adonese's Blog

Payment for developers!

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 12:57:44 +0400

This is a deep dive in payment for developers. The purpose of this rather lengthy article is to show in a very simple way how payment works, while always relating and linking it to the overal progress in technology: servers and security. Fintech and payment is my personal passion and for many years I have been working with teams, business people, tech founders, banks, regulators, international companies and I feel I have a thing or two to help developers with. It is also intended for this guidline to work particularly well for backend and servers developers since I believe majority of complexity lies in there. You will see lots of graphs and I’d highly recommend you to click on them to enlarge them and look at them thoroughly. I have came to realize, personally, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Another angle that this article is trying to push for is “learning by example”. We are following a practical approach with less focus on jargons and theory, and more on the whys and hows. Working with noebs, an open source payment gateway has also left us with a solid open source foundation and ready codebases that curious developers can tap into for even more practical examples. The intention was never to write a book, that would never be possible for my time and resources. Another consideration (reads big catch) is that I deliberately dropped citation and referneces. Usually that is a big red flag, but in my defence I was eager to get a first publishable draft out of my way; and with the advent of chatbots and AI, it became practically trivial to throw in the whole text to any free chatgpt-ish service and ask it for resources. But mostly it was for my personal convenience: listing and citing resources would have added a considerable burden on me that I just was not able to do. Lastly, I wrote this preface after I finished a draft version of this article, so there’s that.

Quick adventure

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 23:04:55 +0400

World is a crazy place. Back in 2023 I witnessed the military build up around Khartoum (in fact, around my office and close to where i lived). I thought it would be just a bluff. The bluff is still there 3 years later. 2 months ago the situation was more or less repeating itself in GCC and even though this time more than before I can tell that “quick adventure in and out” is never really so

You need to care, really

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 00:38:26 +0400

Probably you have read that a lot. This is not e/acc and nor is it a 9/9/6. The best developer i know is 9-5. But he is there when needed and he truly and deeply cares about his craft. He takes good pride in his work. You need to be that. You gotta give a shit about what you are effectively spending your most useful time on. Otherwise, what does really matter? You cannot half-ass your way through your tasks. I mean, let’s zoom out a bit: an organization where no one gives a shit is doomed to fail. An organization that people actually cares will have higher odds at succeeding. Because there are always those who care.

No Textbook: lessons for fellow developers

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 15:09:25 +0400

I have stopped writing since roughly 2023. In part because war had changed my perspective on things. But that perhaps for another article. The main reason though that I stopped writing was due to AI: I felt lack of originality and I also tend to em a lot.

But here we are 2 3 years later after we were promised chatgpt and artificial general intelligence are bound to happen.

The goal of this post, albeit of the bumpy start is about software the engineering part. I’d like to share some of the small things that usually you learn somehow but you rarely find them in a textbook. Or a youtube video. They are nonetheless pre-requisites and everyone just assumes you have prior knowledge.

Software Design

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 17:13:50 +0300

Designing a software program that can work efficiently very well, and testable in that new features and enhancements can be added to it is a bit of work. The way I approach can often be labeled as a lazy or naive way. That is a fair statement. I believe a good design is the simple one. A simple design is iterative in its nature, always assume that your first version of your program is a beta one. Even if your program was the best, it might not meet the expected requirements, or the requirements might have just changed.

Sharp Decline

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 16:54:42 +0400

Since December 19th, 2023 (the fall of Medani) i couldn’t at all picked up on coding, or doing any career-related activities. Impulsively tried to work super hard in the next week post Medani fall just to escape from all of the worries and fears and laser focus on my https://nil.sd work.

I have always been excellent on isolating my work from my life. I recall I was hesitant to take couple of days off to attend my late grandma funeral back when i was TAing at uofk. I went to the dean and he told me i was not supposed to come that earlier and I could have taken some extra days off.

