Kaivalya Apte
thegeeknarrator.bsky.social
Kaivalya Apte
@thegeeknarrator.bsky.social
Podcaster, Youtuber @TheGeekNarrator
(https://youtube.com/@thegeeknarrator?si=yN0zWNDAScJKv_QZ), Staff Platform Engineer @Personio
We’ve reached a point where managing digital cookies burns more calories than you’d gain from eating real ones.

Such a pain 😵‍💫
October 7, 2025 at 6:47 AM
If I ever design a system badly…

I won’t admit..

But there will be signs.

- Every software engineer ever.
October 6, 2025 at 6:46 AM
Reposted by Kaivalya Apte
1/12. I'm excited to share our latest technical blog post on ParadeDB.

After a brief hiatus focused on transforming ParadeDB into an enterprise-ready database, expect to hear a lot more from us.

Today's post: How ParadeDB built an LSM on top of Postgres block storage. 🧵
The ParadeDB BM25 index brings Elastic-style full-text search to Postgres, powered by our custom Postgres-native LSM tree. Dive into how we built it:

www.paradedb.com/blog/lsm_tre...
ParadeDB
Zero-ETL search and analytics for Postgres
www.paradedb.com
July 1, 2025 at 4:22 PM
How do LSM trees work?

Finally created a light board video. I hope you like it 🙏🏻

LSM Trees: How does it all work?
youtu.be/CizxYuq-z6E
LSM Trees: How does it all work?
YouTube video by The Geek Narrator
youtu.be
July 1, 2025 at 2:37 PM
Reposted by Kaivalya Apte
Another advantage to designing systems as state machines: automated testing and even verification becomes dramatically easier.
June 15, 2025 at 4:02 PM
What is State Machine thinking and how do I use it (practically)?

State machine thinking is one of the best ways to build reliable software. The idea is to break down complex systems into discrete states and explicit transitions between them.
June 15, 2025 at 8:33 AM
What is First principles thinking and how do I use it (practically) ?👇

First-principles thinking is one of the best ways to tackle complex problems.

The idea is to break down complex problems into primitive elements and then reassemble the problem from scratch.
June 14, 2025 at 11:59 AM
Small enough service is a micro-service.

Large enough language model is a Large Language Model.

Naming is a NP-hard problem.
June 13, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Here is a sketch of how a solid observability platform built on top of object storage would look like this 👇

And guess what, Parseable is built exactly like that. All the good stuff that makes a system fast, reliable and highly scalable.

New episode 🚀
youtu.be/MugLlrf5E_g
June 11, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Reposted by Kaivalya Apte
Diskless Kafka?

But why?

Why is it important for Kafka ecosystem ?

How does it compare with existing revolutionary technologies?

Blogged a comparison between Diskless Kafka, WarpStream and Confluent Freight. www.geeknarrator.com/blog/diskles...
June 9, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Diskless Kafka?

But why?

Why is it important for Kafka ecosystem ?

How does it compare with existing revolutionary technologies?

Blogged a comparison between Diskless Kafka, WarpStream and Confluent Freight. www.geeknarrator.com/blog/diskles...
June 9, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Reposted by Kaivalya Apte
DUPLICATE events and painfully SLOW joins are a real and painful problems in the world of stream processing and realtime analytics.

But why there hasn't been a simple, easy and fast solution for these problems that just works with the hassle?
May 8, 2025 at 8:18 AM
DUPLICATE events and painfully SLOW joins are a real and painful problems in the world of stream processing and realtime analytics.

But why there hasn't been a simple, easy and fast solution for these problems that just works with the hassle?
May 8, 2025 at 8:18 AM
BLOGGED 🎉 - Diskless Kafka KIP-1150

Wrote a detailed blog on why I think diskless Kafka is going to be HUGE.

Do check it out here:

www.geeknarrator.com/blog/diskless-kafka-kip-1150

Thanks Aiven for sponsoring the blog.
May 3, 2025 at 1:31 PM
There is a lot of innovation happening in the Databases world BUT one area where there is a lot of opportunities is Query optimisers.

I recently learnt about query optimisers and the amazing work CMU db group is doing in this space with their new query optimiser “Optd”.
April 23, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Reposted by Kaivalya Apte
Are there Senior/Staff+ Engineers on my timeline who want to work on the intersection of #Databases, #Caches, #Infra, Kubernetes/Operators and #Scaling #Algorithms (think time series, predictive scaling etc)?

If so, please drop me a DM. Our small but mighty team at ClickHouse is growing!
April 14, 2025 at 5:54 PM
If someone says “I am a perfectionist”… they are either lying OR mean they are not going to get/let things done on time.

The only realistic way is to be above a certain quality bar and keep the progress iterative and incremental.

Get things done fast.
April 11, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by Kaivalya Apte
🎵 Sweet dreams are made of C++ 🎵

When something isn't working, sometimes you just need to rebuild it from scratch. That's what our Founding Panda, @emaxerrno.bsky.social, did when building Redpanda 🚀

Want to hear his story? Listen to Alex's chat with @thegeeknarrator.bsky.social in this episode 🎧
Redpanda - High Performance Streaming Platform for Data Intensive Applications @RedpandaData
YouTube video by The Geek Narrator
www.youtube.com
March 21, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Kaivalya Apte
Thanks to @thegeeknarrator.bsky.social for having me! This was a fun podcast. 🚀
Listen to @thegeeknarrator.bsky.social podcast! @feldera.bsky.social CEO, @lalithsuresh.bsky.social, discusses Feldera's approach to incremental view maintenance and the foundational breakthrough -- DBSP -- that powers it, engine internals, storage, handling late events.

youtu.be/GpcIoABwF60?...
Powering Incremental Compute with Mathematics - Feldera
YouTube video by The Geek Narrator
youtu.be
March 17, 2025 at 7:58 PM
Reposted by Kaivalya Apte
Listen to @thegeeknarrator.bsky.social podcast! @feldera.bsky.social CEO, @lalithsuresh.bsky.social, discusses Feldera's approach to incremental view maintenance and the foundational breakthrough -- DBSP -- that powers it, engine internals, storage, handling late events.

youtu.be/GpcIoABwF60?...
Powering Incremental Compute with Mathematics - Feldera
YouTube video by The Geek Narrator
youtu.be
March 17, 2025 at 5:26 PM
Reposted by Kaivalya Apte
Listening to the DuckDB Internals with Mark Raasveldt (@markraasveldt.bsky.social) episode of The Geek Narrator podcast (@thegeeknarrator.bsky.social):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Ql...
@duckdb Internals with Mark Raasveldt @duckdb3282
YouTube video by The Geek Narrator
www.youtube.com
March 13, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Reposted by Kaivalya Apte
Just imagine writing a mature and massive system like #Kafka from scratch in C++. And on top, challenge yourself to make it 10x faster in tail latencies and way more cost effective.
March 1, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Just imagine writing a mature and massive system like #Kafka from scratch in C++. And on top, challenge yourself to make it 10x faster in tail latencies and way more cost effective.
March 1, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by Kaivalya Apte
In this episode of @thegeeknarrator.bsky.social The GeekNarrator, Richard Artoul and Ryan Worl discuss:

🚀 WarpStream architecture.
✅ Kafka ordering guarantees.
🗜️ Buffering + compaction.
💸 WarpStream flexibility + cost efficiency.
WarpStream: A drop-in replacement for Kafka
In this episode of The GeekNarrator podcast, host Kaivalya Apte interviews Ryan and Richie, the founders of WarpStream. They discuss the architecture, benefi...
buff.ly
February 24, 2025 at 2:30 PM