PinnedSquad vs Platform & Product TeamsExpectations vs Reality — Squad TeamsSoftware Development11 min readSoftware Development11 min read
PinnedThe Polymorphic Software EngineerIn the rainbow days — Back then, to get a job you’d need to know Visual Basic and SQL, and What? Unix too? You’re hired! When it got more complex, you’d be asked how to handle a “Click” event on a button and how to write a SQL query. Nowadays, you can’t even tell how…Software Development6 min readSoftware Development6 min read
Published in TextNow Engineering Blog·Jan 12, 2021Revamping Monetization ServicesThe TextNow app has a number of premium features that make the user experience more engaging, allowing users to do something above and beyond the default app experience, such as: removing ads, getting a premium number, locking-in a number, getting a more comprehensive caller ID, voicemail transcriptions, international calling, and…11 min read11 min read
Published in OmarElgabry's Blog·Nov 24, 2020Consistent Hashing: Beyond the basicsInspired by AWS DynamoDB — The classic consistent hashing algorithm addresses the issues with the modular hashing algorithm, where the hash function (position of key K) is tied to the number of the storage units, requiring a redistribution of all the keys on scale-ups and downs. # modular hashing hash = key % N of…Software Development13 min readSoftware Development13 min read
Published in OmarElgabry's Blog·Jun 22, 2020Member-onlyMigrationThe one-time yet critical task — As we aim to move away from old systems, we stumble upon a one-time task to copy over all the data to the new datastore and cutover to the new system without causing any corruption, data loss, or downtime. We then quickly examine different approaches, squeezing our heads trying to…Software Development11 min readSoftware Development11 min read
Published in TextNow Engineering Blog·Feb 14, 2020Member-onlyWhacking DynamoDB’s p99 and Max LatencyAt TextNow we serve more than 15M active users per month, with millions of calls and messages flooding in and out each day. Users rely on our application to connect and communicate using a technology that is free or as close to free as possible. Over the last two years…Software Development7 min readSoftware Development7 min read
Published in On The Moon·Nov 9, 2019On The MoonGoing to the moon 🌑 — Over the last three years, I traveled and worked in several countries. From India in Asia, Turkey kinda in the Middle, all the way to Canada in North America. The diversity and the contrast between these cultures, and the experiences and skills that I have accumulated made my skin thicker…Self Improvement8 min readSelf Improvement8 min read
Published in OmarElgabry's Blog·May 1, 2019Plug-in Architectureand the story of the data pipeline framework — This is one of the things that we probably use and interact with on a daily basis but seldom do we realize its existence. Not only does it exist in product-based applications such as Eclipse (IDE) or any browser where it can be customized by adding plugins and extensions, but…Software Architecture9 min readSoftware Architecture9 min read
Published in OmarElgabry's Blog·May 1, 2019Data PipelinesStore →Process →Consume — Most of the data processing applications look like a pipeline. A pipeline is a flow, a pipe-and-filter architecture, where data gets stored, processed and finally consumed. These are the three main stages of a pipeline. One of the key designs here is that each stage should be independent of the…Software Architecture8 min readSoftware Architecture8 min read
Published in OmarElgabry's Blog·Apr 15, 2019Threads Vs QueuesAnd the story of scaling a single-threaded application (6M/sec) — Threads have been a must, unavoidable pain in large scale application. We spend lots of time creating, managing and resolving conflicts. We take into consideration every single bit. Things like memory management, race conditions, deadlocks, scheduling, joining threads, and the list goes on. And so, there has been an intriguing…Thoughts11 min readThoughts11 min read
