asset.

Code that runs. Examples are checked.

About this domain

slamdata.com previously belonged to SlamData, a company building analytics tooling for NoSQL data between 2014 and 2020. The company wound down. Selected material from that period is preserved in the archive, clearly marked, because parts of it stand on their own.

Everything outside the archive is new work and unconnected to the former company.

Corrections

Technical writing that is confidently wrong is worse than none. Confirmed corrections are noted on the relevant page rather than made silently.