The Coder Cafe

Feeling overwhelmed by the endless stream of tech content? At The Coder Cafe, we serve one essential concept for coders daily. Written by a senior software engineer at Google, it's perfectly brewed for your morning coffee, helping you grow your skills deeply.

The Coder Cafe is free for everyone from October 7th to November 2nd. Until November 2nd, enjoy a limited-time offer of 50% off a paid subscription for your first year:

Get 50% off for 1 year

What Motivated Me to Create The Coder Cafe

Let me introduce myself. I’m Teiva Harsanyi, and this is me giving a talk at Devoxx (with my favorite Borg1 t-shirt):

I’m a senior software engineer at Google with years of experience, including work in the safety-critical domain of air traffic control and at companies like Docker. I run a tech blog that has reached over a million views, and the author of the well-received book 100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.

One day, I had a discussion with someone on Twitter about Google, and this person told me this:

Honestly, I never ever considered myself as talented. During my studies, I was always close to giving up, constantly needing to retake exams because computer science was too difficult for me.

Yet, one day, I discovered a principle that changed my life: Kaizen (改善). This Japanese concept emphasizes that growth isn’t about how quickly you advance but about a consistent commitment to improvement. I didn’t join Google or become an author because I was talented; I did it because I applied the Kaizen philosophy for over a decade2.

That’s why I created The Coder Cafe. I wanted to build a newsletter to help people grow week in and week out. While you might not learn everything in a day, I believe you will make steady progress over time.

Who Is It for

The Coder Cafe is designed for backend software engineers, DevOps professionals, and SREs. Whether you’re a junior or mid-level engineer aiming to level up or a seasoned senior looking to refresh your knowledge, this newsletter has something for you.

I want to help people design, build, and run complex systems while also becoming more effective professionals.

What to Expect

Here’s how The Coder Cafe works:

• Issue: From Monday to Thursday, you receive a daily issue in your inbox, exploring a specific concept related to the weekly theme.

• Weekly theme: Each week, we focus on a given theme. A theme delves into one of these categories: coding, testing, software engineering, databases, distributed systems, DevOps, reliability, systems, soft skills, or communication.

• Recap: On Friday, you receive a weekly recap to help you solidify your understanding of the concepts covered and explore further.

Subscription details:

• Free subscribers: Access to one full issue per week, with only excerpts for the other issues, offering an overview of the concept.

• Paid subscribers: Get full access to all in-depth content, including the weekly recap.

The Coder Cafe isn’t centered around a single programming language. The goal is to make the content accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of your favorite language. Meanwhile, our focus is on exploring foundational concepts—the ones that form the cornerstone of a successful career—rather than tools or technologies that evolve quickly over time.

The coffee shop drawing was done by the super-talented Eli Huynh.