Redowan's Reflections — Page 3
Recent writing
Longer articles, short notes, and things I'll probably need to look up again.
Browse the archiveHow to wrap a generated gRPC client behind a clean Go API so users never have to touch protobuf types or connection management directly.
Why the etcd codebase is my go-to reference for building gRPC services in Go.
Exploring the tradeoffs between wrapping errors at every return site versus wrapping only at boundaries, with no definitive answer - just honest tradeoffs for the kind of software I write.
Why your mutex wrapper should accept a closure for mutation instead of a plain value, with examples from the standard library and Tailscale.
How Go 1.20's WithCancelCause and Go 1.21's WithTimeoutCause let you attach a reason to context cancellation, plus a gotcha with manual cancel and the stdlib pattern that covers every path.
How Python and Kotlin provide structured concurrency out of the box while Go achieves the same patterns explicitly using errgroup, WaitGroup, and context.
Practical patterns for mocking in Go without external libraries. Learn to mock functions, methods, interfaces, HTTP calls, and time using only the standard library
Master shadow testing for large-scale system migrations. Learn to safely rewrite services by comparing outputs between old and new implementations.
Simplify Go error handling by consolidating validation and system errors. Learn when to return boolean vs error for clearer failure modes.
Test Go subprocesses with the re-exec pattern: spawn your test binary as a subprocess to emulate real command behavior reliably.
Apply SOLID's Interface Segregation Principle in Go with consumer-defined contracts. Learn why small interfaces and implicit implementation matter.
Master Go context keys with custom types, avoid collisions using empty structs, and learn accessor patterns for safe request-scoped values.
Organize Go tests with in-package, external _test packages, and integration tests. Learn white-box vs black-box testing conventions.
Organize Go subtests with t.Run nesting and parallel execution. Learn patterns for setup, teardown, and readable test hierarchies.
Organize Go apps by domain, not technology. Learn why models/controllers structure hurts and how bounded contexts create better separation.