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Software Letters

Sharing insights about Software engineering, Design patterns, AI applications and NoCode tools.

Written by

Houssem BEN SLAMA

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SQS

SL#39 - Make Your Serverless Stack Observable—Before It Breaks

Oct 15, 2025

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4 min read

SL#39 - Make Your Serverless Stack Observable—Before It Breaks

Tracing async workflows, debugging across queues, and the metrics that actually matter—an advanced guide for serverless teams.

Houssem BEN SLAMA

AWS

SL#35 - Building a Serverless ETL Pipeline with AWS Glue: Integrating DynamoDB, S3, and OpenSearch

Aug 3, 2025

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7 min read

SL#35 - Building a Serverless ETL Pipeline with AWS Glue: Integrating DynamoDB, S3, and OpenSearch

AWS Glue is a fully managed ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) service designed to simplify data integration. It automates much of the effort in building, maintaining, and running ETL jobs by providing a serverless environment, built-in transformation logic, and native integration with other AWS services like S3, DynamoDB, and OpenSearch.

Houssem BEN SLAMA

DDD

SL#33 - Understanding the C4 Architecture Model: A Detailed Breakdown

Oct 3, 2024

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12 min read

SL#33 - Understanding the C4 Architecture Model: A Detailed Breakdown

Adapting the C4 Model for Serverless, Domain-Driven Design (DDD), and Event-Driven Architecture (EDA)

Houssem BEN SLAMA

Data-lake

SL#19 - Unleashing the Power of Real-Time Data: A Comprehensive Guide to Apache Kafka

Jul 2, 2024

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9 min read

SL#19 - Unleashing the Power of Real-Time Data: A Comprehensive Guide to Apache Kafka

Understanding Apache Kafka’s Architecture, Benefits, and How It Outperforms Other Data Platforms

Houssem BEN SLAMA

Kubernetes

Jun 5, 2024

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10 min read

SL#15 - Essential kubectl Commands: The Top 100 You Must Know for Effective Kubernetes Management

From Basic Operations to Advanced Techniques

Houssem BEN SLAMA

Containerization

SL#14 - Kubernetes and Docker: Revolutionizing Container Orchestration

Jun 4, 2024

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9 min read

SL#14 - Kubernetes and Docker: Revolutionizing Container Orchestration

Unleashing the Power of Containerization and Orchestration for Modern Applications

Houssem BEN SLAMA

SL#121 - The Strangler Fig: You Don't Rewrite a Legacy System, You Outgrow It

The rewrite plan sounds clean and fails most of the time. The strangler fig replaces a system one route at a time while it keeps earning money. Here is the routing layer, the data problem nobody mentions, and the verification trick that makes cutover boring.

Houssem BEN SLAMA

Tutorial

Oct 10, 2026

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11 min read

SL#120 - Build a Stateless MCP Server With a Human Confirmation Gate: No Sessions, No initialize, Under 200 Lines of Node

We will build an MCP server for the 2026-07-28 spec revision that pauses a risky tool call, asks the user to confirm, and resumes without remembering anything between requests. Plan for 60 to 90 minutes.

Houssem BEN SLAMA

EBS

Oct 10, 2026

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9 min read

SL#118 - AWS Services (14/120) - Amazon EBS: gp3 vs io2 vs st1, the IOPS and Throughput Contract, and a Volume Swap You Can Measure

A definition-first reference to Amazon EBS, plus a runnable boto3 build: a gp3 volume, a fio baseline, a live Elastic Volumes change of IOPS and throughput, and a second measurement that shows what you bought.

Houssem BEN SLAMA

Tutorial

Oct 9, 2026

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9 min read

SL#117 - AWS Services (13/120) - Amazon S3 Tables: Managed Iceberg as a Bucket Type, and the Maintenance Knobs You Should Set on Day One

A definition-first reference to S3 table buckets, plus a runnable boto3 build: a table bucket, a namespace, an Iceberg table, deliberately small writes from Athena, and a maintenance configuration you can inspect. Plan for about 45 minutes.

Houssem BEN SLAMA

S3 Glacier

Oct 8, 2026

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9 min read

SL#116 - AWS Services (12/120) - Amazon S3 Glacier: Archive Tiers, the Retrieval Bill Nobody Models, and a Restore You Can Time

A definition-first reference to the three S3 Glacier storage classes, plus a runnable boto3 build: an archival lifecycle rule, a Bulk restore with a timer, and a cost model you can run before you archive anything. Plan for about 30 minutes of hands-on time, plus a few hours of waiting.

Houssem BEN SLAMA

Web Development

Oct 7, 2026

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6 min read

SL#115 - Your Open Graph Image Route Is an Interpreter. Next.js Just Showed What Happens When You Feed It Strings.

Next.js shipped two security releases in eight days, and the nastiest bugs lived in image routes. Here is the pattern behind them, and the one-hour audit it suggests for your own app.

Houssem BEN SLAMA

design_patterns

Oct 7, 2026

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7 min read

SL#115 - API Gateway and BFF: One Front Door Is a Decision, Not a Default

A gateway gives your clients one address. A BFF gives each client its own backend. Most teams need the first, think they need the second, and build the wrong one in the wrong place.

Houssem BEN SLAMA

Oct 7, 2026

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9 min read

SL#114 - AWS Services (11/120) - Amazon S3: Strong Consistency, Eleven Nines, and the Request Bill Nobody Models

The definition, the cost model, the limits, and a versioned bucket with lifecycle that you build and cost out to the cent.

Houssem BEN SLAMA

EC2 Auto Scaling

Oct 6, 2026

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9 min read

SL#113 - AWS Services (10/120) - Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling: Target Tracking, Warm Pools, and the Forecast You Should Run Before You Trust It

A reconciliation loop, not a scaler: the definition, the limits that bite, and a build with target tracking, a warm pool, and predictive scaling in forecast-only mode.

Houssem BEN SLAMA

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