YOUSSEF JAD | THE DIGITAL PORTER http://localhost:1313/ Recent content on YOUSSEF JAD | THE DIGITAL PORTER Hugo en-us Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Fuzzy Arabic Search Without Elasticsearch: Solving التشكيل, الألف, and المد in PostgreSQL http://localhost:1313/posts/fuzzy-arabic-search/ Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/posts/fuzzy-arabic-search/ You need fuzzy Arabic search but don’t want to introduce Elasticsearch. PostgreSQL can do it—but Arabic diacritics, character variants, and multi-schema operator issues will fight you every step of the way. Here’s how to win. I Lost My Mother. A Video Game Helped Me Carry the Weight. http://localhost:1313/posts/death-stranding-grief/ Sat, 02 May 2026 02:20:00 +0300 http://localhost:1313/posts/death-stranding-grief/ I don’t think grief works that way — you don’t pass it, you carry it. Some days the weight is manageable. Most nights it isn’t. Just start. Then — 'Here we go.' 😄 http://localhost:1313/posts/just-start-blogging/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/posts/just-start-blogging/ Ah, the nightmare of selecting a blogging system — too many choices. Should I get a domain? Should I custom build it? Overthinking is killing me, and overengineering is right around the corner, turning my weekend into a nightmare. My AI coding agent is hallucinating. Here is the road to fix it. http://localhost:1313/posts/ai-agent-hallucinations/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/posts/ai-agent-hallucinations/ As a Tech Lead, my day is a constant battle of context-switching. In this era, we have the Power of Thanos in our hands with LLMs and AI Agents. But that power is a double-edged sword. The main enemy? Hallucinations. Stop Killing Your Database Performance: The Magic of Functional Indexing in MySQL http://localhost:1313/posts/functional-indexing/ Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/posts/functional-indexing/ In the intricate realm of backend architecture and database optimization, an index is your best weapon for accelerating data retrieval. Most developers know the basics of indexing, but what happens when your perfectly indexed query suddenly betrays you and executes a Full Table Scan? You're Paying a Huge Performance Tax on Your JSON Columns. Here's the One-Line Fix. http://localhost:1313/posts/json-virtual-columns/ Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/posts/json-virtual-columns/ You stored it in JSON for flexibility. That flexibility is now costing you full table scans on every filter. Virtual columns are the escape hatch you didn’t know existed. Scope Creep: How Projects Die in Silence http://localhost:1313/posts/scope-creep/ Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0300 http://localhost:1313/posts/scope-creep/ The meeting started at 2 PM. By 2:15, your 8-week project became a 12-week project. Nobody called it out. Nobody documented it. It just… happened. This is scope creep. It doesn’t arrive with a bang. It arrives in whispers.