<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>Vikash Viraj</title><description>Writing about systems, distributed architecture, and production realities.</description><link>https://vikashviraj.dev/</link><item><title>Async Processing and Kafka Essentials</title><link>https://vikashviraj.dev/writings/async-processing-kafka-essentials/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://vikashviraj.dev/writings/async-processing-kafka-essentials/</guid><description>Event-driven architecture fundamentals, Kafka topics and partitions, producer-consumer patterns, consumer groups, exactly-once semantics, and production-ready async processing.</description><pubDate>Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title>Caching and Their Issues at Scale</title><link>https://vikashviraj.dev/writings/caching-issues-at-scale/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://vikashviraj.dev/writings/caching-issues-at-scale/</guid><description>Multi-layer caching architectures, invalidation strategies, cache stampede mitigation, distributed consistency challenges, and production patterns for scaling cache systems.</description><pubDate>Sun, 04 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title>Communication Paradigms</title><link>https://vikashviraj.dev/writings/communication-paradigms/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://vikashviraj.dev/writings/communication-paradigms/</guid><description>Understanding synchronous vs asynchronous communication, request-response vs pub-sub vs event streaming, service-to-service patterns, and choosing the right paradigm for your use case.</description><pubDate>Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title>Practical Nuances Around Connection Pools and DB Proxies</title><link>https://vikashviraj.dev/writings/connection-pools-db-proxies-practical-nuances/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://vikashviraj.dev/writings/connection-pools-db-proxies-practical-nuances/</guid><description>Connection pool sizing, lifecycle management, DB proxy benefits, pool exhaustion scenarios, and production-ready patterns for database connectivity.</description><pubDate>Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title>Deployment Log Streamer</title><link>https://vikashviraj.dev/writings/deployment-log-streamer/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://vikashviraj.dev/writings/deployment-log-streamer/</guid><description>Real-time log streaming during deployments: architecture patterns, log aggregation, filtering and routing, multi-tenant isolation, and production-ready observability workflows.</description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title>Designing Online/Offline Indicator</title><link>https://vikashviraj.dev/writings/designing-online-offline-indicator/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://vikashviraj.dev/writings/designing-online-offline-indicator/</guid><description>Building reliable connection state indicators: heartbeat mechanisms, state machines, browser APIs, and handling network transitions gracefully in production systems.</description><pubDate>Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title>3 Mental Models and Building the Right Intuition</title><link>https://vikashviraj.dev/writings/three-mental-models-building-right-intuition/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://vikashviraj.dev/writings/three-mental-models-building-right-intuition/</guid><description>Three essential mental models for engineers: systems thinking, trade-offs and constraints, and abstractions. Build pattern recognition and develop engineering intuition.</description><pubDate>Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title>Parkinson&apos;s Law: Overcoming Work Time Bloat</title><link>https://vikashviraj.dev/thoughts/overcoming-work-time-bloat/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://vikashviraj.dev/thoughts/overcoming-work-time-bloat/</guid><description>Engineering productivity strategies: applying Parkinson&apos;s Law to optimize development workflows and team efficiency.</description><pubDate>Tue, 12 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title>Understanding first-order thinking</title><link>https://vikashviraj.dev/thoughts/understanding-first-order-thinking/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://vikashviraj.dev/thoughts/understanding-first-order-thinking/</guid><description>First-order thinking in engineering: balancing intuitive problem-solving with critical analysis for technical decision-making.</description><pubDate>Fri, 26 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item></channel></rss>