Salvatore Sanfilippo, the author of Redis: from Sicily with talent and passion
blog.baia-network.org
blog.baia-network.org
I've been following (and using) Salvatore's work for a few years, and he's been a huge inspiration for our development team. There is so much to learn from his approach to problem solving -- small, elegant features that do the bare minimum, but do it so well that no other product can come close. I've never met Salvatore in person, but continue to learn from his work every day.
If you haven't spent the time to figure out why Redis is so successful, it's very much worth sitting back and thinking about it. It's the very embodiment of the Unix philosophy, and yet it feels so distinctly unique you can't help but be impressed.
For anyone who hasn't explored the Redis source, do it! It's very approachable and strikes and interesting balance between cleverness and maintainability.
Prior discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6552680
For those of you who are not aware of it take a look at http://jim.tcl.tk/index.html/doc/www/www/index.html. If you thought Tcl had to be big compared to Lua and others you will be pleasantly surprised, especially since it comes with UTF-8 support out of the box.
if you're sick of the jokes, you don't have to tell people where you're really from. just make something up, or say something sort-of true and then change the subject.
i got pretty sick and tired of explaining myself and dealing with stupid jokes. nobody needs to know anything about you except your close friends.
Although they tend to be annoying in the long run, these kind of jokes usually are done without any malice.
I just think it's sad how stereotypes tend to be the only things that define a particular place, when there is so much more to be found.
I think I've been lucky myself - in 6 years living abroad I was questioned a lot only at the apex of the whole Berlusconi debacle... And even then I think it was more out of curiosity than jest. Ymmv, I guess, depending on the environment...
You're on my list of cool people that I am always interested in following what they are working on.
Thank you for Redis, but also for rekindling a bit of hope in my heart.
I happen to have a mother from Sicily and an entire family there. What Salvatore has achieved is astonishing. There are skilled people in Sicily, but almost all of them leave for a better place due to lack of labour, big corps, good universities and the Mafia which is a VERY real problem in south part of Italy.
That said, the food, the sea and the sight-scenes in Sicily are unbelievably beautiful. Especially the night view of the "stretto di Messina" (the string of sea that separates Sicily) in the summer. Taormina is also mesmerising.
For that, I have much admiration for Salvatore.
Source: Born and raised in Italy until I was 18 before coming to work in the United States.
Source: lived abroad for many years, took a remote dev job to be able to come back to Italy.
"The Italian culture is a big part of the things I try to make. One of the main characteristics of stuff I make is that they are "strange", don't resemble how a given problem was solved in the past, and I believe that this is a common Italian trait. Also I try to make things that are simple, but trying to get the fine details right"
This is something to think about, and I believe this is right (even though Italians make this too weird sometimes - e.g. excess bureaucracy)
"Your parents are your first VCs, they are investing into you in a moment where you are full of energies."
Heh, typical Italian. (Not complaining,though)
I'm 100% positive that the author was not talking about the Italian public administration.
imho, even this little project reflects the 'weird italian' way of doing things .. ;) It is short .. sweet .. simple, and everything you need in order to create an entirely new sphere of things.
This.
I live less than 2 miles/3 km from where I grew up, and having my parents and children be able to develop a deep relationship is one of the most important "quality of life" benefits for all three generations. I did not grow up near my own grandparents, and only really got to know one of them through extended summertime visits, so I can really appreciate the difference.
Or maybe it was more about succeeding in software in Sicily.
Virtual collaboration tools are significantly reducing the barriers, but there is still no substitute for building professional relationships in meatspace. So doing something impressive in a field outside of the human network is an exception, not the rule.
Not surprising that an apparent American isn't as concerned about it as me, though. Let's all move to the US and then make conferences about how the tech industry needs more diversity. The conferences will be hosted in Silicon Valley, of course. There will be free catering and foosball.
It's not that I'm in favor of only having one cluster, I've just accepted it as a fact of life. To some degree this has always been the case -- art in Florence, music in Vienna, etc. etc. etc. There are tons of examples.
I'd love for other major clusters to emerge, but sociological laws are as real as the laws of physics. It's no use to lament the inconvenience of gravity, and it's no use to lament the inconvenience of network effects. They simply exist.
The period of glory for one local school was much shorter than you can grasp with a superficial familiarity with the subject. And even during that period, the "lesser" centers were also important to the history of art.
Hand-waving pseudo science. Do you have anything concrete?
EDIT: serial down votes are nice. "Hey, screw this guy, let's down vote all of his posts in this particular thread".
> with no actual evidence?
There is evidence, look at the thread you're posting in. Also you could imagine what phenomena you might see when individual actors following personal incentives make choices. Maybe you could then ask yourself why centers of gravity sometimes seem to move around, and look at examples in history, and then why not ask yourself how being in a world with more affordable travel would affect things. You could then understand things about how the world around you works. But no, it's easier to cry pseudoscience and not have to think about things.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/H-Farm/@45.554728,12.42898...
Now, mostly, although not exclusively, they have done this in other large urban areas - New York, London, Boston, etc. Succeeding outside one of those, in a rural area with no historical track record in technology, though, is something of a feat.