Hi, I'm Vignesh. Start here
I'm a database engineer at Zoho, working on database internals. Why I write here in public, and how to use the site.
Contents
Who I am
I’m a database engineer at Zoho. I work on database internals: how data is stored, how queries run, and how a transaction stays correct when something fails.
I learn by doing. I don’t feel I understand something until I’ve built it and broken it.
I haven’t done anything big yet. One day I want to build something bigger and better. Until then I’ll keep challenging myself, learning a lot and trying the things that make me happy, and this site is where that gets written down.
Why this site
At Zoho I wrote tech posts so other developers could follow the engineering work in our product. This site is the same thing, in public. If I think something might be useful to someone, it goes here.
Each post explains one thing in plain words. When a post is about PostgreSQL, I usually point to where it lives in the source and what tends to go wrong.
Most posts take a few minutes to read, and many end with links if you want to go further. A lot of what goes here took me a while to work out, and a post should save you some of that time.
Writing a post also shows me what I hadn’t understood, and if I still get something wrong, you can tell me.
What you will find here
- Tech, at /tech: computer science, databases first. For now that means short notes on how PostgreSQL works inside, each marked with how far along it is. Longer explainers are on the way.
- Bookshelf, at /bookshelf: the books and papers I have read, am reading or mean to read, with a line on why each one is there.
- Tracks, at /tracks: the things I’m working through in public, each showing how far along it is. This note is the first part of one.
More sections will appear once there is something to put in them. Everything is also in one list, on Writing.
How to use it
- It is made for your phone. Light or dark is under the menu on a phone and behind the theme icon on a wider screen. By default it follows your device.
- Underline a post at its end to say it was worth your time. No account and no cookies. It tells me what to write next.
- Comment without an account. A name and an email address are optional. I read every comment before it appears.
- Follow along with the RSS feed, or see the newsletter page for email. No algorithm decides whether you see a post.
- Link to a paragraph. Every paragraph has its own link, the ¶ after its last word. A short link in one of my LinkedIn posts opens the post, and its “In 30 seconds” box takes you to the part each point is about.
- Read it with an AI assistant. Add
.mdto a page’s address to get the page as plain markdown. For AI has the rest. - Tell me when I am wrong. Write to vignesh@sudohulk.com or use the contact form. I add a correction above the text, leave the text as it was, and log the correction on /changes.
One boundary
My work at Zoho is not mine to publish. What I write about databases is general knowledge and my own projects, never how our product does it. The opinions are mine.
Pick something from Writing, or start with /tech. Thanks for coming over.