
Salvatore Sanfilippo, the author of Redis: from Sicily with talent and passion - davidw
http://blog.baia-network.org/baiablog/2014/12/salvatore-sanfilippo-from-sicily-redis.html
======
coffeemug
Founder @ RethinkDB here.

I've been following (and using) Salvatore's work for a few years, and he's
been a huge inspiration for our development team. There is _so_ much to learn
from his approach to problem solving -- small, elegant features that do the
bare minimum, but do it so well that no other product can come close. I've
never met Salvatore in person, but continue to learn from his work every day.

If you haven't spent the time to figure out _why_ Redis is so successful, it's
very much worth sitting back and thinking about it. It's the very embodiment
of the Unix philosophy, and yet it feels so distinctly unique you can't help
but be impressed.

~~~
iamartnez
> If you haven't spent the time to figure out why Redis is so successful, it's
> very much worth sitting back and thinking about it.

For anyone who hasn't explored the Redis source, do it! It's very approachable
and strikes and interesting balance between cleverness and maintainability.

~~~
rattray
Direct link:
[https://github.com/antirez/redis/](https://github.com/antirez/redis/)

Prior discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6552680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6552680)

------
antirez
Hard to believe I deserve all this kind words, just want to say thank you.

~~~
networked
Since the interview didn't go into your Tcl work I want to use this occasion
to thank you for creating Jim Tcl. It is an excellent embedded programming
language.

For those of you who are not aware of it take a look at
[http://jim.tcl.tk/index.html/doc/www/www/index.html](http://jim.tcl.tk/index.html/doc/www/www/index.html).
If you thought Tcl had to be big compared to Lua and others you will be
pleasantly surprised, especially since it comes with UTF-8 support out of the
box.

~~~
bch
Indeed. And thank the core canonical-Tcl developers (past and present) for the
inspiring C implementation, and for antirez having the good sense to realize
what he was looking at and model his work on it.

------
atmosx
I know Salvatore by his nickname (antirez) from 1999-2004 when I was studying
in Milan. I knew him as the author of 'hping'. IIRC his nickname featured in
some 's0ftproject' articles. Didn't really had a clue that he was the author
of Redis! That's impressive, really. I use reds with Sidekiq to run a-sync,
background tasks in my Sinatra applications.

I happen to have a mother from Sicily and an entire family there. What
Salvatore has achieved is astonishing. There are skilled people in Sicily, but
almost all of them leave for a better place due to lack of labour, big corps,
good universities and the Mafia which is a _VERY_ real problem in south part
of Italy.

That said, the food, the sea and the sight-scenes in Sicily are unbelievably
beautiful. Especially the night view of the "stretto di Messina" (the string
of sea that separates Sicily) in the summer. Taormina is also mesmerising.

~~~
curiously
On the Mafioso in Southern Italy, checkout the film 'gomorrah'. Crazy stuff.

~~~
inhumanfly
Check it again mate, it has nothing, and I said NOTHING, to do with sicilian
mafia. Saviano's Gomorra narrates stories about "camorra", a criminal
organization based in Campania, Naples' region. Both are criminal
organizations, but are radically different from their origins to their
criminal methodologies.

------
farslan
Having around people like Salvatore is really nice for remote working
developers. Because you can see that working in San Francisco (or Silicon
Valley) is not a must for a successful software developer. I definitely agree
on that and with time more and more people like Salvatore will working remote
in their favorite places without sacrificing their lives (being apart from
their families, etc..) just to work in the valley.

------
pierotofy
If you can pull a great product and get sponsored like Salvatore, sure, you
can match Silicon Valley and make a good living even in Italy. But you have no
idea of how much lower salaries are over there and how much lower you are
considered as a professional if you take a normal dev job.

For that, I have much admiration for Salvatore.

Source: Born and raised in Italy until I was 18 before coming to work in the
United States.

~~~
carlob
In a way you are right, but I know quite a few exceptions. Also remember that
the cost of living even in a large Italian city is much lower than in SV, NYC
or Boston. In terms of professional recognition things are definitely
improving, but again you certainly do have a point.

Source: lived abroad for many years, took a remote dev job to be able to come
back to Italy.

------
raverbashing
Very nice interview

"The Italian culture is a big part of the things I try to make. One of the
main characteristics of stuff I make is that they are "strange", don't
resemble how a given problem was solved in the past, and I believe that this
is a common Italian trait. Also I try to make things that are simple, but
trying to get the fine details right"

This is something to think about, and I believe this is right (even though
Italians make this too weird sometimes - e.g. excess bureaucracy)

"Your parents are your first VCs, they are investing into you in a moment
where you are full of energies."

Heh, typical Italian. (Not complaining,though)

~~~
atmosx
> This is something to think about, and I believe this is right (even though
> Italians make this too weird sometimes - e.g. excess bureaucracy)

I'm 100% positive that the author was not talking about the Italian public
administration.

~~~
raverbashing
Did I say he was? No.

~~~
echoless
There's bureaucracy outside of government?

------
fit2rule
I'm a huge fan of antirez and his ethos for things .. one of my favourite toys
at the moment is his LOAD81 project, which puts a simple text editor (in SDL)
and the Lua language together and gives young minds a nice place to explore
programming:
[http://github.com/antirez/load81.git](http://github.com/antirez/load81.git)

imho, even this little project reflects the 'weird italian' way of doing
things .. ;) It is short .. sweet .. simple, and everything you need in order
to create an entirely new sphere of things.

~~~
dysoco
Nice, I've been following antirez for a while but never seen that project,
looks interesting.

~~~
fit2rule
It is a quite interesting project .. if you've ever wondered how you can
implement a text editor from scratch, using SDL .. or even if you just want a
simple way to understand SDL itself, then this project is a great example of
how to do thing. I'm hard-pressed to think of a better way to implement an
editor in SDL, in fact ..

