Peter Mbanugo

pmbanugo.meA Crash Course on Concurrency: Build a Tiny Scheduler from ScratchBuild a tiny concurrency runtime from scratch and discover how schedulers, task switching, yielding, coroutine state, and event loops work under the hood

I wrote an article two months ago, which shows a glimpse of what the examples could be like. At that time I was still exploring the right example and how it can evolve. There's more to it now but this article is still a good starting point IMO. Link: pmbanugo.me/blog/crash-c...

Peter Mbanugo@pmbanugo.me

I’m writing a hands-on book series about concurrency, for anyone who wants to understand what happens behind async/await or coroutines. You’ll build a small concurrency runtime, step by step, and see how tasks pause, resume, and wait on each other. more info on the video and thread

Peter Mbanugo reposted

learnconcurrency.devBuild a concurrency runtime. Understand it from the inside.Make async and coroutines something you can see, build, and explain. A hands-on book series by Peter Mbanugo. Sign up for early access.

14 May

Tina, Odin's concurrency framework with + a HTTP Server (Tina HTTP) just hit 140 stars on GitHub. Do with that what you may 😉

Peter Mbanugo reposted

The examples use Odin, but there'll be notes for Go, Rust, Zig, or even C programmers to be able to follow along. You’ll predict what happens, run the code, and inspect the execution trace. Interested? Get early chapters and exercises as they’re ready at learnconcurrency.dev

This book project grew out of my work on Tina, the concurrency framework in Odin. I’m working on Tina’s rewrite and aiming to share more in November or December, and I'll work on both concurrently ;) If you know someone who’d enjoy this, please share the first post with them 🙏🏽

21 Sept

Just published: "Writing Clean, Data-oriented APIs". Check it out and subscribe to get everything I'm making. software.pmbanugo.me/posts/writin...

pmbanugo.me/blog/crash-c...

12 Aug

14 June

250 stars (and counting) for TINA — A concurrency framework for Odin, with extensions for building web/infra software. Expect a few interesting changes in the next release. I'm also writing a few articles on Odin. I hope I can get them all done by the end of June. github.com/pmbanugo/tina

pmbanugo.me/blog/buildin...

16 May

pmbanugo.meBuilding an HTTP Server on a Thread-per-Core Framework, without Async/AwaitHow to build a production-grade HTTP server without async/await or coroutines. Discover how Tina HTTP uses thread-per-core state machines in Odin

github.comGitHub - pmbanugo/tina: A shared-nothing, thread-per-core concurrency framework. Designed for massive concurrency because There Is No Alternative (TINA)A shared-nothing, thread-per-core concurrency framework. Designed for massive concurrency because There Is No Alternative (TINA) - pmbanugo/tina

14 May

Tina, Odin's concurrency framework with + a HTTP Server (Tina HTTP) just hit 140 stars on GitHub. Do with that what you may 😉

Peter Mbanugo reposted

Andy Gayton

@ndyg.ca

11 May

@pmbanugo.me 's Tina, thread-per-core concurrency framework for Odin looks rowdy github.com/pmbanugo/tina

4 May

I don't think I ever got this speed when running just even way less test in JavaScript land. Takes between 1.x to 3.5 ms. Thank you Odin. It just needs a good web dev story to get Go and JS folks to consider it.

pmbanugo.me/blog/why-asy...

2 May

pmbanugo.meThe Tokio/Rayon Trap and Why Async/Await Fails ConcurrencyAsync/await makes concurrency easy to write, but incredibly complex to operate. Read on for why the Tokio/Rayon boundary is failing in production, and how explicit state machines fix it.

Peter Mbanugo reposted

23 Apr

After reading Posthog's blog about their recent issue and fix regarding their use of Tokio + Rayon, I decided to write about it. Unrelated to Rust, but a common problem I see with async/await as a primitive for concurrency. What do you think? pmbanugo.me/blog/why-asy...

2 weeks after public release, Tina is gaining some eyeballs. if you haven't already, check it out — don't say I didn't tell you :) I'm currently working on adding a HTTP lib extension, and in the process decided I had to change some things at the core for better socket handling.

15 Apr

For those curious, the link is at github.com/pmbanugo/tina

14 Apr

What happens when you combine Erlang-style concurrency + ScyllaDB's Seastar speed + deterministic simulation? Meet Tina: A strictly bounded, fault-tolerant, thread-per-core concurrency framework. 🧵👇

Instead of coloured functions or promise hell, you write Isolates (They don't block nor await). An Isolate receives a message, updates its state, and returns an Effect (Yield, Receive/Reply, IO, Crash) to the user-space scheduler.

