iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 13/05/2026

US tech companies have their pride, but you know what Europe has? Awesome TLDs. YouTube uses a Belgian TLD for youtu(.)be. Anthropic uses a German TLD for Clau(.)de. Pinterest uses an Italian TLD for pin(.)it One more reason to build in Europe.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 08/05/2026

We're in particular times. AI is moving so fast that we're questioning every single way we work every day. Honestly, it's been exhausting for me. I know I'm not alone. It's okay. Particular times.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 24/04/2026

Obsidian Markdown vaults break past ~7k notes. Dataview chokes, sync gets flaky. Used to be a power-user problem. With LLMs pumping out notes on demand, everyone's vault is about to get huge. Files-as-truth + derived SQLite/DuckDB index feels obvious. Who's building it?

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 23/04/2026

Running an AI workshop? build a minter. I wanted 150+ attendees to run an analytics agent against DuckDB. Local inference was out, smallest reasonable model is a 7GB download, and conf wifi says lol... blog.mehdio.com/p/running-an-ai-wor…

blog.mehdio.com

Running an AI workshop ? Build a LLM key minter first

While prepping my PyCon DE & PyData 2026 talk (slides), I wanted 150+ people to run an analytics agent against DuckDB.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 21/04/2026

The best feeling is when you burn tokens to REMOVE code

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 18/04/2026

Apparently the AI power users are the ones most burnt out. Heard it at PyCon, and even DHH and Simon Willison say agentic coding is mentally rewiring them... In this edition : the 2026 compute crunch, agent burnout, and my Claude status bar in tmux blog.mehdio.com/p/ctrlr-13-agents-d…

blog.mehdio.com

Link to blog.mehdio.com

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 09/04/2026

I'm back at PyCon/PyData DE! Last year in Berlin the workshop was sold out 🤯 It was a lot of fun and this year, I'm getting backup to provide you the best learning experience! We'll be sharing all we know about analytics agents... and the ducks...of course DuckDB!

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 03/04/2026

Wait Mehdi, almost 2 months since the last ctrl+r?! Travel, sickness, and (not to mention) a newborn got me deep into survival mode. Bear with me while I find my rhythm again. The good news: I’ve been experimenting non-stop, so this is a triple edition : 3 🧠 thoughts on AI and 3 🛠️ tools I tried.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 28/03/2026

Learning vim bindings is the best investment I've made over the past decade to improve my productivity as a software engineer. And it's still paying off today.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 24/03/2026

Me trying to keep up with AI news while getting actual work done

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 23/03/2026

I was missing key metadata info on Claude Code, and I found this little gem last week: cship.dev If you're already a Starship user like me, adding this extension is a no-brainer. It shows you the amount spent, context window usage, and the selected model!

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 17/03/2026

Yeah seit is a thing. However as soon as you need collaboration features, complexity increase significantly. I was mostly ref to SaaS sub solo user have

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 16/03/2026

"Can we add brand style and colors?" Old BI vendor: "I'm afraid that's not possible." Me: "Pick one."

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 16/03/2026

You just burned $1k in tokens to rebuild the SaaS you refused to pay $29/month for. Great for the ego. Now maintain it for 3 years to break even. Yup, maintenance is a luxury these days.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 11/03/2026

Most CFPs have a ~6 month gap between submission and the actual talk. Given how much changed in the last 6 months... I suspect a lot of speakers will be quietly rewriting their slides the week before. So if the title doesn't quite match the content... keep an open mind. That's probably a good sign

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 05/02/2026

GitHub has all the pieces for an agentic IDE: Copilot agent, Actions, Codespaces. But it's async—fire and forget. Cursor nails real-time pair programming. You and the agent coding together. The holy grail? Hybrid mode. GitHub could build it, unconstrained by VSCode legacy.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 02/02/2026

OK so I made a mini movie on how to survive in data engineering. No bias. Just ducks. youtu.be/f0DDhKaZDDc plz netflix contact for collab

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 29/01/2026

I'm not sure you are all ready for this... See you tomorrow 🫡

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 20/01/2026

2026 paradox: We question whether LLMs are intelligent enough. Instead of deciding whether we’ll stay intelligent while using them.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 19/01/2026

Two years ago I’d say niche down as a software engineer. Now I’m building far outside my niche (data engineering). It's not “Should I learn React?” but “Do I understand the problem well enough to direct AI?” Execution is commoditized; domain expertise still matters. Generalists win.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 14/01/2026

RIP Mehdio (2019) Time for a fresh new profile picture. Same person. Bolder. Less hair. Hopefully wiser. In 2026, I want to keep teaching curious students—both in person and online—and help the next generation learn not just data, but software engineering in this (post-?) AI wave.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 07/01/2026

Quick software engineers reality check: 2024: AI writes code quickly — quality is meh 2025: AI writes solid code and boosts productivity 2026: Not using AI effectively becomes a liability 2026 is the year coding with AI is no longer a nice-to-have, but a must-have.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 05/01/2026

A few observations from shipping with AI these past weeks : 1) TS quietly wins for AI apps (types catch hallucinations at lint time). 2) Juniors risk building human debt by skipping fundamentals. 3) AI + money works only with verification (SQL saved me). Constraints > vibes.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 21/12/2025

For all the parents out there, I’m launching something new: the Portable family newsletter After living in 4 countries over the past years with young kids, I’m sharing stories on how we did it. Just honestly covering what worked, and what didn't work.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 24/11/2025

This week's issue: thinking on how to not get more stupid with LLMs eating our brains, spinning up the new hype file format Vortex (it's gaining a lot of adoption), and other tech muse from the terminal of my mind. blog.mehdio.com/p/ctlrr-02-h...

blog.mehdio.com

ctlr+r #02: How to not get stupid & The Parquet Killer?

