4 posts tagged with "Engineering"

Most JWT tutorials show you a single token, a login route, and call it a day. Real projects need more: token refresh without re-login, forced password changes for new accounts, role-based access control that doesn't fall apart when requirements get weird.

I recently shipped the auth layer for a side project — the admin backend for a community RPG. Three roles (Admin, Game Master, Moderator), a nested permission tree covering player management and game content, and a forced password change flow for newly onboarded GMs. Here's what the implementation actually looks like in Fastify + Drizzle ORM.

I recently passed my probation period, and in a 1-on-1 my manager said, "I'd like you to be more proactive about exploring product issues."

That caught me off guard. I was writing code every day, fixing issues, and pushing projects forward. How was that still not proactive enough? It took me a while to understand what he actually meant.

Before 2023–2024, I still thought the traditional tech blog had real value. You could consolidate your notes, interview experiences, problems you'd encountered, traps you'd fallen into. A personal knowledge base that actually meant something.

But from mid-2025 onward, models started iterating faster and getting significantly stronger. Even Cursor — which I genuinely liked in early 2025 as an AI code editor — felt noticeably outclassed by Claude Code by the second half of the year. That's when I knew it was time to tear down the whole blog and rebuild it from scratch (hoping to preserve whatever value was still in there).

Some rough thoughts and reflections after completing the HexSchool Node.js Enterprise Course.