@valyala i still think about this paper almost every time i profile something. the insight that holds up best is that prefetchers are simple pattern matchers. regular strides = free throughput, pointer chasing = you lose 10x. most optimizations are just memory access games in disguise
@Halmsy@valyala Go compiler is pretty decent.
In a policy engine, I recall an optimization i had of storing and passing uint32s, instead of slices.
Going from a 32byte struct to 16bytes. yielded better throughput, due to lots of small 'expr' objects fitting into cache lines.
@Halmsy@valyala I rewrote the evaluator in a data oriented fashion. Using arenas of slices and uint32{blockId, idx, size}.
As you can imagine, I had more code to manage the arena. Employed linear allocation to process the request, n dumped the slices when done.
Good documents with AI agent skills are indistinguishable from good documents for human users.
Write clear, concise and accurate docs for your products, so both humans and AI agents could benefit from them.
From June 1st, I will be heading the engineering and technical team of a health startup based in Lagos Nigeria (presently worth $20 million in valuation)
I will be recruiting 10 people into the engineering team for the following positions.
QAs
Product Owners
AI Engineers
DevOps
Software Engineers (Full Stack)
That’s a lot of work for me to handle the recruitment process because we don’t have HR yet.
I can only handle the technical interviews.
Is there any recruitment agency you can recommend?
Very little about software engineering has changed over past last three months.
A great deal has changed about coding, not unlike when we saw the rise of high order programming languages and compilers, the difference today being that the number of developers is far larger and distribution channels are such that the velocity and breadth of change is far greater.
The entire history of software engineering is one of raising the level of abstraction.
I do not fear the rise of superintelligence.
I do, however, fear the rise of billionaires, organizations, and world powers who seek to use computing to maximize their power, influence, and control.
One of the most bizarre things I observed at Shell was how someone would spectacularly fail at a $$$ project, and instead of being demoted or fired, the opposite happens. They get transferred to manage another high-visibility project or even get a promotion!
It took me a long time to understand this but when I did, it changed everything for me.
You see, performance is measured in most companies on two prongs: the what and the how. The “what” is the actual result: did you or did you not strike oil after drilling that well? The “how” is the behavior you displayed during the entire process.
I was too focused on the actual results but I later found out that leaders rate behaviors higher. Hence, a project might fail in that it did not meet its stated objectives and yet the project manager might come out a winner because of how he carried himself through it all.
So what are the behaviors highly cherished by the higher ups?
First is daily updates. Forget weekly reports. Tell your boss and other key stakeholders about how the project is going at least once a day. When I say “tell”, I mean “tell.” Don’t rely solely on an email or a tool. Find a way to get in their face daily even if just for a min or two to verbally articulate the status of things. The pros at this put a standing 5-10 min meeting on their calendars and they come prepared to discuss the highlights and issues that need addressing. Which leads me to the second point.
Second, involve your superiors in solving the problem. Don’t form James Bond or Jackie Chan, trying to do it all alone. Any issue that will lead to a delay or cost overrun or any other wahala should be brought up asap to be discussed. Much easier to do if you talk with them daily. It is hard for them to blame you on the outcome of a project they have been integral to.
Third, conduct a “lessons learned” session where you perform an autopsy on the dead project. Share these lessons far and wide. You will be hailed as a sage. Suddenly you are now the guy helping the company become better by spreading wisdom gained from the school of hard knocks. This act alone has landed many people their promotion.
Bottom line: you can secure victory from defeat. The high flyers in your company do it all the time. If the project succeeds, they win. If the project fails, they win.
Be like them.
This is not the year of writing an AI agent. This is the year of writing small command line utilities that do a thing really really well and then telling an agent about them
I’m seeing some hot takes that AI assisted coding means that you don’t have to be technical anymore. That’s only gonna last you until the first database migration, or the first security issue, or the first cloud migration, or the first scale out, or the first major regression, or the first refactor that ends in slop. I am finding that I’m learning more and I have to be as technical or more technical than ever before to get the kinds of high-quality output that I expect of any code, regardless of whether it comes from my fingertips or someone else’s - including an AI.
Whether your source comes from open source libraries, your own hands, or an AI via your clever prompt, there is exactly one responsible person for the output. That is you.
I never want to be accused of gatekeeping AI assisted programming, as non-technical people can get a lot of interesting work done. Until they hit a wall, and it’s gonna surprise them how quickly they either need to get technical, or get a technical person to help untangle the mess they’ve made.
The art and science of programming is taking intent and turning it into shipping products. I will never blame an AI - nor should you - for bad output. Own the code that you ship.
Performance Hints
Over the years, my colleague Sanjay Ghemawat and I have done a fair bit of diving into performance tuning of various pieces of code. We wrote an internal Performance Hints document a couple of years ago as a way of identifying some general principles and we've recently published a version of it externally.
We'd love any feedback you might have!
Read the full doc at: https://t.co/jej95g236P
@valyala@asmah2107 ^This is the answer.
Building products with anticipation of small bits of outage due factors beyond your control has an outsized savings on your engineering capital.
For rare n brief blips, it is significantly cheaper to say "sorry, we'll be back in 1min" than added complexity.
