Thank you for the kind words.

Databases can be daunting but for a variety of reasons. In my experience, it's not so much because of the sheer amount of features and function that need to be implemented. It's because you have to make sure that the every component is fast and reliable. Ultimately, the software can only be as fast as the slowest part of the stack. So you are going to spend a lot of time hunting for the slow part and looking for ways to accelerate it.

More generally, the way I approached this was to break down the project in small pieces, making each as fast as can be. This makes the problem more approachable. Also, you have to know and love how hardware works.