Piotr Sarna

most important lesson from years of distributed systems: keep everything on a single machine for as long as humanly possible

today in worb: internal performance insights for tuning the database to its limits 🤌 worb.cloud

#ScyllaDB Monster Scale Summit: the only place where you can learn how the Large Hadron Collider uses AI to track Higgs bosons, and at the same time get convinced by MongoDB folks to actually *not* distribute your analytics right away and start with a local comfy DuckDB setup 🤌 unique scylladb.com/monster-scale-…

New tech blogger interview - - this time we’re featuring @muratdemirbas, who’s about to publish his 800th (!) blog post writethatblog.substack.com/p/murat-demirb…

today in worb: crosshair feature across all charts, dynamic data loading, comparing multiple runs, smoothing, and more😌

February in writethat.blog 👇 Apache Iggy’s migration journey to thread-per-core architecture powered by io_uring // @ApacheIggy Look ma, no FUSE! // shameless self-promo Farewell, Rust // Dmitry Kudryavtsev Catching a caching bug at Readyset // Michael Victor Zink (@readysetio for @AntithesisHQ) How to build a distributed queue in a single JSON file on object storage // Dan Harrison (@turbopuffer) six thoughts on generating c // Andy Wingo Owning a $5M data center // @___Harald___ (@comma_ai) Learning from context is harder than we thought // Shihan Dou and Pluto Zhou (@TencentGlobal)

@nyanotech the best kind! CPU caches and bridges are so much more fun than the average network protocol

@sarna_dev i have bad news: a single server is also a distributed system

most important lesson from years of distributed systems: keep everything on a single machine for as long as humanly possible

... which is the main reason why github.com/psarna/worb keeps everything in SQLite by default, and DuckDB for the analytical script kiddies

today's most important update: these cool little histogram previews 🤌

... and since I embrace my domain addiction: worb.cloud

the UI requires a few hundred more iterations, but it already looks decent

I've been working on a single-process server compatible with wandb Python client. Key idea: store everything in SQLite or @duckdb. The web UI stays, but you also have a powerful SQL query engine at your disposal. Now also compatible with @tursodatabase! github.com/psarna/worb

fuss: if you like your OverlayFS without mounting writethat.blog/fuss.html

For our latest tech blogger interview, we’re featuring @gwenshap writethatblog.substack.com/p/gwen-shapira…

> I’ve never found it not useful to keep writing and sharing. Writing is a great way to coalesce one’s thoughts and prove out whether one has fully understood something. writethatblog.substack.com/p/robin-moffat…

📣 Deal of the Day 📣 Feb 11 Save 45% TODAY ONLY! Writing For Developers: Blogs that get read & selected titles: hubs.la/Q042CXPv0 Pragmatic methods for writing blogs, articles, and other technical pieces that stand out from the crowd! @c_a_dunlop @sarna_dev #techblogs #softskills This book is full of the practical tips, tricks, and techniques you need to translate the ideas floating around your head into content that’s clear and compelling. Authors Piotr Sarna and Cynthia Dunlop combine their differing perspectives as an engineer and professional writer to help you write compelling works. This isn’t a generic writing guide - from start to finish, the book is laser-focused on technical topics, writers, and audiences. It covers the entire writing process, from brainstorming, planning, and revising, to promoting your blog in ways that build reputation and generate further opportunities. The book also introduces seven popular patterns for modern engineering blogs - such as "The Bug Hunt", “We Rewrote It in X", and "How We Built It" - and helps you match these patterns with your ideas.

“Writing for Developers” is featured as @ManningBooks's deal of the day today. The 45% discount also applies to “A Damn Fine Stable Diffusion Book” by @willkurt and “Everyday Data Visualization” by @callmedeeray. mng.bz/Y7oK

Rather chuffed to get featured on @c_a_dunlop's blog (alongside many names who I've fanboi'd for years, giving me serious imposter syndrome 🙃)

New tech blogger interview -- this time, we’re featuring @rmoff writethatblog.substack.com/p/robin-moffat…

January in writethat.blog 👇 Building a movie recommendation agent // @novoselrok Why does SSH send 100 packets per keystroke? // @itseieio Replacing Protobuf with Rust to go 5 times faster // PgDog ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering // Alex Harri The design & implementation of sprites // @tqbf (@flydotio) Database transactions // @BenjDicken (@planetscale) Don’t fall into the anti-AI hype // @antirez See it with your lying ears // lcamtuf Finding and fixing Ghostty’s largest memory Leak // @mitchellh Databases in 2025: A year in review // @andy_pavlo Swapping two blocks of memory that reside inside a larger block, in constant memory // Raymond Chen (@microsoft) Writing mutexes from scratch in Go // @rybickic