

The GeekNarrator
Kaivalya Apte
The GeekNarrator podcast is a show hosted by Kaivalya Apte who is a Software Engineer and loves to talk about Technology, Technical Interviews, Self Improvement, Best Practices and Hustle.
Connect with Kaivalya Apte https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaivalya-apte-2217221a
Tech blogs: https://kaivalya-apte.medium.com/
Wanna talk? Book a slot here: https://calendly.com/speakwithkv/hey
Enjoy the show and please follow to get more updates. Also please don’t forget to rate and review the show.
Cheers
Connect with Kaivalya Apte https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaivalya-apte-2217221a
Tech blogs: https://kaivalya-apte.medium.com/
Wanna talk? Book a slot here: https://calendly.com/speakwithkv/hey
Enjoy the show and please follow to get more updates. Also please don’t forget to rate and review the show.
Cheers
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jan 3, 2023 • 28min
Database Internals with Franck Pachot Part-2
Hey Everyone,
This is the part2 of our episode with Franck Pachot.
In this episode I talk to Franck Pachot from YugabyteDB who has vast experience in the world of Databases.
We have talked about how modern databases work internally. BTrees, LSM trees and various design choices.
Cheers,
The GeekNarrator

Jan 3, 2023 • 32min
Database Internals with Franck Pachot Part-1
Hey Everyone,
This is the part1 of our episode with Franck Pachot.
In this episode I talk to Franck Pachot from YugabyteDB who has vast experience in the world of Databases.
We have talked about how modern databases work internally. BTrees, LSM trees and various design choices.
Cheers,
The GeekNarrator

Jan 3, 2023 • 40min
Kafka, Realtime analytics and Apache Pinot with Tim Berglund Part-2
Hey everyone,
This is the part-2 of our episode with Tim Berglund. We have covered some advanced topics on Kafka, Kafka Streams and Apache Pinot.
I hope you like the discussion.
Cheers,
The GeekNarrator

Jan 3, 2023 • 37min
Kafka, Realtime analytics and Apache Pinot with Tim Berglund Part-1
Hey Everyone,
In this episode I talked to Tim Berglund about his vast experience with Kafka, realtime analytics and Apache Pinot.
I hope you like the episode. Do watch the part-2.
Cheers,
The GeekNarrator

Oct 29, 2022 • 1h 3min
Tiered Storage implementation by StarTree (Apache Pinot) with Neha Pawar
In this podcast I have invited Neha Pawar, who is one of the Founding Engineers are StarTree (the company powering Apache Pinot). We talked about how StarTree has implemented Tiered storage and how it differs from other available implementations. Note: Currently tiered storage is available only in StarTree’s Pinot and not available in the open source version. But its only about time.
Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 03:28 What does Tiered Storage mean? 05:51 How many tiers are typically supported? 07:30 Is it mainly about Cost Optimisation? How do I compare the cost savings vs performance hit? 15:41 What is mmap and how does it help? 16:45 How do I implement/approach Tiered Storage? What are the challenges? 23:00 What is Apache Pinot? When we say low latency, how low it is? 25:00 How is it implemented in StarTree (Apache Pinot)? 36:45 What happens when I query for more number of (or all) columns? How is that optimised? 47:10 What are the failure modes? 50:15 How can we test and validate Tiered Storage as a feature? 54:30 How would bloom filter false positives affect performance and correctness? 56:15 Can I move back my data from Cold storage to Hot Storage? 57:45 What other cloud storage services are supported other than S3? 58:35 What is the future of Tiered Storage?

Oct 29, 2022 • 50min
Effective Code Reviews with Curtis Einsmann
In this episode I invited Curtis Einsmann to join us and share his knowledge and experience on how to do code reviews effectively.
Curtis has created a course called "Master the Code Review" which has some great testimonials and amazing feedback.
We have discussed various suggestions on making code reviews more effective for teams and individuals.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
10:36 How should teams appoach Code Reviews?
18:19 How should individuals approach Code Reviews?
25:10 Does Code Reviews slow down the development process?
28:15 Common mistakes done by Authors and Reviewers
35:20 Are nitpicks useful?
37:45 Where does Pair Programming fit into this process?
40:50 Practical examples
Links: Curtis Einsmann Twitter: https://twitter.com/curtiseinsmann
Curtis Einsmann Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtisein...
Master the code review course: https://curtiseinsmann.gumroad.com/l/...
Here is the team license: https://curtiseinsmann.gumroad.com/l/...
Hope you get amazing insights from the episode and make your code review process better.
If you like the video please don't forget to hit the like button and share your feedback in the comments section.
Also please press the bell icon and subscribe to The GeekNarrator for more content on Software Engineering.
Cheers,
The GeekNarrator