Tax Bracket Creep

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 19:52:20 +0400

I never thought there was actually a name for this which adds to how fiasco the whole thing is. But back to one of my earliest companies, my colleague had a very interesting encounter. After months of working really hard he felt the need to ask for a much deserved raise. So went by the HR and completed everything and they told him that he’ll get a raise as per the company’s ladder effective next month. To his much surprise the next month, his net salary actually dropped (that’s your take-home amount). So he stormed to the HR and he’s arguing how could they demote him whilst they promised a pay-raise. The HR explained to him there was a glitch (Tax Bracket Creep) while his gross salary increased (5000), his net salary dropped because he’d have to pay the full 25% social insurance deductions.

Gallery

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 12:57:44 +0400

And then there’s this special person to my heart, mind, and soul

Side Battles

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 13:47:52 +0400

If you know me any better you’d know that I have been yearning for a mattress for quite sometime now, wrote a blog post about it even 2 years before. And i have been grinding to fix it 2 years prior to that. I have never really fixed it, i know the solution: just buy a damn mattress. Side quests and side battles are important to give you some long due rests and rare sense of victories. Post war I had to abruplty leave my apartment and likewise Sudan. It possessed new challenges for me: i lost everything on a blink of an eye and some 10 months later I’m yet to fathom the full scale of that. I have been finding myself occupying my time with some odd activities nonetheless: extra coding, walking for hours, and amongst all having those white-fights with my roommates, who’s tasked to do chores, run errands etc. The fights in particular are quite a thing though: not only do they allow me to peacefully channel out anger, but they also serve as a purpose. To have those rather win-full battles where no harm can be inflicted and they are a good source for cheap testosterone too.

Future and now

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 14:38:48 +0400

Thinking too far ahead about one’s life while advisable can often yield wrong outputs. A simple strategy would be to diversify your portfolio and invest in a variety of things. Investment here is not strictly financial: time and your own effort are also investments. You don’t know what will gonna happen in the next five years from. A good example for survivorship bias to say.

We don’t have that crystal clear view, the magic the unravel the future and the secret of the universe.

new year

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Something I didn’t share this year yet but I was wondering what did I learn this year. What was the summation of it. Yeah the war inevitably had inflicted serious weight over other things. Surviving that on its own is rather a huge win.

But what I came to realize is that I learned to be much better aware at the things I have had the pleasure to have. That I started to actually appreciate things and to not take things for granted. The smallest gesture of kindness, the smallest favor – those very small things which would have gone unnoticed by me, I became more aware about them.

Oh love oh life

Thu, 27 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

O love o life and the question of the spirit. And our constant pursuit to seek absolution.

I no of nothing that keeps me pushing through as though love. The only fuel that drives us onward and upward. But you never really feel its aura unless you have it, you don’t necessarily feel how important love can be unless after you are there you are trapped - and only leave a wreck of a sunken ship. So powerful yet so disastorous. And the fate o the fate, fate is so good at ridculing our hopes and promises, and tearing apart our loved ones. I have this thing where i firmly believe if you declare, you are at a higher risk it won’t happen. But I’m stepping up this time. Not though as much to challenge fate, but just to ask for forgiveness that i shall declare my love. I find so much beauty to spread out love than just keeping it a secret between the two lovers. The blockade on love is next to a war against humanity. Then why on earth humanity always have always had weddings, don’t you think? To showoff and celebrate love.

No thinking

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

i usually write quite a lot, it helps me to process things. But this time is quite different though, much more like I’m taking a hiatus for good. For someone who overthinks every ounce of their life, this feels different, intriguing and rather enticing. Don’t get me wrong and fool it for me using that as an escape from the reality. The war the deaths and the fears lies within. I miss my home, my apartment and my lifestyle too. I miss my tealady. I miss my routine. But at least I’m quite confident my thoughts or lack thereof is not a coping mechanism against the death.

Being the eldest brother

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

i was talking to online friends recently about what better dictates an older brother. The reponses i was swarmed with was nothing less than helpful and wholesome. Thanks a lot fellas.

