Miguel Pinto — Backend systems consultant with 20+ years of experience in system architecture, cloud-native infrastructure, and backend development.https://lookatitude.com/https://lookatitude.com/blog/architecting-ai-powered-applications-from-prototype-to-production/https://lookatitude.com/blog/architecting-ai-powered-applications-from-prototype-to-production/A threat-model-first walkthrough of shipping LLM-backed features — prompt injection defenses, multi-provider failover, structured output, cost control, and the concurrency traps that melt AI services in production.Fri, 29 Aug 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseArchitectureBackendSecurityhttps://lookatitude.com/blog/implementing-zero-trust-security-in-modern-microservices/https://lookatitude.com/blog/implementing-zero-trust-security-in-modern-microservices/Service-mesh zero trust, in practice: SPIFFE identities, mTLS by default, Istio and Linkerd policy at the sidecar, network policies underneath, and the places where you still need app-level authorization.Fri, 22 Aug 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseSecurityArchitectureDevOpshttps://lookatitude.com/blog/building-real-time-data-pipelines-with-typescript-and-kafka/https://lookatitude.com/blog/building-real-time-data-pipelines-with-typescript-and-kafka/How I build type-safe, event-driven data pipelines using TypeScript and KafkaJS -- from schema validation to dead letter queues to exactly-once processing.Fri, 15 Aug 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseTypeScriptData EngineeringArchitecturehttps://lookatitude.com/blog/optimizing-go-performance-advanced-techniques-for-high-throughput-systems/https://lookatitude.com/blog/optimizing-go-performance-advanced-techniques-for-high-throughput-systems/Memory management, concurrency patterns, and profiling techniques that took my Go services from adequate to high-performance. Practical optimization, not premature optimization.Fri, 08 Aug 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseGolangPerformanceBackendhttps://lookatitude.com/blog/designing-resilient-microservices-patterns-for-fault-tolerance-in-go/https://lookatitude.com/blog/designing-resilient-microservices-patterns-for-fault-tolerance-in-go/Circuit breakers, bulkheads, retries, timeouts, and degradation — the fault-tolerance patterns that keep distributed Go systems alive when dependencies fail.Fri, 01 Aug 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseMicroservicesGolangArchitecturehttps://lookatitude.com/blog/modern-authentication-patterns-with-go-and-typescript/https://lookatitude.com/blog/modern-authentication-patterns-with-go-and-typescript/A threat-model-first walkthrough of JWT, OAuth2/OIDC, refresh rotation, and zero trust auth for Go services — with the mistakes that actually burn people in production.Fri, 25 Jul 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseSecurityGolangTypeScripthttps://lookatitude.com/blog/optimizing-kubernetes-resource-management-with-go-controllers/https://lookatitude.com/blog/optimizing-kubernetes-resource-management-with-go-controllers/Building Go controllers with controller-runtime to automate cluster operations — reconcile semantics, CRDs, watches, and the failure modes that actually burn production clusters.Fri, 18 Jul 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseKubernetesGolangCloud Nativehttps://lookatitude.com/blog/high-performance-data-processing-with-go-building-scalable-etl-pipelines/https://lookatitude.com/blog/high-performance-data-processing-with-go-building-scalable-etl-pipelines/A failure-model-first walkthrough of streaming ETL in Go — bounded concurrency, backpressure, context cancellation, poison records, and the mistakes that blow up memory under real load.Fri, 11 Jul 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseData EngineeringGolangPerformancehttps://lookatitude.com/blog/securing-microservices-authentication-and-authorization-patterns-in-go/https://lookatitude.com/blog/securing-microservices-authentication-and-authorization-patterns-in-go/Authorization in a service mesh — RBAC, ABAC, policy engines, SPIFFE service identity, and deny-by-default patterns for Go microservices without the panics and silent bypasses.Fri, 04 Jul 