emmaneugene:|

Software 💻 | Writing 📝 | DIY 🔧

Find me online:

about me:|

Hi! My name is Emmanuel. I've gone by many nicknames, but most people call me 'Emman'.

I love solving problems, asking hard questions, and tinkering. I'm looking to use my skills to work in high-impact roles tackling challenging engineering problems in an open, collaborative context.

I am an impatient optimist. I believe that creating a sustainable and equitable future is well within our means, and I want to contribute to it in my lifetime. To this end, I strive to build expertise and confidence by working with the brightest people in the field.

Broadly, my interests lie in building software systems that are robust, scalable, secure and performant. I'm actively pursuing roles that allow me to strengthen these skillsets. I'm a big fan of learning in public. Education, advocacy and community engagement are vitally important to me, and I share my knowledge through teaching, volunteering and writing where possible.

Some of my interests and hobbies include strength training, nutrition and health science, model kits, DIY, anime, film, jazz, and writing.

now:|

A brief summary of what's going for me at the moment:

- Starting a new role as a backend engineer at Shopee. Excited to finally work on large-scale, performance critical production systems.

- Finally done with the 12-week hackathon + accelerator program under Build for Good. I'll have some writeups and reflections on that whole journey coming soon.

- After what has felt like a really hectic start to adulting, I'm feeling pretty satisfied with the work I've put in and the progress I've made. Taking a bit of a breather for now, but I'll have more things to share in due time.

This page was last updated on: 22-08-2024

work:|

Inspired by Den Delimarsky's 'How I work':

- I'm a big proponent of prototyping and validating ideas as soon as possible, for which software is uniquely suited as the third culture.

- If it wasn't obvious by now, I'm heavy on documentation and writing. It's always a struggle to keep knowledge up-to-date when things are moving quickly, but I've yet to see a project succeed with poor documentation.

- I strive to keep responses to 2 working days, and I'll give a heads-up otherwise.

- Ask me questions! Give me feedback! As a rule of thumb, I believe every single decision is open to criticism.

quotes:|

As clichéd as they may seem, I think quotes serve as valuable reminders in daily life. Here are some of my personal favorites (and a small selection of poem snippets):

"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth."
- Muhammad Ali

"What weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone."
- Carlos Castaneda

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being."
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction."
- The Bhagavad Gita (2:47)

"The mind in itself has no needs, except for those it creates itself. Is undisturbed, except for its own disturbances. Knows no obstructions, except those from within."
- Marcus Aurelius

"People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run."
- Henry David Thoreau

"Practice yourself, for heaven's sake, in little things; and thence proceed to greater."
- Epictetus

"It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
- Alfred North Whitehead

"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."
- Marcus Aurelius

"All cruelty stems from weakness."
- Seneca

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone."
- Henry David Thoreau

"Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves."
- J.M. Barrie

"This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."
- George Bernard Shaw

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, not the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill, but time and chance happeneth to them all."
- Ecclesiastes 9:11 (KJV)

"The safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
- C.S. Lewis

"If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that's often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb."
- Mary Oliver

"Beautiful things don't ask for attention."
- The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

"Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print."
- Barbara Tuchman

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."
- John Kenneth Galbraith

"That's all any of us are: amateurs. We don't live long enough to be anything else."
- Charlie Chaplin

"I bargained with Life for a penny,
and Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store;

Life is a just employer.
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.

I worked for a menial's hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life
Life would have willingly paid."
- Jessie B. Rittenhouse

"There is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
Human being to supply any given army on any given day
And the best at murder are those who preach against it
And the best at hate are those who preach love
And the best at war finally are those who preach peace"
- Charles Bukowski: The Genius Of The Crowd

"I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

"We are not made for the mountains, for sunrises, or for the other beautiful attractions in life - those are simply intended to be moments of inspiration. We are made for the valley and the ordinary things of life and that is where we have to prove our stamina and strength."
- Oswald Chambers

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."
- Greek Proverb

"Years of love have been forgot, in the hatred of a minute."
- Edgar Allan Poe

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here."
- Richard Dawkins

"Hey, it's our basic human right to be fuck ups. This civilisation is founded on fuck ups. And you know what? That makes me proud."
- The World's End (2013)

