Becoming a Technical Superstar: Patterns, Deliberate Practice, and Persistence

Caolè, a Tsinghua graduate who now leads DiDi’s ride‑hailing technology team, writes a heartfelt letter to engineers about the common anxiety of growth, the myth of the "35‑year crisis," and the importance of embracing continuous learning rather than staying in a comfort zone.

He argues that true technical excellence comes from deliberate practice, which consists of three steps: (1) identify the underlying patterns of a domain, (2) repeatedly practice each pattern, and (3) obtain timely feedback. Simple repetition of hours is insufficient.

Illustrative examples include high‑school exam preparation—breaking a subject into knowledge points, solving targeted problems, and reviewing mistakes—and learning badminton by dissecting footwork and strokes, then receiving coach feedback. The same method applies to complex fields like distributed storage.

When tackling distributed storage, Caolè first listed required knowledge (metadata organization, HA, erasure coding, consistency, etc.), then consulted surveys and papers to build a knowledge map. He deep‑dived into each topic (e.g., reading CAP, Paxos, Raft) and constantly compared academic designs (GFS, Dynamo, Spanner) with his own implementation experience, refining his understanding through iterative feedback.

He stresses that work should be inseparable from learning: real‑world problems provide high‑density, practical knowledge that textbooks lack. Engineers should treat every task as an opportunity to abstract a method, continuously question why a design choice was made, and apply those insights across domains.

Beyond coding, he highlights two core abilities for engineers: writing clean code and troubleshooting. Improving code quality requires regular self‑review, studying exemplary open‑source projects (e.g., Boost), and analyzing the reasons behind differences. Troubleshooting is honed by deep post‑mortems of incidents, identifying root causes, and preventing recurrence.

For architects, a systematic knowledge framework, strong business understanding, and the ability to propose elegant, minimal solutions are essential. Over‑design often stems from ignoring how the business actually uses the system.

In summary, the “action‑in‑thought” mindset—maintaining curiosity, constantly testing hypotheses in work, abstracting lessons, and iterating—combined with relentless persistence, is the secret to becoming a technical superstar.