More Writing

More essays, field notes, and technical writeups.

Production War Stories

Backend Development

I Shipped a Race Condition That Double-Charged Customers (And Other War Stories)

The production bugs I actually shipped, how they failed in the real world, and what fixed them.

Nov 2025 8 min read
Pyscn tree-sitter analysis cover

Go

How Pyscn Analyzes Python with Go and tree-sitter

How Pyscn uses Go and tree-sitter to analyze Python code quickly for dead code, clone detection, and dependency insight.

Oct 2025 4 min read
Extended thinking interaction model diagram

AI Development

Extended Thinking in LLMs: A Mental Model for Developers

A practical mental model for extended-thinking LLMs, where slower reasoning changes interaction design and developer workflows.

Sep 2025 7 min read
AI features users actually want diagram

Product Development

AI Features Your Users Actually Want (Hint: Not Another Chatbot)

The AI features users keep rewarding in real products tend to be the ones that remove work instead of asking for another chat prompt.

Aug 2025 6 min read
LangChain production workflow diagram

AI Development

LangChain in Production: What the Tutorials Don't Tell You

What LangChain production work needs beyond tutorials: persistence, retries, validation, tracing, deployment, and cost control.

Jun 2025 5 min read
Claude Opus 4.5 context hierarchy diagram

AI Development

Claude Opus 4.5: When an AI Finally Gets It

Why Claude Opus 4.5 felt useful in real coding work because of stronger reasoning, context handling, and workflow fit.

May 2025 5 min read
FAQ bot RAG pipeline diagram

FAQ Bot

Building a Smarter FAQ Bot (with Gemini, RAG, and Structured Output)

A practical FAQ bot walkthrough using Gemini, RAG, ChromaDB, embeddings, and structured output for grounded answers.

Apr 2025 8 min read
Django ORM optimization diagram

Backend Development

Optimizing Django ORM Queries for Large Applications

Django ORM query fixes that improved billing performance by reducing relation loading mistakes, repeated writes, and inefficient loops.

Feb 2025 3 min read
Final year project planning diagram

FYP

Final Year Project (FYP) Guide for Students

A practical final year project guide for choosing scope, building steadily, avoiding weak ideas, and presenting work clearly.

Feb 2025 15 min read
Portfolio hosting cost breakdown cover

Hugo

What I Actually Spend on Running mhassan.dev: $8/year

The full cost breakdown of running a developer portfolio — what's free, what's paid, and what tradeoffs I made.

Feb 2025 2 min read