A weekly recall from the terminal of my mind: Thoughts 🧠, 🛠 Tools, and 📕 Takes.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 16/11/2025

Starting a weekly habit/newsletter. Each issue includes: - something I’ve been thinking about - something I’ve built, tried, or found useful - something I read or watched, with my take blog.mehdio.com/p/ctlrr-01-t...

blog.mehdio.com

ctlr+r #01: Toon, LLM CLIs

Hey there, I’m starting a new habit that I hope to stick with and that will help you: ctrl+r : a weekly recall from the terminal of my mind.

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Reposted by Mehdi Ouazza

Simon Späti 🏔️ @ssp.sh · 30/10/2025

We cover everything from interview prep and data quality struggles to the eternal "just a small schema change". Each question gets four different perspectives from @seattledataguy.bsky.social, @hachej.bsky.social, @mehdio.com, and me, with practical wisdom that goes beyond the hype.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 23/10/2025

2 things that my non tech friends asked me recently : WTH is - us-east-1 - astronomer I wonder what's next.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 19/07/2025

If you’ve ever found yourself in copy-paste hell during webdev — debugging logs, pasting API errors into an AI chat, or sending screenshots just to say “the button isn’t there" I wrote something for you. blog.mehdio.com/p/an-actuall...

blog.mehdio.com

An actually useful MCP for web cevelopment

Eliminates the copy-paste hell with browser-tools

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 17/06/2025

I don't kill my side projects. I just quietly stop maintaining them while convincing myself I'll definitely get back to that one.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 15/06/2025

I think it will change the fundamentals of the business long term. Short term, a lot of noise and spikes.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 15/06/2025

You are right; I've seen, for instance, Supabase putting some rules to set projects on pause, close inactive projects pretty aggressively after 7 days.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 15/06/2025

Using Docker Desktop or Podman on macOS? WWDC surprise: Apple's own containerization framework. The end of 3rd party containers on Mac? youtu.be/s06VHrb_Fss

youtu.be

Apple’s new ‘Container’ Engine (Bye Docker?)

YouTube video by mehdio DataTV

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 09/06/2025

There’s a big shift coming in dev tools: their main users will soon be AI agents, not humans. Neon already sees 4x more DBs spun up by AIs. The question now: How do you make your tool AI-consumable? MCP is one answer—but new platforms & integrations will matter too.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 07/06/2025

Ok, the third point may be a bit far-fetched. Or not. You’ll never know. 😈

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 07/06/2025

3. Build an agent based on that content — digitally clone myself and go on holiday for the next 6 months

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 07/06/2025

Having more fun building a metadata registry for my personal website with all my content. 3 goal for this : 1. Bring public visibility to all my content (written / video) in one place 2. Make it easier to search through all of it (WIP)

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 07/06/2025

WAIT, first time in NL while living in UK ? You do know that Tokyo is kinda of a detour right ?

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 05/06/2025

If you're wondering what all the fuss is about table formats—and this new one called DuckLake—this video is for you. If you don’t choose table formats but benchmark them, it’s for you too. If you don’t like table formats at all? Well, then share this video with your enemies.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 04/06/2025

The best part of being active online is turning connections into real-life moments. Just hosted a sold-out DATA+AI meetup in Zurich at Google!

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 03/06/2025

I just had an epiphany, what Iceberg, Delta Lake, and Duck Lake have in common? Their logos are all blue. Like a lake... You’re welcome.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 01/06/2025

Right, that’s a fair take. And it’s definitely true — I’ve seen several solopreneurs willing to drop a product because it wasn’t worth their time anymore, and looking to sell.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 01/06/2025

Thanks for the feedback — you’re right, I could’ve added a bit more framing to better match the title. My thinking was that startups are nimble, giants have capital and reach, and it’s the middle that ends up getting squeezed.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 01/06/2025

Do you actually need to scale? I get it if you’re a VC-backed company—but if you’re bootstrapped, sometimes enough is enough. I know people who intentionally don’t scale because they feel it would mean dealing with too many people—and more problems.

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 01/06/2025

What if medium-sized software companies are slowly dying? I’ve seen more and more solo-preneurs and small teams shipping fast, staying lean — and still landing enterprise customers. So what if scaling headcount… wasn’t actually necessary? blog.mehdio.com/p/the-slow-d...

blog.mehdio.com

The Slow Death of Medium-Sized Software Companies

What if scaling was no longer the goal? And what would that mean for software engineers?

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Mehdi Ouazza @mehdio.com · 29/05/2025

Remember: AI won't replace software engineers—but it will replace those who don't use AI. I wrote about my latest AI productivity hacks using Cursor. blog.mehdio.com/p/making-cur...

blog.mehdio.com

Making Cursor smarter (and up to date)

Context is king — and documentation context rules.

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