list of programming languages
Extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) allows custom programs to run inside the Linux kernel without changing kernel source code or loading modules. For years, writing eBPF meant writing C and relying on libbpf and clang. The aya framework changes this: it is a pure-Rust library that lets you write both the kernel-side eBPF program and…
Change Data Capture is the pattern of detecting row-level changes—inserts, updates, and deletes—as they happen, and streaming them to downstream systems. The two dominant approaches in relational databases are log-based CDC, which reads the database’s transaction log, and trigger-based CDC, which installs database triggers that write to an audit table. Debezium is the de-facto open-source…
Rust’s default build path assumes the host machine and the target machine are the same. A standard cargo build compiles for the host architecture, links against the host’s C library, and produces a binary that runs on the machine that produced it. Cross-compilation breaks this assumption. The toolchain must be told which target to build…
A Foreign Data Wrapper is PostgreSQL’s implementation of the SQL/MED standard: a library that lets the database treat data residing outside PostgreSQL as if it were a local table . The wrapper handles the protocol for connecting to the external source, fetching rows, and returning them to the PostgreSQL executor. The postgres_fdw extension is the…
Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) allows a CPU to process multiple values with a single instruction. On modern x86_64 processors, this means adding four f32 values in the time it takes to add one, or processing eight u8 values in a single operation. Rust provides two primary paths to SIMD: the std::arch module, which exposes…
Dynamic SQL is the construction of a SQL statement as a string at runtime, then executing it. It exists because some parts of a query cannot be parameterized: table names, column names, sort directions, and identifiers that the query planner needs to see as structure rather than data. The hazard is that the same mechanism…
A distributed system is a collection of independent computers that appears to its users as a single coherent system. The moment a Rust backend outgrows a single process, the communication layer becomes the critical path: it determines latency, failure behavior, and the shape of every service boundary. Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) abstract the network away,…
Database auditing is not a single mechanism but a spectrum of approaches that differ in what they capture, where the record is stored, and whether the record can be tampered with by the same principals being audited. The choice of approach is determined by the compliance framework and the threat model, not by convenience. A…
In high-frequency trading, latency is measured in nanoseconds, and memory allocation is the enemy. A single call to the system allocator can cost hundreds of nanoseconds—an eternity when competing orders are separated by microseconds. Rust’s ownership model and zero-cost abstractions make it a viable language for HFT, but the default allocator and standard data structures…
Cross-database migration and schema evolution are two different problems that are often confused because both involve moving data and changing structure. A cross-database migration moves data from one database engine to another—PostgreSQL to SQL Server, MySQL to PostgreSQL, on-premises to cloud. Schema evolution changes the structure of a database while it is running, with the…