Arpit’s Newsletter

Arpit's Newsletter focuses on empowering software engineers by enhancing their learning capabilities, soft skills like active listening and extreme ownership, and technical skills including multi-threading, database management, and understanding complex systems. It also explores how companies like Shopify, Slack, Twitter, and Grab tackle scalability, data management, and service reliability.

Career Development Software Engineering Practices Databases Multi-threading API Design System Design Scalability and Performance Company Case Studies

The hottest Substack posts of Arpit’s Newsletter

And their main takeaways

Build a blameless culture or join one ⚡

196 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24

A blameless culture prioritizes learning over pointing fingers, fostering open error discussions.
Encouraging transparency and learning from failures helps build a blameless culture.
Shifting focus to 'What went wrong?' instead of 'Who made the mistake?' can promote a blameless culture.

Be an active listener at work ⚡

216 implied HN points • 28 Jan 24

🕹 Technology Engineering Algorithm Database Blogging Social media

Good engineers actively listen to understand the intent and context in meetings and discussions.
Asking the right questions clarifies ambiguities and prevents mistakes during development.
Active listening indicates high ownership mindset and gives necessary visibility in the organization.

What does extreme ownership really mean?

176 implied HN points • 04 Feb 24

💼 Business Career growth Engineering Leadership Education Technology

Extreme ownership means taking initiative and completing tasks without waiting to be told what to do.
Keeping everyone on the same page by proactively sharing progress and potential roadblocks is crucial for success.
Extreme ownership does not mean working twice as hard, but rather taking complete ownership and ensuring delivery of assigned tasks.

How to learn better and faster as a software engineer?

314 implied HN points • 21 Jun 23

🕹 Technology Learning Software Engineering Skills Career growth Courses

Curiosity is important for learning - register what interests you
Start learning right away, don't procrastinate
Focus on hands-on implementation to turn knowledge into practical skills

Datetime vs Timestamp datatype in databases - Which one is better?

176 implied HN points • 26 Apr 23

🕹 Technology Data Database Storage

In databases, you can use DATE, DATETIME, or TIMESTAMP data types to store date and time information, each with its own range of values.
DATETIME is best for storing static timestamps like appointment schedules, while TIMESTAMP is ideal for recording event timestamps with efficient storage and automatic timezone handling.
Consider factors like range, storage requirements, and use cases when choosing between DATETIME and TIMESTAMP for accurate and efficient temporal data storage.

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Will AI replace programmers?

117 implied HN points • 12 Jul 23

🕹 Technology AI Automation Programming Job Market Innovation

Throughout history, humans have used technology to simplify tasks and advance.
Job hierarchy sees automation start with mundane tasks and gradually move up.
AI is enhancing programming tasks but complete job replacement will be a gradual process.

Writing Good Multi-threaded Programs: Ensuring Correctness and Optimality

157 implied HN points • 05 Apr 23

🕹 Technology Programming Concurrency Optimization Best Practices

Ensuring correctness in multi-threaded programs is crucial; use locking and atomic instructions to prevent race conditions.
For optimality, ensure fairness among threads and efficient logic to avoid bottlenecks.
Divide workload evenly among threads or use a global variable to track progress for efficient results.

Thundering Herd Problem and addressing it with randomness

157 implied HN points • 22 Mar 23

🕹 Technology Networking Randomness Performance optimization

Thundering Herd Problem can overwhelm a server when multiple clients retry requests simultaneously.
Exponential Backoff introduces delays between retries to give servers breathing space and time to recover.
Adding randomness (Jitter) to retry intervals helps distribute retries and avoid coinciding, easing the server load.

Designing Idempotent Payment APIs

98 implied HN points • 15 Mar 23

🕹 Technology APIs Reliability Consistency Error Handling Database Management

Building idempotent APIs is crucial for processing requests exactly once.
Using idempotency keys helps in preventing duplicate processing in distributed systems.
Considerations like error handling and database storage are important when designing idempotent APIs.

Why do databases store data in B+ trees?

78 implied HN points • 29 Mar 23

🕹 Technology Databases Data Storage

SQL databases use B+ trees for efficient data operations like insert, update, find, and delete.
Storing data in sequential files can lead to inefficiencies for database operations.
B+ trees enable efficient CRUD operations and range queries with time complexity O(log n).

Why most TCP servers are multi threaded and how to build one from scratch

58 implied HN points • 17 May 23

🕹 Technology Networking Programming

TCP servers are multi-threaded for handling multiple connections efficiently
Building a TCP server from scratch involves listening to a specific port and accepting client connections
Implementing loops for continuous operation allows a server to handle multiple client requests indefinitely

How Shopify Balances Database Shards Without Downtime

58 implied HN points • 01 Mar 23

🕹 Technology E-commerce Database Management Systems Design

Shopify uses a distributed architecture with pods to handle a large number of shops sharing the same database.
Shopify balances database shards without downtime by moving shops between pods using a tool called ghostferry.
To ensure no downtime or data loss, Shopify follows three phases when moving a shop from one pod to another: batch copy, prepare for cutover, and cutover and updating the routing.

Slack's Email Classification Service

39 implied HN points • 08 Mar 23

🕹 Technology Software Data Implementation Systems Infrastructure

Slack has a feature to classify emails as internal or external during workspace invitations.
Slack uses heuristics like domain matching to classify emails, but may face challenges in diverse email domains.
Implementing a classification service involves maintaining a table with counts and eventual consistency for accurate classification.

How Twitter keeps its Search up and stable

3 HN points • 08 Feb 23

Twitter uses Elasticsearch (ES) for search because it provides speed, performance, and scalability.
Twitter built an Elasticsearch Proxy to ensure cluster efficiency, stability, and provide standardized access.
Twitter implemented an Ingestion Service and Backfill Service to manage massive data ingestion into Elasticsearch clusters.

How Grab stores and processes millions of orders every day

0 implied HN points • 22 Feb 23

🕹 Technology Data Management Database Design Data processing Scalability

Grab uses separate databases for transactional and analytical queries for efficiency
Design goals for database systems include stability, availability, and consistency
Grab uses DynamoDB for transactional data and MySQL for analytical data, with Kafka for synchronization