Writing & Thinking
Ideas Worth Shipping.
Technical writing on performance engineering, Next.js, Shopify development, system design, and the messy reality of building software at scale.
All
8 articles
The fastest third-party script is the one that never runs
The HTML was fast and the page still felt broken. A war story about third-party embeds wrecking LCP and TBT, and the lazy-load and facade patterns that fixed it.
Miracle Kalu
Stop Using useEffect for Data Fetching: A Senior Engineer's Guide to Server Components
Why server-side fetching should be your default in Next.js App Router, when client fetching still wins, and how to migrate without a big-bang rewrite.
Miracle Kalu
Building a Related-Articles Engine with Vector Embeddings: A Production-Ready Design
How we replaced tag-based recommendations with a cached vector-embedding pipeline, and the production trade-offs we learned the hard way.
Miracle Kalu
The Art of the One-Shot Prompt: How I Get Useful First Drafts on the First Try
A senior engineer's framework for writing one-shot prompts that produce solid first drafts and cut review rounds in half.
Miracle Kalu
How we cut LCP from 4.5s to under 2.5s on a Next.js 16 editorial site
Fixing a 4.5s LCP on a Next.js 16 editorial site. We replaced a video player with a facade, fixed server rendering, and tuned Cloudflare caching. Lighthouse rose from 79 to 90s.
Miracle Kalu
Event-Driven Architecture in Production: Lessons from a High-Throughput Order Pipeline
Real-world lessons from migrating a monolithic order processor to an event-driven pipeline handling millions of events per day.
Miracle Kalu
Custom Shopify Themes vs Pre-Built Templates: What Your Business Actually Needs
Should businesses invest in a custom Shopify theme or start with a premium template? This article breaks down the real tradeoffs beyond marketing hype.
Miracle Kalu
How I Reduced LCP from 5s to Under 1 Second on a 10M-User Platform
A practical breakdown of how we reduced Largest Contentful Paint from over 5 seconds to under 1 second on a high-traffic platform serving millions of users monthly.
Miracle Kalu