Set a rough query budget per request in dev/test and alert when exceeded. This is a pragmatic way to keep performance regressions visible without requiring a full APM setup.

For Postgres search beyond trivial ILIKE, maintain a tsvector column and a GIN index. Update it via trigger or application logic. This keeps search fast and predictable even as your dataset grows.

I like optimistic UI for tiny interactions (like “star” or “follow”) because it makes the interface feel instant. The tradeoff is handling failure cleanly. I implement this with Stimulus: flip CSS + text immediately, then submit a Turbo request in the

Row-by-row inserts are painfully slow for big ingests. Postgres COPY is a great bulk-ingestion tool, and in Node you can stream into COPY using libraries like pg-copy-streams. The important part is validating before you stream, because once you’re in

Active Storage makes uploads easy; production makes them dangerous. Validate content type and size at the model layer, and keep the error messages user-friendly. This prevents large or unexpected uploads from blowing up costs and processing queues.

Factory Boy eliminates boilerplate in tests by generating model instances with sensible defaults. I use Sequence for unique values, SubFactory for foreign keys, and post_generation for many-to-many relationships. The Faker integration provides realist

Drag-and-drop reorder can be fancy, but the core is: user triggers a reorder action, server persists positions, and the UI updates. For simpler UIs, I skip drag-and-drop and use up/down buttons. Each click POSTs to a move_up action, updates position,

A modal that opens without focusing an input is a tiny annoyance that adds up. In Hotwire apps, modals often swap in via Turbo Frames, which means the DOM is injected after navigation. Stimulus is ideal here: attach an autofocus controller to the moda

A simple fixed-window rate limiter is often enough for endpoints like login, password reset, webhooks, or expensive searches. Use atomic Redis INCR + EXPIRE with a stable key and return remaining quota for UX.

Django provides built-in password reset views. I customize templates to match site design. The flow sends a secure token via email that expires after a timeout. I configure email backend and PASSWORD_RESET_TIMEOUT in settings. For better UX, I customi

Scheduling bugs are often time zone bugs. Persist times in UTC, accept user input in their zone, and convert explicitly. Keep conversions close to the boundary (forms/controllers).

Instead of sprinkling custom JS for notifications, I treat flash as UI state and render it via Turbo Streams. When a create/update succeeds, the controller responds to format.turbo_stream and the template uses turbo_stream.replace to swap the flash co