Writing for Developers • Piotr Sarna & Glauber Costa

GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech

This interview was recorded for the GOTO Book Club.
http://gotopia.tech/bookclub

Piotr Sarna - Co-Author of "Writing for Developers" & Founding Engineer at poolside
Glauber Costa - Founder & CEO at Turso
RESOURCES
Piotr
https://bsky.app/profile/sarna.dev
https://github.com/psarna
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarna-dev
https://bio.sarna.dev

Glauber
https://bsky.app/profile/glaubercosta.bsky.social
https://github.com/glommer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/glommer
https://glaubercosta-11125.medium.com

Links
Get 45% discount with code: *GOTOdunlop*: http://mng.bz/Y7oK
https://writethat.blog
https://writethat.blog/?year=2025&month=3
https://turso.tech/blog/zig-helped-us-move-data-to-the-edge-here-are-our-impressions-67d3a9c45af4
https://www.scylladb.com/2021/09/28/hunting-a-numa-performance-bug
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/typescript-native-port
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42378843

DESCRIPTION
Glauber Costa interviews engineer Piotr Sarna about his evolution from a reluctant writer to a successful technical book author. They discuss writing as an engineering discipline, common engineering blog post patterns, and why even introverted non-native English speakers should be blogging.
RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Piotr Sarna & Cynthia Dunlop • Writing for Developers • https://amzn.to/3Z3rzgf
Cardeneti Mendes, Sarna, Emelyanov & Dunlop • Database Performance at Scale • https://amzn.to/3ZNBqqJ
Nicole Foster • How To Write In Plain English • https://amzn.to/3XaTWHf

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Kapitler

1. Intro (00:00:00)

2. Piotr's writing journey (00:02:49)

3. Technical depth vs Simplicity (00:09:25)

4. Writing, refactored (00:17:05)

5. What motivates you to write? (00:19:02)

6. Engineering blog post patterns (00:23:57)

7. Pattern 1: Bug Hunt (00:26:00)

8. Pattern 2: We Rewrote It In X (00:29:22)

9. Pattern 3: How We Built It (00:32:40)

10. Pattern 4: Lessons Learned (00:36:11)

11. More Patterns (00:37:57)

12. Surviving the spotlight (00:41:59)

13. Outro (00:46:22)