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David Jayatillake

@jayatillake.bsky.social
2.5K followers 612 following 942 posts

Writer @ davidsj.substack.com

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Reposted by David Jayatillake
Samuel Wong @samuelwong.bsky.social · 28/09/2025
How big should your data team be? Data teams are often oversized. A company of 200 people rarely needs 15+ data staff, usually 5% of org size is enough dataactionmentor.com/knowledge-ba...
dataactionmentor.com
How big should your data team be?
Founders and CEOs are wondering if their data function is bloated and if they should replace everyone with AI agents. Data Leaders are scrambling to defend why they need a 15-people data team in a 200...
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 28/09/2025
Try to find a non-traditional role that is more suited to a future where engineering is very cheap. If you have an idea, try build it yourself. The experience of trying to found is more valuable than employee experience now and even more so in the coming years.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
The amount you love someone is proportional to how often you Ghiblify their pictures.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
This week I look at agents. I think this is a new way to build where we don’t intentionally build code-based software. open.substack.com/pub/davidsj/...
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
BERT and ERNIE! 😂 tracking.tldrnewsletter.com/CL0/https:%2...
tracking.tldrnewsletter.com
China's biggest public AI drop since DeepSeek, Baidu's open source Ernie, is about to hit the market
Chinese internet search giant Baidu will open source its Ernie gen AI large language model as soon as this week, with uncertain consequences for the market.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
I don't usually share photos of my family on social media for good reason, but I'm happy to share these ones!
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
This post encapsulates how I feel about the current state of LLMs and doomers etc. Really great read: fly.io/blog/youre-a...
fly.io
My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts
My smartest friends have bananas arguments about LLM coding.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
So when I've attended Snowflake summit before, I've usually written a blog post talking about the new features released, etc. Is someone going to do that this year, given I didn't go? 😊 #datasky #databs
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Reposted by David Jayatillake
Anil Dash @anildash.com · 06/06/2025
It is possible to build machine learning systems which punch up instead of punching down.
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Reposted by David Jayatillake
rmoff 🏃‍♂️🫖🥓 @rmoff.net · 05/06/2025
Got a cool story about something in the data engineering space? You should 💯 submit it as a talk to Current 2025 in New Orleans 😁 Do it! Now! CfP is open until 15th June. sessionize.com/current-2025... (Pro-tip: you only need an abstract at this point; writing the talk can be later 😅) #dataBS
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
This is genuinely one thing you can rely on AI for.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
It was actually very impressive. Lots of stuff I want to try.
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Reposted by David Jayatillake
Mark Rittman @markrittman.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
At the London Data Practitioners Meetup with @pedramnavid.com @jayatillake.bsky.social @rittmananalytics.bsky.social and the London Dagster community
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
I also think people don’t use the tags as we have found each other. I almost exclusively use the popular with friends feed.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
It’s not but you don’t have to keep declaring ctes. May be able to have partial queries too.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
Theyre still here just quieter than at the start. More of them though
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 27/04/2025
Doctor’s orders 🫡
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
I still think this is the biggest prize in AI. If Siri could actually do most things you do on a phone manually... 9to5mac.com/2025/04/22/s...
9to5mac.com
Siri’s new boss is already making big internal changes, per report - 9to5Mac
Siri’s new boss at Apple, Mike Rockwell, has reportedly wasted no time making big changes internally to the people building its assistant.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Haha yes but he fits the bill.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
@petefein.bsky.social
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
I wonder what the limit difference between CSV and Parquet would be under real conditions, where most queries only need a tiny subset of large datasets. You could probably handle >petabyte datasets on that EC2 machine with good partitioning of Parquet or using Iceberg.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Well, if it works, the real engineers can tidy it up or more likely do nothing and talk about code standards.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
Has anyone tried Llama 4 Maverick yet? How big a machine does it need to run locally? @simonwillison.net
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
Looks like Nintendo became the best at console FPS.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Oh no! I’ve been enjoying bluesky for the data stuff but can imagine that it’s swung very radically left on other topics.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
@windsurfai.bsky.social
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
I've seen many blog posts and social posts by these supposed true artisans saying that they tried this method, and the output was subpar. Well, maybe it would have taken just as long if you had just written the code, but for the rest of us, we now have an option to build without you.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Once again, we've devised a derogatory name for something many of us are doing: "Vibe coding". Just like "Citizen Data Scientist", "Excel Data Analyst", and many other terms made to belittle by the supposed true artisans that came before. open.substack.com/pub/davidsj/...
