Things I've figured out in production, written down so you don't have to figure them out the hard way.https://ilzam.dev/enhttps://ilzam.dev/notes/how-to-choose-a-software-development-company/https://ilzam.dev/notes/how-to-choose-a-software-development-company/Eight questions to ask before you sign, including how they use AI, the red flags to look for in a proposal, and how to compare quotes fairly, even if you are not technical.Sat, 10 Oct 2026 17:00:00 GMTMVP & Development Costhttps://ilzam.dev/notes/c-level-ngoding-lagi/https://ilzam.dev/notes/c-level-ngoding-lagi/sudah benar yang punya cita - cita ternak ayam, ke sawah dan buka kolam leleMon, 14 Sep 2026 17:00:00 GMTFounder Decisionshttps://ilzam.dev/notes/process-theater-vs-shipping-code/https://ilzam.dev/notes/process-theater-vs-shipping-code/A project was 5 CRUD screens and 1 screen reading a materialized view. It still took tickets, story points, sprint ceremony, design review, and a pipeline before anyone wrote a line of code. Where that process actually comes from, and when it earns its place.Thu, 10 Sep 2026 17:00:00 GMTFounder Decisionshttps://ilzam.dev/notes/elasticsearch-prod-is-not-a-youtube-tutorial/https://ilzam.dev/notes/elasticsearch-prod-is-not-a-youtube-tutorial/Every YouTube tutorial makes Elasticsearch look easy. Then you run it in production. A node pegged its CPU and stopped answering queries, holding just 4.2 GB at 39% heap. It hadn't failed. The setup around it had: a schema never shaped for its queries, and storage that was never bounded. Here's what the tutorials leave out.Sun, 12 Jul 2026 17:00:00 GMTEngineeringhttps://ilzam.dev/notes/million-cctv-events-512mb-container/https://ilzam.dev/notes/million-cctv-events-512mb-container/A million camera events a day is only twelve a second. The real work is keeping one fragile NVR stream alive on the smallest container on a shared box. Why Go and the actor model fit the shape of the problem.Thu, 02 Jul 2026 17:00:00 GMTEngineeringhttps://ilzam.dev/notes/work-stealing/https://ilzam.dev/notes/work-stealing/Tokio, Go, and Java's ForkJoinPool all use work-stealing. I learned the algorithm by implementing the Chase-Lev variant from scratch in Rust, building up from load distribution to per-worker deques, CAS, and memory ordering.Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:00:00 GMTEngineeringhttps://ilzam.dev/notes/cursor-vs-claude-code-founder-pricing/https://ilzam.dev/notes/cursor-vs-claude-code-founder-pricing/Cursor pays Anthropic $650M/year while earning $500M. I break down pricing, trust, business model risk, and why I chose the $100/month option with no middleman.Sat, 14 Mar 2026 17:00:00 GMTAI-Native Developmenthttps://ilzam.dev/notes/gitnexus-codebase-rag-benchmark/https://ilzam.dev/notes/gitnexus-codebase-rag-benchmark/Does graph-indexed retrieval actually beat Claude Code's native codebase exploration? I ran the same architectural question both ways. $0.52 vs $0.39, 38 tool calls vs 12, and the KuzuDB internals that explain the difference.Fri, 13 Mar 2026 17:00:00 GMTAI-Native Developmenthttps://ilzam.dev/notes/ai-security-scanner-upstash-box/https://ilzam.dev/notes/ai-security-scanner-upstash-box/877,000 malicious packages and counting. I used Upstash Box to build a sandboxed AI security scanner that does both static and dynamic analysis.Wed, 11 Mar 2026 17:00:00 GMTAI-Native Developmenthttps://ilzam.dev/notes/how-to-build-startup-website-2026/https://ilzam.dev/notes/how-to-build-startup-website-2026/WordPress, Webflow, Next.js, or Astro? A real comparison, and how this site was actually built.Sat, 07 Mar 2026 17:00:00 GMTFounder Decisions