Curated list

Books that changed how I architect systems

A handful of titles - short list, opinionated commentary, no affiliate nonsense.

12 booksResources

A short, opinionated list of books that shaped how I think about systems.

Most architecture books are verbose and outdated. Here are the ones that are neither.

The list

  • Domain-Driven Design — Eric Evans. Learn to think in systems.
  • Designing Data-Intensive Applications — Martin Kleppmann. Read the chapters on consistency and consensus.
  • The Art of Unix Programming — Eric Raymond. Old but timeless.
  • Building Microservices — Sam Newman. The chapter on testing is worth the book alone.

These are the ones I recommend to engineers I mentor. Read them in order.

More resources

Series · 4 parts

Building production voice agents that don't embarrass you

A walkthrough of the state machine, audio pipeline, and fallback design I use for Chasyr.

Updated Apr 2026
Tutorial

A pragmatist's guide to RAG (with code)

When RAG actually beats fine-tuning, when it doesn't, and how to tell which one you need.

Updated Mar 2026
Tutorial · Open source

AI-first PR review, codified

The exact prompts and CI workflows my team runs on every PR. Copy-paste, MIT licensed.

github.com/isheraz/ai-pr
Starter kit

Next.js × Supabase × Stripe - a deployable starter

The boilerplate I clone for every new SaaS bet. Auth, billing, RLS, AI hooks pre-wired.

github.com/isheraz/saas-kit
Talk · 32 min

AI-First Engineering Teams - Lahore Devs Meetup

How I restructured a 7-person team around AI tooling. Velocity numbers, cultural pitfalls, what worked.

November 2025
Lecture

From Pre-sales to Production: Solutions Architect, decoded

A guest lecture at COMSATS on how mid-career engineers can move into architecture roles.

COMSATS · Sep 2025
Panel

Voice Agents in Regulated Markets

Panel at AusFinTech 2026 - the legal, technical, and ethical scaffolding for AI that talks to customers.

AusFinTech · 2026
Stack

Tools I actually use, daily

My exact dev stack - IDE, terminal, AI agents, productivity hacks. Updated quarterly.

Updated Q2 2026
Reading list

AI-engineering reading list

Papers, blog posts, and talks I send every engineer I mentor on getting up to speed with AI.

40+ links
Career guide

Resources for engineers from Pakistan

Remote-friendly companies, visa sponsors, OSS scholarships - things I wish I had a decade ago.

Free