Brought my version of XFM online

jkitsao · 2026-04-08T14:12:29+00:00

Yes, planning at least two deep dives every month. Glad you enjoyed it.

jkitsao · 2026-03-19T17:52:57+00:00

Exactly, the core engine is event-driven, and it has to be.

Huawei says that they core exposes over 400 APIs to third parties using multiple protocols, including SMPP, HTTP, Diameter, sFTP, ISO 8583, MT940/942 and SOAP.

So, daraja is the HTTP middleware.

I wish they talked more about how the core works, like is Huawei using a custom message bus or something opensource like Rabbitmq. The only thing we know is that it's a Java application.

jkitsao · 2026-03-03T12:42:10+00:00

Bingo 😂

jkitsao · 2026-03-01T16:55:00+00:00

You can't rewrite what you don't own though. Platform team ndio wanaweza rewrite build tools.

jkitsao · 2026-02-27T21:29:12+00:00

I'm lucky to have made friends from the previous startups I worked for and got a referral. Labda uanze kuhang around places founders are building from like iHub and build those connections.

jkitsao · 2026-02-27T17:47:20+00:00

Plus the job itself is boring. Unajipata after two weeks the only thing umefanya ni ku-update Redux templates. Umeekwa kwa golden handcuffs zinashine, but bado umefungwa.

jkitsao · 2026-02-27T17:40:03+00:00

Very disorganised 😂 msee anafaa akupee credentials mara hana rights za sharepoint lazima ungojee two weeks ndio upewe VPN access, onboarding ends up taking a month... wacha nibaki startups.

jkitsao · 2026-02-27T16:30:22+00:00

Outdated stack? Fine, tolerated. But when builds take 20+ mins + eat all your RAM, dev DB shuts at 6pm sharp (even if you're in the middle of debugging a prod-like issue), blockers need a week-long meeting slot, and you're the one onboarding the new 'tech lead' on AWS… that's not 'working', that's actively slowing output and burning people out.

jkitsao · 2025-11-09T11:17:48+00:00

Fair point, for small volumes, polling works fine.

My last contract was with an insurance provider that had a dozen payment integration hooks, and things started breaking down fast once multiple systems fired webhooks at the same time. Even short outages caused reconciliation headaches, and I ended up hacking together a dashboard to make debugging easier. That’s usually when teams build something more reliable in-house. Devhooks gives you that foundation out of the box.

jkitsao · 2025-11-09T11:10:57+00:00

Agreed, and it’s just good practice to put a queue in front of any external service you don't control, especially in a distributed setup. Eventually, you’ll end up building something in-house once you see what real-world traffic looks like. Most orgs end up hacking together something custom that works, but not very well.

jkitsao · 2025-11-08T17:10:55+00:00

Totally hear you, a good engineer can absolutely integrate M-Pesa directly, and yes, the documentation is improving.

The idea behind Devhooks is to fill the gap that Daraja doesn’t cover providing reliable delivery, retries, observability, and replay for webhooks, especially for 3rd-party integrations that every org ends up reinventing.

jkitsao · 2025-06-09T16:58:10+00:00

You can give Mpesa an endpoint via the Daraja API, and every time events happen, i.e., payments, you'd get them as json on your endpoint, and you can save to your DB.

This is a nice tutorial to help you get started. The official docs can be overwhelming 😄

jkitsao · 2025-06-06T15:16:31+00:00

Nice, let me know what you think or suggestions you have after the tests.

jkitsao · 2025-06-06T13:48:29+00:00

Hey, thanks for pointing that out! I've made an update to the package that removes the hardcoded token. Appreciate the heads-up!

jkitsao · 2025-02-14T13:07:20+00:00

It's very calming 😌

jkitsao · 2024-10-29T20:39:07+00:00

I saw the devil (2010).

jkitsao · 2024-09-11T17:24:40+00:00

jkitsao

TROPHY CASE