I've had a Dev.to account for two years. Zero Posts.
Not because I have nothing to say. More the opposite, I kept, waiting until I knew enough to say something worth reading. That bar kept moving.
Im EJ, a software engineer at AWS. I write Rust, think about distributed systems, and spend too much time on Codeforces. I'm also doing my Master's at Georgia Tech part-time this upcoming September, because apparently I enjoy being busy.
Here's what finally got me writing.
The Codeforces effect:
I've been grinding competitive programming for a while. What I noticed is that the problems I struggle with most aren't the ones I lack the algorithm for, they're the ones where my mental model is slightly off. Writing a clean explanation of a solution, even just for myself, is how I find the gaps. I want to do that publicly. Forcing clarity.
System design is weirdly fascinating:
I got into systems because I wanted to understand how things actually work at scale. Not framework tutorials, the real stuff. Why does S3 guarantee durability the way it does? How does Tokio's scheduler decide what runs next? Why does Firecracker boot a microVM in 125ms? These questions don't have short Stack Overflow answers. They require digging. I'd rather write up what I find than let it disappear into a private note.
Open source is how I learn best:
Reading production Rust codebases like Tokio, Firecracker, has taught me more than any course. I want to write about that process: what I look for, what surprises me, what I steal for my own code.
So this is the start:
No strict schedule. No niche I'm locking myself into. Just things I'm thinking about: systems, Rust, competitive programming, and occasionally what it's like navigating a CS career while doing a part-time Master's.
If any of that sounds useful, stick around.
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