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseSecurityGolangMicroserviceshttps://lookatitude.com/blog/cloud-migration-strategies-refactoring-monoliths-to-microservices-with-go/https://lookatitude.com/blog/cloud-migration-strategies-refactoring-monoliths-to-microservices-with-go/An opinionated migration framework for strangling a Go monolith — threat model, dependency analysis, strangler-fig routing, database-per-service, and when not to migrate at all.Fri, 27 Jun 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseCloudGolangArchitecturehttps://lookatitude.com/blog/the-future-of-backend-development-ai-assisted-coding-with-go-and-typescript/https://lookatitude.com/blog/the-future-of-backend-development-ai-assisted-coding-with-go-and-typescript/An honest assessment of AI coding assistants for Go and TypeScript backend work — where they save real time, where they fall short, and how to integrate them without losing your edge.Fri, 27 Jun 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseAIDevelopmentProductivityhttps://lookatitude.com/blog/typescript-at-scale-managing-complex-frontend-architectures/https://lookatitude.com/blog/typescript-at-scale-managing-complex-frontend-architectures/Managing large TypeScript codebases without drowning in complexity — modular architecture, state management, and type system patterns that actually work.Fri, 13 Jun 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseTypeScriptFrontendArchitecturehttps://lookatitude.com/blog/building-llm-powered-applications-with-ollama-and-go/https://lookatitude.com/blog/building-llm-powered-applications-with-ollama-and-go/A practitioner's walkthrough of local LLM integration in Go with Ollama — structured extraction, RAG, and the production patterns that actually hold up under load.Fri, 06 Jun 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseAIGolangDevelopmenthttps://lookatitude.com/blog/infrastructure-as-code-from-manual-deployments-to-gitops-with-flux/https://lookatitude.com/blog/infrastructure-as-code-from-manual-deployments-to-gitops-with-flux/How I moved from manual kubectl applies to fully automated GitOps deployments using Flux CD — and why it changed everything.Fri, 30 May 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseDevOpsKubernetesInfrastructurehttps://lookatitude.com/blog/building-enterprise-grade-microservices-with-go/https://lookatitude.com/blog/building-enterprise-grade-microservices-with-go/The architecture patterns I rely on for building microservices that actually survive production — DDD boundaries, outbox-based events, gRPC, and the currency mistake almost everyone ships.Fri, 23 May 2025 03:00:00 GMTfalsefalseArchitectureGolangMicroserviceshttps://lookatitude.com/blog/get-your-geek-on-consumer-vs-enterprise/https://lookatitude.com/blog/get-your-geek-on-consumer-vs-enterprise/A decision matrix for consumer vs enterprise homelab gear — power draw, noise, ECC, IPMI, and what I'd actually buy given the workload.Tue, 23 May 2023 05:07:10 GMTfalsefalsehomelabhardwareEnterpriseserverhttps://lookatitude.com/blog/my-homelab-evolution-from-single-server-to-3-node-powerhouse/https://lookatitude.com/blog/my-homelab-evolution-from-single-server-to-3-node-powerhouse/How my homelab grew from one server to a 3-node cluster — the upgrades, mistakes, and lessons along the way.Mon, 10 Apr 2023 05:07:10 GMTfalsefalseGetting startedhomelabnetworkingciscoserverrackhttps://lookatitude.com/blog/creating-a-homelab/https://lookatitude.com/blog/creating-a-homelab/The hardware, networking, and rack setup behind my first homelab build — from Cisco switches to enterprise server racks.Fri, 02 Dec 2022 05:07:10 GMTfalsefalseGetting startedhomelabnetworkingciscoserverrackhttps://lookatitude.com/blog/getting-started-with-flux/https://lookatitude.com/blog/getting-started-with-flux/A practitioner's quickstart for Flux — bootstrap, repo layout, token hygiene, and the beginner mistakes I see most often.Wed, 24 Aug 2022 05:07:10 GMTfalsefalseGetting startedDevOpsKuberneteshttps://lookatitude.com/blog/getting-started-with-kind/https://lookatitude.com/blog/getting-started-with-kind/Spin up a local Kubernetes cluster in minutes using Kind — the fastest path to a dev-ready K8s environment.Wed, 24 Aug 2022 05:07:10 GMTfalsefalseGetting started