After many months of direct ChatGPT use, I’ve finally started coding with the help of Copilot and Claude Code. It’s definitely an intriguing experience. The biggest difference so far? I’m going to hit my Claude Code Pro limits pretty quickly, whereas my Copilot Premium Requests are far from exhausted.
Vallified
Software engineering, distributed systems, databases, and the teams that build them
Vallified
Software engineering, distributed systems, databases, and the teams that build them
Why talking to LLMs has improved my thinking
I’ve been surprised by – and enjoy – one aspect of using large language models more than any other.
They often put into words things I have long understood, but could not write down clearly. When that happens, it feels less like learning something new and more like recognition. A kind of “ok, yeah” moment.
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Common misunderstandings about large software companies
I sometimes read commentary about large software companies and notice a recurring pattern. People correctly identify real characteristics of large organizations, criticize them, but show little appreciation for why those characteristics exist in the first place.
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Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
I work as an Engineering Manager at Google, and my teams practice a simple habit – we book all meetings to start at five minutes past the hour (or half hour).
rqlite 9.3.5 to 9.3.10: Snapshot Robustness, WAL Handling, and Shell Improvements
rqlite is a lightweight, open-source, distributed relational database built on SQLite and Raft.
Versions 9.3.5 through 9.3.10 focus on internal correctness and operational robustness, particularly around Raft snapshotting, WAL handling, and testing. These releases also include improvements to logging, the rqlite shell, and routine dependency upgrades, including a new SQLite release.
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rqlite 9.3.1 to 9.3.4: Parser Updates, Static Analysis Fixes, and Non-Root Docker Images
rqlite is a lightweight, open-source, distributed relational database built on SQLite and Raft.
Versions 9.3.1 through 9.3.4 deliver a set of targeted fixes and internal improvements, most of them aimed at code quality, security posture, and correctness. The only user-facing operational change is that the official Docker image now runs the rqlite daemon as a non-root user.
Balancing SQLite’s WAL, SYNCHRONOUS=OFF, and fsync for fast rqlite recovery
rqlite is a lightweight, user-friendly, distributed relational database. It’s written in Go, employs Raft for distributed consensus, and uses SQLite as its storage engine.
The newly released rqlite 9.2 introduces a major improvement to startup performance – nodes can now resume from where they left off, instead of rebuilding their state from scratch on every restart. This change means that even if a node manages gigabytes of SQLite data, it can come back online almost instantly, with startup time no longer proportional to dataset size.
In this post, I’ll explore why this change matters, how it was implemented on top of the existing Raft system and SQLite WAL, and what it says about rqlite’s evolution.
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rqlite images now available on GitHub Container Registry
rqlite
is a lightweight, open-source distributed relational database implemented in Go, and which uses SQLite as its storage engine.
rqlite container images are now mirrored to GitHub Container Registry (GHCR). Images on Docker Hub and GHCR carry the same tags and digests; you can pull from either registry based on your preferences or network policy. This change should improve reliability and make it easier to integrate rqlite into environments that standardize on GHCR.
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rqlite reaches 17,000 stars on GitHub
Driving Open Standards in Cloud Observability
My teams recently delivered support for the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) into Google Cloud Observability. This marks a significant step toward open, vendor-neutral observability.
By adopting OTLP, customers gain interoperability across tools, simpler data pipelines, and a future-proof path as the ecosystem standardizes. The change strengthens data quality in Cloud Trace today and sets the stage for metrics and logs to follow.
You can read the full announcement on the Google Cloud blog.