About

I’m Anas, a software engineer who gets unreasonably excited about how things work.

Not just that they work, but why they were built that way, what problem forced that design, and what it would look like if someone started from scratch today. That question pulls me into rabbit holes I rarely regret.

Most of those rabbit holes lead somewhere in the space of database internals, distributed systems, or programming languages. What draws me to these isn’t the abstractions. It’s the data structures and algorithms underneath. A B-tree isn’t just a concept from a textbook; it’s a decision made under real constraints, and understanding those constraints is what makes it interesting. Same with a consensus protocol, or a type system, or a memory allocator. The ideas are old, but the reasons behind them are surprisingly human.

I also have a strong instinct toward automation. If I find myself doing something tedious more than once, I start thinking about how to make it disappear. Not out of laziness, but out of the conviction that repetitive work is usually a sign that something hasn’t been thought through properly yet.

This blog is where I write about what I learn, mostly long-form dives into things I couldn’t find a good explanation for anywhere else.