seclorum seclorum

What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining A Unicorn

Disclaimer: This piece is written anonymously. The names of a few particular companies are mentioned, but as common examples only.

This is a short write-up on things that I wish I'd known and considered before joining a private company (aka startup, aka unicorn in some cases). I'm not trying to make the case that you should never join a private company, but the power imbalance between founder and employee is extreme, and that potential candidates would

This document has moved!

It's now here, in The Programmer's Compendium. The content is the same as before, but being part of the compendium means that it's actively maintained.

Creating a redis Module in 15 lines of code!

A quick guide to write a very very simple "ECHO" style module to redis and load it. It's not really useful of course, but the idea is to illustrate how little boilerplate it takes.

Step 1: open your favorite editor and write/paste the following code in a file called module.c

#include "redismodule.h"
/* ECHO <string> - Echo back a string sent from the client */
int EchoCommand(RedisModuleCtx *ctx, RedisModuleString **argv, int argc) {

System Design Cheatsheet

Picking the right architecture = Picking the right battles + Managing trade-offs

Basic Steps

Clarify and agree on the scope of the system

User cases (description of sequences of events that, taken together, lead to a system doing something useful)
- Who is going to use it?
- How are they going to use it?

Orthodox C++

This article has been updated and is available here.

"Scar Tissues Make Relationships Wear Out"

04/26/2103. From a lecture by Professor John Ousterhout at Stanford, class CS142.

This is my most touchy-feely thought for the weekend. Here’s the basic idea: It’s really hard to build relationships that last for a long time. If you haven’t discovered this, you will discover this sooner or later. And it's hard both for personal relationships and for business relationships. And to me, it's pretty amazing that two people can stay married for 25 years without killing each other.

[Laughter]

> But honestly, most professional relationships don't last anywhere near that long. The best bands always seem to break up after 2 or 3 years. And business partnerships fall apart, and there's all these problems in these relationships that just don't last. So, why is that? Well, in my view, it’s relationships don't fail because there some single catastrophic event to destroy them, although often there is a single catastrophic event around the the end of the relation

	==========================
	How Software Companies Die
	==========================
	- Orson Scott Card

	The environment that nurtures creative programmers kills management and
	marketing types - and vice versa.

	Programming is the Great Game. It consumes you, body and soul. When
	you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into

	# Install QEMU OSX port with ARM support
	sudo port install qemu +target_arm
	export QEMU=$(which qemu-system-arm)

	# Dowload kernel and export location
	curl -OL \
	https://github.com/dhruvvyas90/qemu-rpi-kernel/blob/master/kernel-qemu-4.1.7-jessie
	export RPI_KERNEL=./kernel-qemu-4.1.7-jessie

	# Download filesystem and export location

	#define _GNU_SOURCE 1
	#include <sched.h> // sched_setaffinity
	#include <stdint.h>
	#include <stdio.h>
	#include <limits.h>
	#include <stdlib.h>
	#include <stdint.h>
	#include <pthread.h>
	#include <assert.h>
	#include <sys/time.h>

	#define _GNU_SOURCE 1
	#include <sched.h> // sched_setaffinity
	#include <stdint.h>
	#include <stdio.h>
	#include <limits.h>
	#include <stdlib.h>
	#include <stdint.h>
	#include <pthread.h>
	#include <assert.h>
	#include <sys/time.h>