From Coursework to Real Systems

Coursework gave me fundamentals, but real systems gave me responsibility. In class, inputs are clean and success is defined for you. In production, ambiguity is the default.

When I started deploying apps, the questions changed. Auth failures, performance bottlenecks, and bad data pipelines were no longer theoretical. I had to ask what breaks first, how I observe it, and how I recover.

That shift made me think holistically. Logging, monitoring, and defensive design stopped being extras. Ownership made me a better engineer, even in academic projects.