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Ethan Thornberg

Blog

Thoughts on development, AI, and learning in public

Learning Journey

Week 9: Workers

Month 3 begins in Los Angeles at 6:30am. Building a task queue system from scratch: linked lists C can't template, fire-and-forget clients, persistent workers, and learning to spawn a thousand of them with one command.

Deep WorkSystems ProgrammingTask Queue+3
February 28, 202612 min read
Learning Journey

Week 8: Prediction

Fixing the broken game. Client-side prediction, server reconciliation, a comprehensive reliability system, and the transformation from networking prototype to something production-ready.

Deep WorkNetworkingUDP+3
February 22, 202615 min read
Learning Journey

Week 7: Hostile Networks

Building a UDP proxy to stress test the treasure hunt game. Discovering that real networks break everything. Rethinking the architecture from the ground up.

Deep WorkNetworkingUDP+4
February 15, 202611 min read
Learning Journey

Week 6: Flow State

Building a multiplayer treasure hunt game. Finding flow. Making hard decisions. 30 days complete.

Deep WorkNetworkingUDP+3
February 8, 202610 min read
Learning Journey

Week 5: From Copying to Creating

Making something beautiful out of simple fundamentals

Deep WorkNetworkingTCP+3
February 7, 20269 min read
Learning Journey

Week 4: When Planning Pays Off

Building a multi-client chat server. Proving the Week 3 lesson. Month 1 complete.

Deep WorkNetworkingTCP+3
January 24, 202613 min read
Learning Journey

Week 3: When Planning Matters

Building a reliable UDP protocol. Discovering why architecture matters. Friday's disconnection.

Deep WorkNetworkingLearning+2
January 17, 20269 min read
Learning Journey

Week 2: When Discipline Takes Over

Five more days of deep work. Classes started, my schedule exploded, and Day 9 almost broke me. Then Day 10 showed me what all the struggle was for.

Deep WorkNetworkingLearning+3
January 10, 202610 min read
Learning Journey

Week 1: Proving I Can Stick With Hard Things

Five days of deep work learning TCP networking from scratch. What it takes to become more than a professional beginner.

Deep WorkNetworkingLearning+2
January 4, 202614 min read