14 Apr

If you are building servers or infrastructure systems that simply cannot fail, I'd love your architectural critique. Check out the code, the docs (work-in-progress), and run the examples here: github.com/pmbanugo/tina

I achieved this by strictly limiting what the programmer can do. Architecture constraint solves problems better than language features. So I chose these constraints: 🚫 No Garbage Collection. 🚫 No async/await. 🚫 No Mutexes. 🚫 No hidden allocations after boot.

14 Apr

The architecture maps directly to the hardware constraint: 1. The Shard (Cell): 1 OS thread pinned to 1 CPU core. 2. The Isolates: lightweight processes representing a unit of concurrent execution. 3. The Grand Arena: A single memory block, partitioned at boot.

Software engineers usually have to compromise between speed and safety. You get the BEAM’s "let it crash" reliability, but pay with VM/GC overhead. Or you get C/Rust speed, but fight mutexes and async/await fragmentation. Tina was built to reject this compromise.

pmbanugo.meWhy Queues Don’t Fix Overload (And What To Do Instead)Why adding Kafka or bigger queues won't save your server from traffic spikes. Learn the physics of backpressure, load shedding, and the latency death spiral.

11 Apr

Why Queues Don’t Fix Overload My Saturday musing, published as a blog post pmbanugo.me/blog/why-que... Do you agree?

17 Mar

AI coding accelerates software pollution and further advances bad education on what it takes to make software Just as ppl expected the increase in software performance with 5 - 20x hardware performance decades ago. They’re doing a similar thing with AI - better hardware & models

10 Mar

In programming reliable software systems, first you make them correct and fault tolerant, then you make them fast.

10 Mar

My current experiment is around stealing some ideas from the BEAM and combining with some from Seastar (C++ framework) Hopefully it comes out good enough for me to share it publicly. Imagine-> BEAM (fault-tolerance) + Seastar (Shards) = 💭

1 Feb

Elimination is a core part of software optimisation. But it also carries over into other areas of life. If you can eliminate, thereby reducing the amount of task or functions you would like to do, you have enough memory space to juggle the vital few

pmbanugo.meBuilding a Formal Verification Tool from ScratchA deep dive into building a TLA-based formal verification tool from scratch. Learn systems programming, virtual machines, parsers, compilers, and formal method by building a real tool.

29 Jan

Most bugs exist because we only test scenarios we thought of. What about the ones we didn’t imagine? I’m building a formal verification tool from scratch and documenting everything — parser, VM, state-space exploration. You can follow along in my journey: pmbanugo.me/series/forma...

pmbanugo.meSeries | Peter Mbanugo - Consultant, Trainers, and ProgrammerCurated multi-part article series on DevOps, JavaScript, and software development

27 Jan

I've got some blog post series if you want to follow my journey into building a compiler and virtual machine, along the line learning about formal method and TLA MOre info at pmbanugo.me/series

pmbanugo.meSeries | Peter Mbanugo - Consultant, Trainers, and ProgrammerCurated multi-part article series on DevOps, JavaScript, and software development

27 Jan

I've got some blog post series if you're looking to learn about single-producer, single-consumer queue MOre info at pmbanugo.me/series

Peter Mbanugo reposted

Barry Pollard

@tunetheweb.com

23 Jan

Replying to @tunetheweb.com

I also talked about prerender until script (and other improvements to the Speculation Rules API!) a few months ago at @perfnow.nl , so if you prefer your learning though video (and can put up with my um's and err's) then you can check that out here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqE9...

youtube.comSpeculations about Web Performance - Barry Pollard - performance.now() 2025YouTube video by Web Conferences Amsterdam

Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones. —Alan Perils

Turning academic papers into working code I recently dove into the paper "𝘽𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙁𝙪𝙨𝙚 𝙁𝙞𝙡𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨: 𝙁𝙖𝙨𝙩 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙎𝙢𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙧 𝙏𝙝𝙖𝙣 𝙓𝙤𝙧 𝙁𝙞𝙡𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨" by Graf and Daniel Lemire. I wanted to understand how we can store millions of keys efficiently in memory without the overhead of standard hash tables or Bloom filters.🧵

implemented the algorithm in Odin as part of my deep dive into Data Structures and Algorithms. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗟;𝗗𝗥: Binary Fuse Filters use a peeling algorithm to compress data down to theoretical limits. The implementation achieves: ✅ ~9 bits per entry ✅ 0.4% False Positive Rate ✅ Branchless query logic

github.comfabulous_dsa.odin/binary_fuse_filters at main · pmbanugo/fabulous_dsa.odinAN adventure and experiment on Data Structure and Algorithms, implemented in Odin - pmbanugo/fabulous_dsa.odin

It was a great exercise in translating theory into a Data-Oriented implementation. Check out the repo here: github.com/pmbanugo/fab... hashtag#DataStructures hashtag#Learning hashtag#Coding hashtag#Odin hashtag#ComputerScience

pmbanugo.meBuilding a Formal Verification Tool from Scratch: Part 1 (Die Hard Edition)What if you could explore every possible timeline of your distributed system to find the bugs you haven't imagined yet? I'm building a TLA model checker from scratch to understand how formal verificat...

