1 year to Curious Engineer ??
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It’s been one year since I started this newsletter (Curious Engineer )! While a year might seem like a short time, maintaining the consistency to publish an article every week has required significant energy and careful time management.
In this edition, I want to step back from the usual technical series to reflect on the journey so far. I'll revisit the highlights of this newsletter and share a curated list of some of the most interesting topics to save you the effort of scrolling through them all.
How did it start?
I began creating content on LinkedIn in June 2023, initially focusing on technical topics I was already familiar with. Over time, I expanded to exploring and writing about entirely new subjects.
While sharing insights on LinkedIn was great, I realized a limitation—content on LinkedIn isn’t easily searchable or retrievable for readers who want to revisit it. This insight led me to launch a newsletter that would serve as a more organized and accessible repository of technical knowledge. Additionally, I saw the newsletter as an opportunity to provide long-form, in-depth content for my audience.
To get started, I compiled a list of 10 topics, blending both familiar and unfamiliar concepts, and shared this list with my audience before writing the first edition. This early commitment helped keep me accountable and focused on the journey ahead.
Attempt to writing technical concepts in depth
The journey so far…
The journey has been one of dedication and sacrifice. I spent several hours every week, including weekends, researching topics and crafting each edition, which typically took around four hours. While it was challenging, the rewards were immense—I explored numerous topics and uncovered at least a few layers of depth for each. That’s how you build expertise over time: step by step.
In the beginning, I focused on topics that were relatively easy to learn. This was a deliberate choice to familiarize myself with the newsletter-writing process and adapt to audience feedback. That’s why you’ll see early topics like Load Balancing, Consistent Hashing, ACID, Java HashMap, and Caching.
Fun fact: My very first edition on Load Balancing remained the most-read piece for the first two months!
As time went on, the challenge grew. In my recent list of 10 LinkedIn articles , I tackled unfamiliar and complex topics like Elasticsearch, SkipLists, QuadTrees, and Data Sharding vs. Partitioning. Each of these required significant research to understand and write about effectively.
At first, I was more comfortable with the topics but found writing to be the hard part—crafting content that readers could fully grasp wasn’t easy. Over time, as I mastered the process, writing became smoother once I understood the concept thoroughly. The real effort shifted to researching and understanding the topics deeply.
The last three months have been especially rewarding for this newsletter:
This journey has been nothing short of incredible!
What’s the Future Plan?
All good things eventually evolve.
The past few months have been quite hectic, with increasing responsibilities at work making it challenging for me to maintain a weekly publishing schedule. As a result, I’ve decided to shift to a biweekly cadence for the newsletter. The intention is simple: balance the quantity and the quality of the newsletter. I will reconsider the cadence in the future as I get more time from my workplace and personal life.
If you’re interested in contributing to this newsletter, feel free to reach out to me on Linkedin .
Some Popular Editions
Here are some popular editions if you’re interested in reading and upskilling:
Kafka Internals
Kafka Basics
What makes Kafka so fast and efficient?
Case Study: Kafka Async Queuing with Consumer Proxy
Database Internals
Database Internals - Write Ahead Logging (WAL)
Multi Version Concurrency Control
MySQL vs PostgreSQL: Indexing
A deep dive: What is LSM tree?
Sequential vs Random Disk I/O with Code example
B-Tree vs B+ Tree: Key Differences Explained
Sharding v/s Partitioning
Miscellaneous
How to find nearby entities?
Message Queues v/s Message Brokers
Introduction to gRPC
Text Based Search: ElasticSearch
QuadTrees
That’s it for this edition on retrospecting my journey on this newsletter. If you’re someone who is looking to start their writing journey and has any questions, feel free to hit me up on Linkedin and I would love to help you.