Dark Mode: Worth Building, or a Distraction From What Matters?
Dark mode looks like a small toggle but it's rarely a small job to do properly. Here's how I decide whether it's worth building for a given system.
Insights
Insights on business software and automation
Practical thinking on business systems, automation and software built around the way organisations actually work.
Laravel Forge vs Laravel Cloud: Which One Actually Fits Your Project
I use both Laravel Forge and Laravel Cloud on live projects. Here's the honest difference between them, and how I decide which one a project needs.
Why I Keep Building on Laravel, React, Tailwind and MySQL
A look at the stack I reach for on most projects, why boring and well-supported beats fashionable, and when I'd pick something different.
Soft Deletes Sound Simple Until You Actually Need Them
Adding a deleted_at column is easy. Making soft deletes actually work with uniqueness rules, relationships, restores, reporting and GDPR is a different job entirely.
Building an Audit Trail You Can Actually Trust
An updated_at column tells you something changed. It doesn't tell you who changed it, what it was before, or whether a person or a script did it. Here's what a proper audit trail looks like.
Idempotency Explained Without the Computer Science Lecture
A plain-English look at idempotency: the one question that tells you whether your software will double-charge, double-book or double-email a customer when something runs twice.
Queues Aren't Just for Scale: Why I Move Slow Work Out of HTTP Requests
Queuing background jobs isn't just for big apps handling huge traffic. It's how I stop a single slow email or API call from taking down a form submission for everyone.
Your Webhook Worked. So Why Did the Customer Get Charged Twice?
A webhook firing successfully isn't the same as your system handling it correctly once. Here's why retries and duplicate delivery cause double charges, and how to build handlers that don't care how many times an event arrives.
Why Payments Should Be a Ledger, Not a Balance Column
A single 'balance' column looks simple until two requests hit it at once, or a customer disputes a charge and asks where the number came from. Here's why credits, refunds and prepaid balances belong in a ledger.
Got a problem worth solving properly?
Tell me what's slowing your business down. The first conversation is free and straightforward, and it's with me, not a salesperson.
Or email me at josh@thackr.co.uk