How Tech - Systems Programming

Build Real Systems, Not Toy Projects

Bridges the gap between abstract systems theory and production-ready engineering, through deep-dive analysis of real production problems, postmortems, and breakpoints.

core topics covered

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From the archive

Sep 30, 2026

Hardware Acceleration and Heterogeneous Compute: Building and Debugging a Rust Driver for RISC-V Architecture

Sep 28, 2026

Debugging RISC-V Firmware with GDB and OpenOCD: From JTAG Signal to Source-Level Breakpoint

Sep 26, 2026

Issue 06 — Ingestion Pipeline: Kafka to ClickHouse

Issue 05 got events off the host with mTLS.

Sep 23, 2026

Porting a Linux Distribution to a Custom RISC-V SoC: Hardware Acceleration and Heterogeneous Compute

Sep 21, 2026

Low-Power Firmware for RISC-V Cores: Inside the SBI HSM Idle Handshake

Sep 16, 2026

Setting Up a Full RISC-V Development Environment: Cross-Toolchains, QEMU, and the Sanitizer Gap

Sep 14, 2026

Debugging Data Movement Latency Between Host Memory and GPU VRAM

Sep 12, 2026

Issue 05 — Real Transport: Buffering, mTLS, Fleet Enrollment

Phase A agents print OCSF JSON to stdout.

The curriculum

3 core areas covered

01 eBPF and kernel observability

02 Kernel internals and debugging across Linux and Windows

03 Systems architecture and high-performance design

What you'll walk away with

Kernel-level debugging skills most engineers never develop

Real postmortem analysis, not textbook examples

eBPF and observability tooling you can point at your own production systems

What you're signing up for

What makes it different

Real postmortems and live debugging sessions, not surface-level tutorials.

Format

"Code in Action" deep dives that stop where the documentation ends.

Who it's for

Senior developers, architects, and security researchers who want to actually understand the kernel.

A few things worth knowing

How often will I get an email?

Frequency isn't fixed — "From the archive" above shows recent issues so you can see the actual pace before you subscribe.

Is this actually free?

Yes — 100% free, no card required, no trial that converts to a charge later.

Can I unsubscribe anytime?

Yes, one click, no hoops — that's a standard Substack feature, not something we gate.

Stop reading docs. Start reading kernel source.

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