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Tag: Hardware

22 Oct 2026

Zelda on My Conference Badge

Zelda on My Conference Badge

An NES emulator running inside MicroPython on GitHub's Universe badge, fast enough to play Zelda.

Steve Francia

Three decades ago I started turning breakthrough ideas into platforms developers rely on every day. I joined MongoDB as employee #24 and built the developer experience that fueled its adoption. At Docker, I helped create the container standards the industry now runs on. At Google, I led Go as it grew from 400,000 developers to 4.5 million. At Two Sigma, I built AI platforms for some of the hardest problems in finance.

My approach has stayed the same throughout: listen deeply, build elegantly, and keep a healthy disregard for the impossible.

Every one of those products outlived its original technology. What carried them was the human stack: the teams, cultures, and communities behind them. That’s what I write about here — building products, teams and communities that endure.

If you appreciate my work, subscribe to the newsletter, sponsor me, or just say hello.

2026 © spf13. All Right Reserved. Published with Hugo.