Ever wonder how some of today’s hardest problems are solved? I do all the time, well at least in the software realm. Problems like operating systems, complex distributed systems, modern programming languages, advanced machine learning, browsers, etc. Each problem sounds impossible. And although they aren’t impossible, they are hard! Lets talk about how those problems get solved. Composition Operating systems can break down into a kernel, drivers and a few other (also complex!

Great Engineers I’ve met a few engineers I would describe as great. Those you can trust will get the job done, and in the best way possible. There are many qualities of those engineers, I recently read a paper that was all about what makes a great software engineer - spoiler alert: many qualities! However, there is one quality that I see in almost all the engineers I would describe as great, they give a shit.

I’m a big fan of writing things down. Proposals, Documentation, Notes, etc. Proposals have many benifits: They force you to get the ideas in your head out into the world. That in itself forces you to think about those ideas in depth and helps you understand them better. They allow multiple people collaborate on the idea before any code gets written. It’s a good way to get buy-in from others.

The Metaphor Disclaimer that I did not come up with this, and I heard about it a while ago. It’s also important to remember that while metaphors are great to reason about, they are fundamentally flawed, as they try to generalize across different situations. To the metaphor: Imagine your energy capacity as a suitcase. And all the things you need/want to do are clothing items. We all have the tendency (at least I do!

January & February 2024 Books Below is a list of the books I’ve read in January and February 2024 with a few comments on each of the books. I’m proud of the diversity of technical and non-technical books so far - my favorite in this list has been Design of Everyday Things By Donald A. Norman , with a special mention of a book I read close to end of last year, Thinking in Systems by Donella H.

Droidcon London 2023 I had the pleasure of speaking at Droidcon London this year so I wanted to write a blog post to reflect on the exprience. A massive thank you to the organizers at Droidcon for hosting a fantastic conference! The Talk My talk was titled “Shipping Production Ready Rust in Android”. That talk went over why Mozilla invested in Rust in the Firefox Android app, and covered a bit of the “how” we made it work.