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Werner Vogels on building scalable and robust distributed systems

Przemysław Alexander Kamiński · Raideur des doigts September 20th, 2025 marks exactly one year since I bought Roland’s FPX-30, 88-keys full sized digital piano. Being in my 4th decade of life I never taught myself any instrument, even though I own and dabble with many. In fact, while I’m unable to remember sounds or hear them in my head, it seems I have a rather good understanding what “sounds nice” that allows me to ad-hoc compose music.

Effective writing for software developers

A portfolio website for Bhargav. Software developer based in Berlin,Germany.

In my consulting work, I’ve worked with a wide range of developer-focused tools. WordPress, React, Vue, Next, HTMX, PHP, Python, Rails, Java, .NET, a variety of static site generators, and more. I can pretty confidently state that modern tools (render-all-the-things-in-JavaScript libraries like Vue and React) are worse than legacy approaches. Don’t get me wrong: npm install can be a much easier initial setup than trying to install a DB and connect a PHP install to it (but often, it isn’t).

As a software engineer, I often work on big tasks that require hours of continuous and focused work. However, we have plenty of meetings, colleagues asking us something in Slack, and lunch breaks. Add a colleague who comes to you and calls you for a cup of coffee if you work from the office. And usually, we don’t really have such a luxury as hours of uninterrupted time. Nevertheless, sometimes we catch the flow of productive and focused work at the end of the workday. Imagine you come up with an elegant solution to a problem you’ve been tackling all day, or maybe even the whole past week. You can’t wait to implement and test your solution. And of course, you are so driven by your idea that you decide to continue working despite your working day being over. “20 minutes more and I will finish it,” you think. Obviously, this is not the case; some edge cases and new issues will inevitably arise. You come to your senses only 2–3 hours later—tired, hungry, demotivated, and still struggling with your problem. You just wasted your evening, with nothing to show for it. Worse, you overworked and didn’t recover that night. Thus, you were already exhausted when you started working.

To cut things short, always use the easiest solution to solve a particular problem and once that solution does not work for the business anymore reassess wha...

I read to forget. Even when studying or working on papers for a PhD, I approach texts with the same mindset: I'm not a storage device that needs to save all ...

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When a pursuit becomes a drag, here's some questions to help you figure out why, and what to do about it.

Consider the resale value when buying something. You move from buying things, thinking that you'll own them forever, and that the price you paid is gone, to thinking they're more in rental mode until you resell them.

I've read numerous articles about renting versus buying and most dive into financial projections while completely missing the bigger picture.

The financial transactions database designed for mission critical safety and performance. - tigerbeetle/docs/TIGER_STYLE.md at main · tigerbeetle/tigerbeetle

Offline-first apps promise instant loading and privacy, but in practice, very few apps get offline support because getting sync right is surprisingly hard.

AI was supposed to empower junior developers. In reality, it has become a tool that makes seniors more valuable while exposing the gaps in software culture.

Designer, builder, and visual storyteller. Now building Huxe. Previously led design on NotebookLM and contributed to Google AI projects like Gemini and Search. Also shoot photo/video for brands like Coachella, GoPro, and Rivian.

Blog by Walid Dib featuring learning insights into game development with Godot, and building startups in the Middle East.

Supply chain attacks are malicious updates that sneak into open source code used by many apps. Here’s how we design Obsidian to ensure that the app is a secure and private environment for your thoughts.