14 Jan

I used the Die Hard water-jug puzzle to understand model checking, by building a naive solver. I only defined the rules; the strategy emerged from exploring every timeline/state. That’s why formal verification catches bugs tests miss. Part 1: pmbanugo.me/blog/tla-for...

pmbanugo.me/blog/2025-wr...

12 Jan

pmbanugo.me2025 Wrapup: Articles, Talks, Papers, and Software I LovedA look back at some of the most impactful articles, talks, research papers, and software tools that shaped my year in 2025.

protocol-zero.pmbanugo.meStop Trusting Magic Boxes. Build Your Own Pub/Sub.Don't just use Redis/NATS. Build it. A 2-day workshop & course on System Programming. Pre-Order now for 60% OFF.

21 Dec 2025

Christmas sale discount 50% Limited seats available

Peter Mbanugo@pmbanugo.me

𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗮 𝟭𝟬𝘅 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿, 𝗿𝗲𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗲𝗹. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗮 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗮 𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗯𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗮 𝗣𝘂𝗯/𝗦𝘂𝗯 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲. Join this workshop where you will build a nats.io pub/sub server from scratch. 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲 (𝟲𝟬% 𝗼𝗳𝗳) 𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟭 𝟭𝟭:𝟱𝟵 𝗣𝗠 𝗛𝗦𝗧. Go to protocol-zero.pmbanugo.me

Peter Mbanugo reposted

protocol-zero.pmbanugo.meStop Trusting Magic Boxes. Build Your Own Pub/Sub.Don't just use Redis/NATS. Build it. A 2-day workshop & course on System Programming. Pre-Order now for 60% OFF.

1 Dec 2025

protocol-zero.pmbanugo.meStop Trusting Magic Boxes. Build Your Own Pub/Sub.Don't just use Redis/NATS. Build it. A 2-day workshop & course on System Programming. Pre-Order now for 60% OFF.

1 Dec 2025

protocol-zero.pmbanugo.meStop Trusting Magic Boxes. Build Your Own Pub/Sub.Don't just use Redis/NATS. Build it. A 2-day workshop & course on System Programming. Pre-Order now for 60% OFF.

24 Nov 2025

Peter Mbanugo@pmbanugo.me

Stop building To-Do apps. 🛑 If you want to be a 10x programmer, reinvent the wheel. Build a Database, a load balancer, Pub/Sub engine. I’m launching a workshop where we build a NATS-compatible server from scratch. More info at protocol-zero.pmbanugo.me Founding Member pricing is live from 27 Nov.

protocol-zero.pmbanugo.meStop Trusting Magic Boxes. Build Your Own Pub/Sub.Don't just use Redis/NATS. Build it. A 2-day workshop & course on System Programming. Pre-Order now for 60% OFF.

24 Nov 2025

22 Nov 2025

I've been experimenting with ZeroMQ for a couple of months and recently stumbled on NATS. Played around with it and implemented some parts of the core NATS protocol in @deno.land I'm making available only a few slots with 60% off only during Cyberweek. More info: protocol-zero.pmbanugo.me

protocol-zero.pmbanugo.meStop Trusting Magic Boxes. Build Your Own Pub/Sub.Don't just use Redis/NATS. Build it. A 2-day workshop & course on System Programming. Pre-Order now for 60% OFF.

20 Nov 2025

black friday offer incoming. still putting ginishing touches protocol-zero.pmbanugo.me I need to record the video to show off demo and talk about the package

youtu.beProgrammers' Biggest Lies: Programming with AssertionsYouTube video by Tech with Peter Mbanugo

9 Nov 2025

Programmers' Biggest Lies: Programming with Assertions youtu.be/U2Jr66nYRDA

youtu.beProgrammers' Biggest Lies: Programming with AssertionsYouTube video by Tech with Peter Mbanugo

5 Nov 2025

Programmers' Biggest Lies: Programming with Assertions youtu.be/U2Jr66nYRDA

pmbanugo.meNode.js Performance: Processing 14GB Files 78% Faster with Buffer OptimizationLearn how to optimize Node.js for processing large files: 14GB of data processed 78% faster using buffer streaming, byte-level parsing, and hash-based lookups. Complete guide with benchmarks, profilin...

3 Oct 2025

Processed 1 BILLION rows (14.8GB file) 4.7x FASTER 🤯 with a single-threaded Node.js. How? *Byte Parsing *Integer Math *Used hashing to keep Map lookups fast. Full technical breakdown and code in the linked blog post: pmbanugo.me/blog/nodejs-... #Nodejs #1BRC #Performance #JavaScript #Programming