The Two Hard Things in Software Development with Benedikt Deicke

Data in the Wild

Today, we’re joined by Benedikt Deicke, co-founder and CTO of Userlist. He talks to us about why naming things and cache invalidation are hard, why it’s a good idea to denormalize your data sometimes, and more.

• Userlist
• Real Time Analytics with PostgreSQL
• Follow Benedikt on Twitter
• Follow Userlist on Twitter and LinkedIn
• Visit Benedikt’s website

Chapters

• (01:28) - What is Userlist?
• (02:10) - Userlist’s tech stack
• (04:40) - You don’t always have to normalize your data
• (12:27) - Naming things is hard
• (14:01) - Cache invalidation is hard
• (18:28) - How Userlist maintains data accuracy
• (29:24) - How Benedikt developed their real-time reporting engine
• (32:49) - Database consistency
• (37:14) - Benedikt’s tall tale about deleting large data

Sponsor

This show is brought to you by Xata, the only serverless data platform for PostgreSQL. Develop applications faster, knowing your data layer is ready to evolve and scale with your needs.

About the Hosts

Queen Raae wrote her first HTML in 1997 after her Norwegian teachers encouraged her to take the new elective class.

Around the same time, Captain Ola bought a Macintosh SE for his high school with the proceeds from the school newspaper he started.

These days, you’ll find them building web apps live on stream and doing developer marketing work for clients. They are both passionate about the web as a platform and the joy of creating your own thing.

Visit queen.raae.codes to learn more.