Software Jutsu Articles https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles Essays on software craft, engineering, and career en Five Message Broker Patterns https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/five-message-broker-patterns I kept dropping names like Saga, CQRS, and Outbox in design reviews without being fully honest about which one solved what. A ByteByteGo infographic pushed me to stop faking it and draw each one from memory. These are the diagrams - and the use cases - that finally made them stick. Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/five-message-broker-patterns rickvianaldi@gmail.com (Rickvian Aldi) Systems Why Engineers Are Obsessed With P99 https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/why-engineers-obsess-over-p99 If you only watch the average, you are watching the wrong number. P99 is where the money leaks, where the outages start, and where your users quietly decide to leave. Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/why-engineers-obsess-over-p99 rickvianaldi@gmail.com (Rickvian Aldi) Systems Meta-Stable Failure: When Your System Is Up But Completely Down https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/meta-stable-failure The most dangerous distributed systems failures are the ones where everything looks fine, until it doesn't. Here's the failure mode that buries on-call engineers. Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/meta-stable-failure rickvianaldi@gmail.com (Rickvian Aldi) Systems Thundering Herd: What a 10-Minute Video Taught Me About Retries https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/thundering-herd-what-retries-taught-me I thought I understood API retries. Then I watched Arpit Bhayani explain the thundering herd problem, and realized every retry I'd ever written was either part of the fix - or part of the fire. Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/thundering-herd-what-retries-taught-me rickvianaldi@gmail.com (Rickvian Aldi) Systems Reading Cron Fluently https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/reading-cron-fluently Most engineers can write a cron expression but struggle to read one at a glance. Here's a mental model that makes cron as readable as plain English. Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/reading-cron-fluently rickvianaldi@gmail.com (Rickvian Aldi) Engineering JWT: What Every Engineer Should Know https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/jwt-what-every-engineer-should-know JSON Web Tokens are everywhere, yet most engineers treat them as black boxes. Here's the mental model that changes how you debug auth. Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/jwt-what-every-engineer-should-know rickvianaldi@gmail.com (Rickvian Aldi) Systems The Pattern Worth Paying For https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/the-pattern-worth-paying-for Idempotency is the single most underrated contract in distributed systems - and ignoring it is how you end up charging customers twice at 3am. Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/the-pattern-worth-paying-for rickvianaldi@gmail.com (Rickvian Aldi) Systems The Craft of Deleting Code https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/the-craft-of-deleting-code Adding code is easy. Knowing what to remove - and having the conviction to remove it - is where the real craft lives. Fri, 03 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/the-craft-of-deleting-code rickvianaldi@gmail.com (Rickvian Aldi) Craft How I Think About the Staff Engineer Track https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/how-i-think-about-staff-engineer-track Most engineers I know who became staff engineers did not plan for it. The ones who planned for it often got stuck. Here is why - and what the track actually rewards. Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.softwarejutsu.com/articles/how-i-think-about-staff-engineer-track rickvianaldi@gmail.com (Rickvian Aldi) Career