------
davidw
I worked with antirez at Linuxcare Italy. Nice guy, besides, of course knowing
his stuff. He ought to visit northern Italy more often though :-)

~~~
antirez
It's thanks to David I got exposed to Tcl, he gave me a five minutes intro and
gave me a book for the weekend, and I got sucked into Tcl back then. A few
weeks later I tried to write a toy interpreter for Tcl in C and this was a
turning point for me (years later I wrote a proper interpreter for Tcl btw).
This in turn is why Redis is Tcl-ish in some way (for example command names,
and INCR everything-is-a-string semantics), and why the Redis test is written
in Tcl. Thank you David. We worked together with another programmer called
Marco Pantaleoni that also inspired me for a number of things. I remember
these days as a wonderful learning experience.

~~~
mperham
That's hilarious, small world. I'm the author of Sidekiq, a major user of
Redis, and I got my start in CS hacking on a Tcl extension:

[http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/Projects/zeno/Tcl-
DP/dp97/](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/Projects/zeno/Tcl-DP/dp97/)

------
seffignoz
As a Sicilian engineer working abroad, I always admired Salvatore. I exactly
know and perfectly understand what is like to be successful in the comfort of
Sicily, I hope someday to be as successful as him and able to come back to my
beloved Sicily.

------
ilamont
_Moreover my wife and I believe that for our parents to experience their
grandchildren is extremely positive, so it 's not easy to go away._

This.

I live less than 2 miles/3 km from where I grew up, and having my parents and
children be able to develop a deep relationship is one of the most important
"quality of life" benefits for all three generations. I did not grow up near
my own grandparents, and only really got to know one of them through extended
summertime visits, so I can really appreciate the difference.

------
dimitris99
Salvatore is an inspiration for all the developers living in off the grid
areas. I am based in Greece where there are a similar challenges (crap
government which almost tries to stop you from building a business) and
opportunities (good quality of life(especially if you are not in Athens) -
family). It would be nice if we reach a point where our location does not
matter that much.

------
mbillie1
It's not too often that the top response to the Stackoverflow threads I find
via search comes from the main author of the software, but antirez is all over
it with Redis - above and beyond, definitely one of the people I most strive
to emulate.

------
faragon
Salvatore is very talented. Not only because of Redis, which is great, but for
other great tools too, e.g. sds:
[https://github.com/antirez/sds](https://github.com/antirez/sds)

------
SnaKeZ
Orgoglio italiano!

------
vdm
Kudos to the interviewer, Franco Folini, as well as Salvatore; these are
excellent questions.

------
brogrammer90
Redis easily creates millions of dollars in value, but antirez doesn't get to
capture any of it. A 6 figure sponsorship is a drop in the bucket of what
antirez should be earning.

------
Dewie
How messed up is "our industry" \- internationally speaking - if succeeding
outside of SC is a major feat?

Or maybe it was more about succeeding in software in Sicily.

~~~
coffeemug
Not messed up at all. In any industry networks of people matter, which is why
industries tend to cluster in geographic areas. Movies in Hollywood, finance
in NYC, software in SV, government in DC, oil & gas in Texas.

Virtual collaboration tools are significantly reducing the barriers, but there
is still no substitute for building professional relationships in meatspace.
So doing something impressive in a field outside of the human network is an
exception, not the rule.

~~~
Dewie
To have just _one cluster_ IS messed up. It would be one thing if Italy had
its own tech cluster, or even if all of Europe only had one cluster. I never
said that "meatspace" (what a terrible term, btw) isn't important. But why
can't it be more distributed?

Not surprising that an apparent American isn't as concerned about it as me,
though. Let's all move to the US and then make conferences about how the tech
industry needs more diversity. The conferences will be hosted in Silicon
Valley, of course. There will be free catering and foosball.

~~~
coffeemug
I'm a Ukrainian/Jewish American (though I do, admittedly, live and work in
SV).

It's not that I'm in favor of only having one cluster, I've just accepted it
as a fact of life. To some degree this has _always_ been the case -- art in
Florence, music in Vienna, etc. etc. etc. There are tons of examples.

I'd love for other major clusters to emerge, but sociological laws are as real
as the laws of physics. It's no use to lament the inconvenience of gravity,
and it's no use to lament the inconvenience of network effects. They simply
exist.

~~~
Dewie
> I'd love for other major clusters to emerge, but sociological laws are as
> real as the laws of physics. It's no use to lament the inconvenience of
> gravity, and it's no use to lament the inconvenience of network effects.
> They simply exist.

Hand-waving pseudo science. Do you have anything concrete?

~~~
coffeemug
Just this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity)

~~~
Dewie
So you're saying that I should, by the Principle of charity, just accept that
your explanation is true and actually has some merit from a sociological
perspective with no actual evidence? I don't think the point of that
particular _principle_ is so that you can get away with saying that things are
true, in the same way that _gravity_ is true. That's a pretty high standard to
set for some _truth_!

EDIT: serial down votes are nice. "Hey, screw this guy, let's down vote all of
his posts in this particular thread".

~~~
SamReidHughes
You're the one claiming he's being hostile towards non-Americans for no reason
and making trite comments about pseudoscience in the face of the reality
before you.

> with no actual evidence?

There is evidence, look at the thread you're posting in. Also you could
imagine what phenomena you might see when individual actors following personal
incentives make choices. Maybe you could then ask yourself why centers of
gravity sometimes seem to move around, and look at examples in history, and
then why not ask yourself how being in a world with more affordable travel
would affect things. You could then understand things about how the world
around you works. But no, it's easier to cry pseudoscience and not have to
think about things.

------
curiously
Luca Garulli created OrientDB and I believe he is also Italian. Super helpful
guy too.

