Blog
Thoughts on software, entrepreneurship, and everything in between.
Thoughts on software, entrepreneurship, and everything in between.
Got a project in mind, a question, or just want to chat? I would love to hear from you.
Send an EmailThoughts on building software, running a business, and everything in between.
Architecture decisions, incident write-ups, and post-mortems from production systems.
How HMD Pay charges nothing for payment processing, and why the model that everyone said was impossible has been running for over three years.
Performance optimisation patterns for Next.js 15 deployed on Vercel, from React Server Components to image optimisation and edge middleware
The complete TypeScript stack we use at HMD Developments in 2025, from Next.js to infrastructure, and why we chose every piece
Principles for API design that prioritise developer experience, from URL structure to error messages, learned from building payment and communication APIs
A practical framework for choosing between PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, and other databases, based on real decisions across 25+ projects
The architecture and technical decisions behind HMD Payments, a zero-fee payment platform supporting crypto, Papara, IBAN, and card transactions
How the HMD Developments team built a Discord invite tracking system that handles thousands of events per minute and detects fake accounts using behavioural heuristics
Practical MongoDB patterns for high-throughput applications, from schema design to indexing strategies, learned the hard way running Discord bots at scale
The architecture decisions behind Chat Guard, a Discord moderation bot serving 7,500+ servers and 15M+ users, built and maintained by the HMD Developments team