The database behind Twitter, GitHub, Snapchat, Airbnb, Pinterest, Instagram.
In 2009 one Italian wrote it alone, on a MacBook Air. 🤯
Meet Salvatore Sanfilippo 🇮🇹
> Italian programmer. Born 1977 in southern Italy. Goes by "antirez" online.
> Left university at 17. Self-taught coder.
> 1998 ~ invented "idle scan" ~ a stealth network scanning technique now built into nmap.
> 2009 ~ started building Redis alone, on a MacBook Air 11, to fix his own startup's database problem.
> Redis became the in-memory database powering Twitter, GitHub, Stack Overflow, Snapchat, Airbnb, Instagram.
> One of the most-used databases on Earth ~ built by one self-taught coder.
> Maintained it alone as Benevolent Dictator for Life for 11 years.
> Also built Kilo (a full text editor in under 1000 lines of C), Linenoise, Dump1090, Disque, Jim Tcl ~ all open source.
> June 2020 ~ walked away at the peak. "My hands will be free," he wrote.
> Spent two years writing a science fiction novel about artificial intelligence.
> The novel described prompt engineering ~ before ChatGPT existed. 🚀
> December 2024 ~ the internet called him back. He returned to Redis.
> Built the new Vector Sets data structure for AI similarity search.
> 27k followers on GitHub. Active on BlueSky. Avoids Twitter.
> Lives in Catania, Italy. Codes from home. Calls himself "the Robin Hood of open source."
He built it alone. Walked away at the peak.
Came back when AI needed a new way to think.
No fame. No equity. Just code, novels, and home.
Open source GOAT. 🐐