Kemal Akkoyun#
Software Infrastructure Engineer | System Programmer | Performance Engineer. Obsessed with Observability, Instrumentation, and low-level programming. š¤ Slow thinker. Open Source Enthusiast. Mentor (CNCF LFX, Google Summer of Code, CommunityBridge, GoBridge). Blogger and speaker. Introverted Human (not Cylon, I guess). š Pronouns: He/Him
š Deep in the trenches of Go compile-time magic, runtime eBPF trickery, and tracing wizardry. Keeping a soft spot for profiling while tinkering with Go and its toolchain. š± Still exploring distributed systems, time-series (Prometheus) sorcery, and making machines sing in harmony.
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TL;DR: Spent a week building cool stuff with Cursor, an AI-powered IDE. Found it surprisingly effective for both coding and managing my second brain. When your requirements are clear, itās almost magical! āØ
The Setup: R&D Week Vibes You know that feeling when R&D week rolls around, and youāre caught between āI should learn something usefulā and āI want to have funā? Well, this time I decided to combine both by diving deep into Cursor, an AI-powered code editor thatās been making waves in the developer community.
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Another Year, Another FOSDEM FOSDEMāthe annual pilgrimage to Brussels for a weekend of open-source brilliance, hallway track magic, and the inevitable sleep deprivation. This yearās Free and Open Source Software Developersā European Meeting was, as always, a whirlwind of ideas, people, and tech so bleeding-edge it practically needed bandages.
But for me? It was all about seeing friends. Catching up, syncing, and squeezing in as many conversations as humanly possible. As we always sayāthe hallway track is the real conference. Iām beyond grateful for the people I managed to see, and equally bummed about those I missed. But with a toddler waiting at home, even carving out this limited time was a logistical miracle.
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Startups can be exciting arenas of innovation, filled with ambitious goals, rapid development cycles, and the allure of shaping the future. But when the pace becomes unsustainable, and personal values clash with company culture, the dream can quickly lose its luster. My recent experience at a machine learning inference startup taught me invaluable lessons about overwork, alignment, and the balance between idealism and pragmatism.
Why I Decided to Leave The decision to leave wasnāt easy, but it became necessary when I realized that the environment was not compatible with my personal and professional priorities.
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A new chapter in my professional journey
As the flowers bloom and the world awakens to the vibrant colors of spring, a season of renewal and growth, I find myself embarking on a significant transition in my professional journey. (Too cheesy? I know, but bear with me.)
This year, I find myself absent from the vibrant buzz of KubeCon, a place of learning and connection that I hold dear. Instead, Iām on a different kind of duty ā one that involves embracing new roles and responsibilities in life.
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Profiling Python with eBPF: A New Frontier in Performance Analysis Profiling Python applications can be challenging, especially in scenarios involving high-performance requirements or complex workloads. Existing tools often require code instrumentation, making them impractical for certain use cases. Enter eBPF (Extended Berkeley Packet Filter)āa revolutionary Linux technologyāand the open-source project Parca, which together are reshaping the landscape of Python profiling.
In this post, Iāll explore how eBPF enables continuous profiling, discuss challenges like stack unwinding in Python, and demonstrate the power of modern profiling tools.
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