iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Thought about confronting the candidate of their LLM use but from their facial expression at the end, I can tell that they know I know. So we ended it as is.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

This candidate just answered it confidently (after the same 5 second lag and a stern expression) in the style of a mini lecture about MVCC and logical timestamp; did not apply it to the problem at hand in any ways.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Just to be extra sure I asked something vague and abrupt intentionally like “how about snapshot isolation” without any context, that a human candidate would frown or be confused, or at least respond it with clarification “do you mean xxxxx?”

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

They spoke in complete sentences throughout, using elevated words like “robust”, “leverage”, “offer”, it’s like they were trying to pitch me their answers for a seed round.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

They name-dropped cs concepts every other sentence in their answers, but does not elaborate into them or apply them to the problem (despite conceptually correct).

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Interviewed an LLM recently for a system design interview. Candidate responded every question with a 5 second lag. There was a bit of eye shifting, but *very* subtle. The answers were unnaturally fluent and canonical.

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Bryan Cantrill @bcantrill.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

The peril of laziness lost bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/04/12/t...

bcantrill.dtrace.org

The peril of laziness lost | The Observation Deck

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

I think I have completed my five stage of grief (AI edition): denial:"AI is overhyped" anger: "AI code is a sloppy mess!" bargaining: "maybe AI will stay at jr. eng level..." depression: "does craftsmanship still matter?" acceptance: "well, at least I don't have to write boilerplate code anymore..."

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

(Or at least largely redefined)

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Builder is outcome-oriented. And AI allow them to get to their outcome faster and provide a faster feedback loop. Craftsman is process-oriented. And AI removes the process of designing, implementing, debugging, testing, etc. the reward was the journey, but the journey is no longer there.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

This has been my observation, but curious if anyone else feel this way: - if you are a builder at heart, using AI to code energizes you - if you are a craftsman at heart, using AI to code feels like it’s taking something away from you

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Martin Kleppmann @martin.kleppmann.com · 18/02/2026

The second edition of Designing Data-Intensive Applications, by myself and @chris.blue, is finished and sent off to the printers! Ebooks should be available in the next week, and print books in 3–4 weeks. Sigh of relief. 😅 (BTW, this is a good opportunity to support your favourite local bookshop!)

Book cover of "Designing Data-Intensive Applications, 2nd edition". It has a similar wild boar on the cover as the first edition, but it uses O'Reilly's new cover design, and the boar is now slightly colourised.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Nobody: Me: honey I think I finally have an explanation for why you have better senses (taste/smell/vision) than me: my ancestors invented agriculture earlier than yours, and evolution pruned my expensive sensory hardware to adapt to the modern world, while you are still fit for hunter-gatherer

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Phil Eaton @eatonphil.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

One thing I'm excited about with The Consensus is giving you a hub to find interesting 1) jobs and 2) events going on in systems programming.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

I will be speaking at the Monster Scale Summit this year to talk about ClickPipes. Hope to see you there! 😊

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Eric Wastl @was.tl · 03/12/2025

If you're curious what it takes to run #AdventOfCode every year, I have a talk called Advent of Code: Behind the Scenes that you might enjoy: youtu.be/uZ8DcbhojOw

youtu.be

Keynote: Advent of Code, Behind the Scenes - Eric Wastl

YouTube video by CppNorth

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Happy advent of code month!

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Nobody: Me: (in k8s land) if a replicaSet contains only one pod, is it still a *replica* set?

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

This is so cliche but it is also so true — every time I grow in life/career is when I find myself in a situation I’m not ready/comfortable with. I love routine, but have to keep reminding myself to break it from time to time.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Just like how human are bad at writing correct concurrent code, we are also bad at solving concurrent problems in our lives (both leads to *panic*, lol) So the advice of only introduce concurrency if you must applies as life advice too: solve one problem at a time, multitask only if you must.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

This is great and to-the-point.

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Reposted by Joy Gao

Eric Wastl @was.tl · 22/10/2025

Hello, friends! After 10(!) years of #AdventOfCode, I've made some changes to preserve my sanity: there will be 12 days of puzzles each December (still starting Dec 1) and there is no longer a global leaderboard. Read more: adventofcode.com/2025/about#f... adventofcode.com/2025/about#f...

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Quite optimistic about this project and the great people behind it.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

Really great opportunity for those who want to learn more about sync engines / building real time applications.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

Encountered multiple issues on one roundtrip with BA: - connection ticket not available for download - failure to check-in (blank page) after filling out required personal details - created BA account for inflight wifi, and then unable to login afterwards Makes a lot of sense now wrt outsourcing.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

Now that we have all retreated from Monday’s world wide war rooms… anybody beat this chaos monkey on hard mode?

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

People are like programming languages, with personalities on a spectrum between strongly typed and weakly typed. The strongly typed prefer routines, structures, and consistency; the weakly typed prefer and thrive in a dynamically changing environment. Yes I am strongly typed 😆

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

We are hiring an EM for the database integration team (ClickPipes) at ClickHouse! job-boards.greenhouse.io/clickhouse/j...

job-boards.greenhouse.io

Engineering Manager - Database Integrations

United States (remote)

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

Great blogpost summarizing a paper that I now must read.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

A secondary but equally important reason is there are few things that are table-stake — correctness, reliability, security.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

One of my favourite things about working at ClickHouse (and storage systems in general) is we get to nerd out on performance optimizations constantly.

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Filippo Valsorda @filippo.abyssdomain.expert · 10/09/2025

Woke up this morning to find my gophers playing Go. Huh.

A plush purple gopher and a plush red gopher are playing Go on a wooden board. The purple gopher, on the left, has an open tin of white stones, one on its nose, with a few placed on the board. The red gopher on the right stands next to a tin full of black stones, with a few placed on the board. A large, black-and-white print of a city skyline hangs on the wall behind them. A copy of The Onion sits next to the board.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Engineering is hard, but really given its deterministic nature, I always find communication a harder skill to master.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Similarly, I think it's important to voice up (respectfully) when someone's communication style does not line up with yours. Often they are not aware of it.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

I find it impossible to avoid these scenarios (because the surface area is so large), but what has helped me is to be aware that this difference exists, and when misunderstanding happens, respect the others' feedback and handle it based on their preferences.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Misunderstanding can and will happen, and often it's a *cultural* difference without anyone being on the right or wrong side.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

When working on an international team, one thing I learned is that interpersonal communication and team culture is navigated very differently from when the entire team comes from a similar cultural background.

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Oooo, you get more chaos testing, *and* for a fraction of the cost of AWS. This is the way 🥇

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Netflix had it all wrong, don’t waste engineering resources to build your own chaos monkey infrastructure, just put production on AWS us-east-1 and you get chaos monkey for free. Just kidding, just kidding…

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Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Also didn’t realize Coq got rebranded to Rocq recently: github.com/rocq-prover/... Hopefully with Lean, dependent type can have a comeback and gain more popularity because it’s fascinating and needs more people knowing 🥹

github.com

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