Talim

CS Engineer.
Building distributed systems with Go.
Learning databases from first principles.

[Talim @talimbuilds]

🧵I took my from-scratch Redis server (in Java) from 1,200 ops/s → 83,000 ops/s (+70x) using flame graphs. No magic. Just profiling and fixing the real bottlenecks.

Here's exactly what I found:

[Talim @talimbuilds]

wrote about building a distributed task queue in Go + PostgreSQL a few days ago.

@SinghDevHub shared it, it showed up on daily dev. now it ranks when you search “distributed task queue in Go”.

got 80+ followers on X, 17 on Medium, 6 GitHub stars.

so happy rn. back to building

[Talim @talimbuilds]

wrote about building a distributed task queue in Go + PostgreSQL a few days ago.

@SinghDevHub shared it, it showed up on daily dev. now it ranks when you search “distributed task queue in Go”.

got 80+ followers on X, 17 on Medium, 6 GitHub stars.

so happy rn. back to building

[Talim @talimbuilds]

@shrvniverse I'm on the same boat, graduating in 2027. I'm trying to figure this out too. Mass applying to job/internships is definitely not working for me.

[Talim @talimbuilds]

@SinghDevHub For anyone who wants to read the full article, here's the link: https://t.co/1GZbGetYyV

[Talim @talimbuilds]

@SinghDevHub Thank you, really appreciate you taking the time to read it! I learned a lot building it, especially from the benchmarking and the Postgres implementation. Glad the write-up was useful.

[Talim @talimbuilds]

@Kshitij_Shahi55 @Anishdotcom repo: https://t.co/Nm2iW2gNG6

blog: https://t.co/1GZbGetYyV

[Talim @talimbuilds]

MIT 6.5840 update

Read the fault-tolerant VMs paper and sat through Lecture 4 (primary-backup replication).

Next up: Go memory model reading.

[Talim @talimbuilds]

MIT 6.5840 Lab 2 done. Lock works over the unreliable KV client.

All lock1 tests passing (including many clients + unreliable network).

[Talim @talimbuilds]

mapreduce, gfs, fault-tolerant vms, then building a task queue with heartbeats

yeah i can’t hear that word normally anymore

[Talim @talimbuilds]

locking in to read this paper for the next lecture of MIT distributed systems course.

[Talim @talimbuilds]

locking in to read this paper for the next lecture of MIT distributed systems course.

[Talim @talimbuilds]

MIT 6.5840 Lab 2 done. Lock works over the unreliable KV client.

All lock1 tests passing (including many clients + unreliable network).

[Talim @talimbuilds]

@gxjo_dev You're right brother, fundamentals are important to become a good engineer

[gxjo @gxjo_dev]

learn programming to understand how computers work, solve problems, break down complex systems, and build things.

learn the fundamentals. data structures, algorithms, databases, networking, distributed systems, operating systems, etc.

because when you actually understand these things, llms become way more useful. you can let them write a huge chunk of the code while you focus on what actually matters: what to build, how to build it, why it should be built that way, and whether the shit it generated is actually correct.

be a good engineer.

[Talim @talimbuilds]

spent way too long getting command parsing working in C for the codecrafters shell challenge

single quotes, double quotes, backslash escapes… all the little edge cases

C strings make you earn it every time

[Talim @talimbuilds]

@AtharvMixraw this is basically the path i’m on rngo + postgres, then diving into distributed systems with the mit labs + papers. the systems/networking/db fundamentals feel like the real multiplier

[Talim @talimbuilds]

@sankitdev building it yourself and then calling "wtf this is free?". pure aura farming bro. btw thanks for this, this is a good one

[Talim @talimbuilds]

@func25 i've read your map blog too sir. totally worth it

[Talim @talimbuilds]

@avrldotdev this is exactly why i’m doing the mit distributed systems labs + reading the papers. did the first two labs by hand + lot of debugging and learned way more than i expected. i'm going to finish this properly

[Talim @talimbuilds]

@gxjo_dev yes bro, competition is already so much

[Talim @talimbuilds]

@gxjo_dev Yeah. I've been doing the MIT distributed system course, and codecrafters shell challenge in C, i'm doing these without AI.

[Talim @talimbuilds]

@CodeWithAmann Linux for sure. Installing it was best decision i ever made