Sep 1, 2022 • 1h 32min
System Design Framework for Interviews and beyond with Pratik Pandey
Pratik Pandey, Senior Software Engineer at Booking.com, talks about system design in interviews vs. real-world scenarios. They debunk myths, discuss requirements gathering, capacity planning, tech stack choice, and must-have components. They also share resources and strategies for preparation.

Sep 1, 2022 • 1h 16min
Apache Cassandra Masterclass with Patrick McFadin
Hey Everyone,
In this episode I invited Patrick McFadin who is an expert in the world of Cassandra and Data Modelling.
Patrick currently works for DataStax as a VP Of Dev Rel. Patrick has given several techtalks on Cassandra and the ecosystem around it. We have covered the architecture of Cassandra in depth.
Heres what we have covered:
00:00 Introduction
04:00 History of Cassandra
07:18 Patrick Apache Cassandra?
14:30 How writes work in Cassandra?
21:30 How many copies are written on a single write?
25:44 How does replication work?
32:00 How do reads work? (Read consistency levels)
39:00 Why is Allow Filtering not recommended?
43:00 Data Modelling in Cassandra
50:45 Modeling a Chat Application
01:05:00 How does CAP theorem fits Cassandra?
01:07:06 New features in Cassandra?
References:
Patrick McFadin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-m...
Kaivalya Apte: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaivalya-...
Astra: astra.datastax.com
Cassandra: https://cassandra.apache.org/_/index....
Webinar on Data Modeling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D39w...
Playlist on Distributed Systems and Databases: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
I hope you enjoyed our discussion and learned from it. Please like, share and subscribe to the channel and keep supporting.
Cheers, The GeekNarrator

Aug 6, 2022 • 1h 22min
Site Reliability Engineering Masterclass with Luis Mineiro
In this episode I talk to Luis Mineiro, Senior Director at Delivery Hero about Site Reliability Engineering.
We have busted a lot of myths around Site Reliability Engineering as a concept.
We have talked about the following:
00:00 Introduction
02:00 What is SRE? What is NOT SRE?
10:00 DevOps vs SRE vs Developers
13:10 When do we need a dedicated SRE team?
20:00 Traits of a Strong SRE culture
29:00 Observability vs Monitoring vs Alerting
41:40 Adding Observability to a Sandiwch Shop
53:00 How to add distributed tracing to the Sandwich shop?
57:10 How do we define SLO's for the Sandwich shop?
01:01:00 How to I define timeouts between services?
01:05:00 How do I determine cost of adding 9's to my SLOs?
01:15:00 How do I transition from a Developer to SRE?
References: SRE Books from Google: https://sre.google/books
Luis Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lmineiro/
The GeekNarrator Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-...
Kaivalya Apte Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaivalya-...
I hope you like the video and learn a lot about SRE.
Cheers, The GeekNarrator

Aug 6, 2022 • 1h 7min
Software Engineering Career Growth with Arasu Shankher
In this episode I speak with Arasu Shankher, who is working as a CTO at KBX Digital. Arasu has a vast experience as an Engineer, Manager and Technology Leader. He has worked for companies like Microsoft, Google and Amazon and has built many high performance teams.
We cover extremely important topics for Software Engineers and Managers at all levels.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
02:30 Traits of a Successful IC and Manager
07:11 Depth for ICs?
09:05 Do you miss being an IC? what is it that you miss?
10:10 How do you stay up to date? How do you keep learning?
16:30 What are some resources that you use to learn?
21:20 Productivity and Time Management
28:20 Dealing with toxic people?
37:10 How has the Tech space changed over the years?
41:40 What is the next big thing in the Tech Space?
48:00 Buy vs Build? How do we make a good decision?
54:10 How to manage Tech Debt effectively?
57:00 Attaching risk level to Tech Debt. Is it a good model?
59:20 Strategies to mitigate technical risks
01:01:20 One tip for Junior, Mid and Senior Engineers and Managers.
I hope you like this episode. Please hit the like button if you did and subscribe to the channel for more content like this.
Cheers, The GeekNarrator