I just started re-reading Start With Why by Simon Sinek, which is a fantastic book on leadership and business strategy. The book’s core argument is that great companies don’t focus on what they do or offer, or how they do it. Instead, they focus on their WHY, their story, and what they stand for.
Tableflow: the stream/table, Kafka/Iceberg duality
Confluent just announced Tableflow, the seamless materialization of Apache Kafka topics as Apache Iceberg tables. This announcement has to be the most impactful announcement I’ve witnessed while at Confluent. This post is about why Iceberg tables aren’t just another destination to sync data to; they fundamentally change the world of streaming. It’s also about the macro trends that have led us to this point and why Iceberg (and the other table formats) are so important to the future of streaming.
The beauty of writing
I woke up this morning, sleep deprived after my cat woke me up repeatedly last night and discovered I needed to write something about writing. Perhaps it's because I'm reading "Bird by bird" again by Anne Lamott. So here is another post about writing as a software engineer.
I love writing, I love the feel of knowing there's a seed of a story or an idea inside. With some writing projects I know something is there worth telling, but I don't always know enough about it yet to be sure. Sometimes it requires upfront research and sometimes I think I know enough to start writing and see the idea emerge as I type. The piece advances, in fits and starts, as I go back and research gaps, and often discarding the whole thing and rewriting it again... until it has formed itself into something worth while. Then I send it to people for review and I get more ideas and insights making the piece better again.