Brian Mehrman

Diagram Builder

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

Diagram Builder is an open-source code visualization platform built to make large codebases navigable. It parses repositories into a dependency graph, renders them in both 2D and 3D layouts, and exports to multiple formats.

What It Does

Repository parsing — scans source files and builds a typed dependency graph of modules, classes, and functions
2D and 3D layouts — force-directed and radial-BFS algorithms render the graph at different levels of abstraction
Semantic tiered views — zoom from architecture-level down to individual module dependencies
Export — outputs to JSON, SVG, and image formats for documentation and diagramming tools

How It Was Built

Built using an agent-driven development workflow with Claude Code and the Anthropic SDK. Most of the core graph logic and Three.js rendering pipeline was developed through iterative agent sessions, with human oversight on architecture decisions and API design.

On-Demand Kubernetes Test Environments

Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

Basis Technologies ran shared long-lived integration environments. Engineers queued up, stepped on each other’s changes, and environment contention was a constant source of delays. Setting up a fresh environment could take days — sometimes weeks if infrastructure issues arose.

The Solution

I designed and led the build of an on-demand full-stack environment system on AWS EKS. Each environment runs the full platform stack: application services, data warehouse, event streaming, and persistent storage.

Company-Wide CI/CD Pipeline Standard

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

Engineering teams at Basis were building and maintaining their own CI/CD pipelines independently. There was no standard. Pipelines varied in quality, lacked consistent artifact management, and created ongoing maintenance burden for each team.

The Solution

I designed and authored the company-wide CI/CD pipeline standard — a 14-stage pipeline that became the default for all engineering services.

The 14-stage pipeline includes:

Source checkout
Dependency installation
Static analysis / linting
Unit tests
Integration test trigger
Docker multi-stage build
Image tagging (semantic versioning)
Security scanning
Artifact registry push
Staging deploy
Smoke tests
Production deploy gate
Production deploy
Post-deploy verification

Three deployment modes:

Ruby Code Blocks

Sun, 13 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0500

Code Blocks

Ruby code blocks are from the closure family

Ruby blocks are found throughout ruby. They are a powerful feature that allow you to pass snippets of code to enumerable methods (e.g. each, select, detect) as well as custom methods useing the yield keyword.

Blocks are nothing new, they use the computer science concept called closures. This concept was invented by Peter J. Landin in 1964. Closures were adopted by a version of a Lisp called Scheme in 1975.

Postgresql Record Locking

Sat, 23 Jun 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Database Lock Modes

Postgresql provides different locking modes to control concurrency within the database. Locks are automatically acquired by most Postgres commands to make sure tables are not dropped or modified while a command is executed. Locks can also be acquired manually for application level control.

ActiveRecord provides the interface between the Rails application and the database. Using ActiveRecord we can create these database level locks.

Setup

For the examples in this post we will be using the following data setup with a new Rails application.

Optimistic vs Pessimistic Locking

Tue, 29 May 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Data integrity is at risk once two sessions begin to work on the same records…

Martin Fowler

Optimistic Locking

Is a data access strategy where it is assumed that the chance of conflict between sessions is very low. Changes from one session are validated before being committed to the database.

Pessimistic Locking

This an opposing data access strategy assumes that conflicts between sessions is highly likely. Conflicts are prevented by forcing all transactions to obtain a lock on the data (record or table) before it can start to use it.

Git Tips

Tue, 06 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Git

Git is a free version control system designed for both small and large projects.

Tips

Rebase

Whenever I am working on a project with other developers I find that I need to rebase my feature branch with the common branch the rest of the team is using. This branch is usually called dev or ci.

$ git fetch

To make sure I have the latest branches I run a fetch to update all my local branches.

class_eval vs define_method

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Meta Programming

Having to write redundant methods can lead to hundreds of lines of code that can be hard to maintain. Meta programming provides us with tools that allow us to write code that writes its self.

Class Eval

class_eval opens the class and adds the method to the class itself. While this takes longer to define a method it puts the new method in the ancestor chain where it can be accessed quicker than if you used define_method.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

About Brian Mehrman — Platform Engineer, Architect, Mentor

Resume

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Resume — Brian Mehrman, Principal Software Engineer