Welcome to The Coder Cafe!

Feeling overwhelmed by the endless stream of tech content? At The Coder Cafe, we serve timeless concepts with your coffee. Written by a SWE at Google and published author, we help you grow as an engineer, one coffee at a time.

Why 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 with over a million views, and I am the author of the very 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.

Credits

That’s why I created The Coder Cafe. I wanted to build a community 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.

Kent Beck

Newsletter

Designed for backend software engineers, DevOps professionals, and SREs, the newsletter covers a range of topics: coding, software engineering, testing, distributed systems, reliability, systems, and soft skills & communication.

Enter The Coder Cafe, grab a coffee (or a tea), and explore foundational, timeless concepts—the building blocks of a successful career.

Contact

You can reach me through these channels:

• Substack DM:

• Email: contact [at] thecoder [dot] cafe

• Bluesky: @teivah.dev

• X: @teivah

1. Borg is Google’s internal system that inspired Kubernetes. More information here.

2. And I still have a lot of things to learn and get better at.

The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

—Aristotle