open.substack.com
Vibe coder
Free like a puppy
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
yeah but was there coffee down there, and if so was it any good?
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Clickbench says @duckdb.org is a great analytics database www.mooncake.dev/blog/clickbe...
mooncake.dev
Clickbench says Postgres is a great analytics database
Postgres is now top 10 in Clickbench with pg_mooncake.
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Reposted by David Jayatillake
arynndoesdata @arynn.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
I enabled the Cube AI API Slack App today, and I found a little treat 👀 Shout-out @mjirv.bsky.social and @jayatillake.bsky.social! If you're curious how easy this is to set up, check out: cube.dev/blog/make-yo...
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about @pola.rs Cloud, and as coincidence would have it, DeepSeek then releases smallpond - a way to use @duckdb.org scaled out. It's pretty cool that an org has managed to build this, but is it the right way? davidsj.substack.com/p/many-ducks...
davidsj.substack.com
Many ducks, a big pond
Splitting the query
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
I hope you enjoy my talk, and see if you can spot @joereis.bsky.social and @hannes.muehleisen.org in the crowd. This was a really cool conference to attend, too. They will definitely need a bigger venue this year!
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
I could see they were really taking the production quality of recordings really seriously, and wow, check out the video to see it. The quality is similar to a big tech conference or perhaps even better.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
🗣️ It was a real honour to speak at the very first Forward Data Conference in Paris last November, not to mention being introduced with a special piano verse just for me! 🎹 www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNQW...
youtube.com
AI on Data - snake oil or actually useful?
YouTube video by ForwardDataConf
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
I graduated from Cursor to Windsurf. Here is my latest creation using Windsurf; getting it through the PR approval process was far harder than building it! github.com/obsidianmd/o...
github.com
Add plugin: LLM Tagger by djayatillake · Pull Request #5312 · obsidianmd/obsidian-releases
adding llm-tagger I am submitting a new Community Plugin Repo URL Link to my plugin: https://github.com/djayatillake/obsidian-llm-tagger Release Checklist I have tested the plugin on Windows ...
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
This can slow down development and make it brittle, like I’ve seen in the past. The new SQLMesh blueprinting feature elegantly and simply solves this!
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
In dbt, it’s not possible to create models from a single generator file that generates logical models based on a list of parameters to iterate through. So, you have to make a separate file for each model you want to create, even if they’re almost the same as a bunch of other models.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
🏭 @tobikodata.com released a great new feature for SQLMesh last week called blueprinting. This is a feature that the dbt Labs community has been asking for for ages, and I’ve been wanting it too! open.substack.com/pub/davidsj/...
open.substack.com
Model Generation
A big feature release by SQLMesh
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
Haven’t you seen the movie?
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
🦆🦆🦆🦆 everywhere these days count.co/blog/announc...
count.co
Keep canvases moving with DuckDB on the server
We're super excited to announce the general availability of DuckDB on the server. This is our way of dramatically speeding up query speed while reducing computer cost for customers, helping you drive ...
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
The downvoting by anyone who feels like it rather than the admin is stupid too. Doesn’t make sense for technical topics… ends up with idiocracy.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
No not that one, it was about gold layer in medallion architecture.
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Reposted by David Jayatillake
Tech on the Rocks @totrrocks.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
New episode: “Semantic Layers: The Missing Link Between AI and Data” with @jayatillake.bsky.social . We discuss how semantic layers bridge raw data and AI, achieving 100% accuracy for natural language queries, and what’s next for LLM-powered data pipelines. 🎧 techontherocks.show/14 🎧
techontherocks.show
Tech on the Rocks | Semantic Layers: The Missing Link Between AI and Data with David Jayatillake from Cube
In this episode, we chat with David Jayatillake, VP of AI at Cube, about semantic layers and their crucial role in making AI work reliably with data. We explore how semantic layers act as a bridge ...
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
There seems to be a high level of resistance to new ideas there because many experienced practitioners don't see a reason to learn a new way to do things.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
I've been interacting with r/dataengineering a bit recently, and I'm impressed by the size and engagement with the community there, but... Folks on #databs / #datasky seem much less likely to just mouth off without thinking or reading! I think I much prefer what we have here on BlueSky.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Yeah Evidence is on my list too. I want to use it with Cube though and this integration needs some work at the moment I believe.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
There is some magic about not knowing whether it's possible, though... bigger high to chase.
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David Jayatillake @jayatillake.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
There is even the Dagster integration to explore which runs Cube pre-aggs, to keep it Dagster focused lol.
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