10 best Go resources in my bookmarks. Read just one and you’re in good shape:
1. Go Concurrency Rocks: https://t.co/42LEBEsHjN
2. Go Cookbook: https://t.co/fswwA2rkOV
3. 100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them: https://t.co/gFIMP7wuRZ
4. Practical Go Lessons: https://t.co/cIfWrUPihL
5. Common Performance Patterns: https://t.co/z1cFIedfAM
6. Practical Networking Patterns: https://t.co/AA3leNCvU8
7. Learn Go with Tests: https://t.co/BVrbzyWSOK
8. Guide to Go Profiling, Tracing and Observability: https://t.co/hqLeafvPUS
9. Go Class: https://t.co/LRI9n99gA9
10. Go Roadmap: https://t.co/PQHfL3SQLT
Bonus:
11. Go at VictoriaMetrics series: https://t.co/vlhtpvjWxF
12. Go Practical Tips (by me): https://t.co/KyVXYi1jYm
Every time I dip a toe into anything remotely political here, I’m reminded why I try to avoid it.
A few lessons seem lost, so…my personal favorites:
1) The world is almost never “Black & White”. It’s almost exclusively varying shades of grey.
2) There are no absolute heroes or villains. It just depends on who you’re talking to.
3) “Truth” is absolute & real, but humans overwhelmingly have no idea what it is, which makes “The Truth” fluid & malleable. I’m not immune.
4) Humans crave a purpose & tribe. They’ll adopt anything that offers it to them, no matter how bad the idea. They will ignore / attack evidence that threatens either.
5) Nothing is purely good, or purely bad. Everything has second & third order consequences & it can all be spun.
6) Information & knowledge is power. Control those & you control the majority.
7) Those outside of power will seek to attain it, and the ends often justify terrible means.
8) Those with power will seek to consolidate & expand it, and the ends often justify terrible means, but they are *usually* more constrained than those outside of power.
9) “Power” comes in many forms & is poorly understood by most, even as most spend the majority of their day vying for it.
10) Life isn’t a “Star Wars” movie, and the good guys don’t always win; history looks that way because the winners write the history.
11) Losers aren’t morally superior by virtue of having lost, and their last counter-attack is to make themselves appear as innocent victims.
12) Ordered civilization is fragile; empires can fall in a single generation. When the food deliveries stop, it all crashes down.
13) Everyone is lying to some extent. Some more than others, but everyone, including me…see rule #3.
14) The best way to lie is to lie by omission, leaving out facts that are inconvenient. You can then make a claim of a simple mistake if caught.
15) Emotion is the most effective means of manipulation. Anger, fear, empathy & guilt are particularly effective. They can be weaponized.
16) Those who cry loudest are the ones who intrinsically understand rule #15.
17) Simple, one-word labels that invoke strong emotions, which you can apply to opponents, are highly effective at achieving rule #15.
18) Create Zealots of your followers & you won’t have to personally show up on the battlefield or explain your inconsistencies & hypocrisy. They’ll do it for you.
19) When evenly equipped & led, God is always on the side of the bigger Battalion.
20) Zealots get slaughtered; on the battlefield quickly if they lose, one by one at the hands of their leaders if they win.
21) Politicians understand all of these ideas, and rarely go into politics “for the people”. They go into politics for power, ego & money. Yes, your favored politicians, too. They are *not* smarter than you, they just understand the dynamics.
22) There is always something worse. The choice is frequently between the lesser of two evils.
23) Choosing the lesser of two evils sometimes leads to a worse long-term outcome.
24) Perceived moral superiority does not protect from hunger, thirst or violence; in some circumstances, it makes an easy mark for those who do not share the same convictions.
25) No amount of cleavage ever shows up in a selfie by accident.
Hope you’ve enjoyed some of the guidelines I try to call on. Remember, it’s just my opinion & I could be wrong!
Back to airplanes & food….
That was recklessly deadly.
So many things questions here.
- hard to imagine this being accidental with such thrust.
- the fact, someone was already recording hints prior commotion.
@CaptainArinze Have you seen this?
SAFETY BREACH: NCAA SUSPENDS VALUEJET PILOTS
The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) confirms that it has received reports concerning a serious breach of aviation safety protocols by a ValueJet pilot at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja (Domestic Terminal) on Tuesday, August 5, 2025.
Preliminary information indicates that the pilot in question commenced departure procedures from the designated bay without adhering to the mandatory pre-departure clearance protocols.
This reckless action endangered the safety of ground personnel and other airport users, contravening established civil aviation regulations and international safety standards.
The NCAA views this incident with utmost seriousness.
Consequently, the Authority has taken immediate enforcement action by suspending the licences of the pilot, Captain Oluranti Ogoyi, and the co- pilot, First officer Ivan Oloba with immediate effect.
This suspension will remain in place pending the conclusion of a full investigation into the incident.
The Authorty hereby reaffirms all stakeholders of its commitment to safety.
Signed:
Michael Achimugu
Director, Public Affairs and Consumer Protection.
In November 2022, while campaigning in Delta State, the then APC Presidential Candidate, Bola Tinubu, now the President, berated the other Presidential Candidate (Peter Obi), he was ashamed to call his name, saying "Na statistics we go chop all I want is to put food on the table of Nigerians”.
Now 2 years into his 4-year tenure, Nigeria is classified as one of the hungriest nations in the world with millions of Nigerians not knowing where their next meal will come from.
President Tinubu is now overfeeding Nigerians with wrong Statistics from wrong unemployment figures, wrong inflation figures, and now GDP rebasing, all to put a positive spin on our deteriorating economic and household conditions.
Governance is not a rocket science, it's not a gamble, like I have always reiterated, it requires sincerity of purpose, character, competence, capacity and compassion.
A new Nigeria is POssible. -PO