"A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails."
- Czesław Miłosz: Gift

"Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know"
- Michel de Montaigne

"I am an old man now and have come to the summit of my years. But in my heart is the joy of youth for I have learned that the essentials of life are near at hand and happiness is his who but opens his eyes to the beauty which lies before him."
- John Burroughs

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living."
- Annie Dillard

"If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place."
- Rainer Maria Rilke

"People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past."
- Milan Kundera

"The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short."
- Arthur Schopenhauer

"Since I met you, I feel like I can see the operating system of the world - and it is unrequited love. That is why everyone's doing everything. Every book, opera house, moon shot and manifesto is here because someone, somewhere, lit up silent when someone else came into the room and then quietly burned when they didn't notice them. On the foundation of the billion kisses we never had, I built you this opera house, baby. I shot the president because I didn't know what to say to you. I hoped you'd notice. I hoped you'd notice me. We turn our unsaid things into our life's work."
- Caitlin Moran: How to build a girl

"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes."
- Annie Dillard: Write Till You Drop

cool-stuff:|

A little contrived, but here are some of the cool sites I've come across:

P.S.: Trying to organize this better and make it easier to update - thinking of linking to a live notion page

Developer blogs

Andy Matuschak
Anil Dash
Behnam Mohammadi
Ben Kuhn
Brendan Gregg
Cerebra Lab
Chris Olah
Dan McKinley
Den Delimarsky
Derek Sivers
Eric Holscher
Fabrice Bellard
Fernando Borretti
Jake Archibald
Jakob.Space
John Ousterhout
Julia Evans
Julio Merino
Ken Shirriff
Li Haoyi
Luke Smith
Maggie Appleton
Marginalia
Martin Kleppman
Miguel Grinberg
Patrick Collison
Paul Graham
Piotr Kołaczkowski
Peter O'Hearn
Shawn Wang
Simon Tatham

Tech blogs

Amazon Builder's Library
Cloudflare blog
Github Engineering blog
Jane Street Tech blog
Netflix Tech blog
Web3 is going great
Write The Docs
37 Signals

Newsletters, magazines and writing

META: My Substack recommendations
A Working Library
Collab Blog
Every
Farnam Street
James Clear's 3-2-1
Kernel Magazine
Low-Tech Magazine
More to That
New Things Under the Sun
NOEMA
Palladium
David Perell
Pluralistic
Rest of World
The Marginalian
Wait but Why
Works in Progress

topics:|

Some of broad-themed questions and problems I like to mull over:

Repair culture: Technology is great, but the one thing nobody talks about is what happens when it stops working. Modern appliances have incredibly short shelf lives and are often designed to be replaced, with disastrous consequences for the environment. I'm interested in any and all efforts to make DIY and repair more accessible.

Public health: Implementing policies that target low-hanging fruit and make the most impact for community-level health outcomes - I believe there's a lot of missed value in quantifying the impact of environmental influences like noise and air pollution, expanding green spaces (see: solarpunk), and improving nutrition and sleep as pre-emptive health interventions.

Robotics: Software on its own is complex, but we've barely scratched the surface of making software that interacts with the physical world. We're probably a long way away, but I believe that nature-inspired robots will be crucial for us to flourish in a changing world, and it's a space that I'm very excited about.

Energy: Energy powers everything that we do, and our biggest challenge is to provide clean, reliable sources to meet humanity's needs as soon as possible. Renewables like solar and wind are in many cases already cheaper than fossil fuels, but we desperately need innovation in many more areas to get to a future where energy is abundant and carbon-neutral.

Mental health: Interest in mental health is growing, spurred by anxieties about the future, new digital platforms, the breakneck pace of modern life, and the erosion of traditional communities and civic bonds. How do we help people thrive in their environments? How can we design policies, institutions and systems to be more humane? There are no easy answers, but if there's anything I know for sure, it's that change can only begin once we're able to have these conversations openly.

contact me:|

If anything I've shared interests you, feel free to contact me through the following handles (please introduce yourself if I haven't met you yet).

Email: emmaneugene[at]gmail.com
Telegram: [at]emmaneugene