Yet my very initial thoughts were unanswered, partly because it is actually me who’s supposed to answer them. The question was not really how to become a good older brother but more of why I feel i’m lacking.

I will go with the standard template: guidance, support, being present and being there for them. That seems really really good, and it is also nontrivial. The more you age, the more your life, network and responsibilities branch out and only grow up. My friend would always say choose your own battles.

State of payment in Sudan

Mon, 27 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

My Experience with E-Payment in Sudan: Challenges and Opportunities

I am a cofounder and CTO of a fintech startup company operating in Sudan. Our company aims to provide innovative and convenient solutions for e-payment using cards and POS devices. We believe that we have the right product and the right product-market-fit and we have a solid niche to operate on. However, we also face many challenges and obstacles in our journey to grow and scale our business in the Sudanese market.

what makes a company culture

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes i legit be wondering about life. What is life? What is the whole point? What is the point of living? This is not a question that i can answer, nor is it a warning sign about my mental situation. I’m good thank you. But, this mundane, routine thing is becoming extremely irritating. An important person to me used to say that they were a virtual person in the process to become an individual. I think it was a quote from a movie that i never get to watch. What does it truly mean to become an individual? Is it worth it either? I’m afraid i’m even wind up losing that virtual person in the process of becoming an individual…

insecurities

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is not me fishing for validation or sympthay. This is just me.

I don’t really feel seen. Like honestly, I never felt as though someone actually love me. I always felt I had to put in more efforts and be the giver as my only source and contribution to sustain a relationship. And I was ok with that for the majority of my life. I honestly don’t have a dream you know or a goal or whatever, I always just optimize for helping and to some extent serving others.

love life

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In a retrospect i love life, i have so much love to give and so much stories to tell. i have so many roads i wanna tap into and so many feelings that i yet to experience. Whilst the situation might not really encourage the message this post is trying to relay – and it might as well seems so off to the point it is irrelevant, given the economical situation we are in at the moment. I still believe there is a spot for being happy. We often tend to amplify sadness and bad feelings in general, while totally ignorning any ray of happiness.

State of open source in Sudan

Fri, 30 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I had a delightful conversation with a friend of mine about the state of open source in Sudan, we discussed many topics but the main question was: why open source is not prominent in Sudan?

Software industry in Sudan is not that mature yet, most of what we work on are rather simple crud operations. I feel that we still didn’t reach that point where businesses have worked through complicated business requirements that they decided hey let’s abstract all of that onto packages and modules we could use by other teams in other projects. Abstractions should be reached through natural system’s evolution. There are also economical aspects, we don’t have that luxury in Sudan to be fully dedicated for open source.

BOK and trust

Sat, 17 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Payment in Sudan is rather a very interesting challenge. But, my focus today is on this rather unique characteristic: trust. I will take Bok, the mobile wallet app for bank of khartoum. It is the largest app in Sudan, backed by the biggest bank in Sudan. It has around two million users, and it became synomyoum to payment in general. If it is a payment channel, then in most case it will be BoK.

quiet times

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Today is the first day i enjoyed a quiet night in ages. I went back home rather very early at 330 and took a lovely nap too. Chatted with my friends and roomates, and shitposted on facebook. Now, i’m embrassing the nothingness, it is raining and I enjoy the sound of rain in the background, though I also indeed enjoy playing in the rain. I don’t have electricity at the moment, but I don’t feel pissed for that too. The rain in the background as well as a new episode of King of the ring as well. there’s something liberating about not worrying about many things… enjoying the emptyiness. It feels good actually, it feels very fresh. I can also think more openly, and reflect on things. I can also get to work on other things, I have that capacity to think well beyond my $day job and other responsibilities.

Harsh reality

Sat, 27 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I notice this general feeling of discomfort amongst my colleagues and friends. Situation in Sudan is not the best, and the grass is always greener on the other side. There are extremely good reasons for that, this is not what this post is trying to address. I don’t think life is meant to be comfortable, nor easy. But we can have fun and work our asses while we are at it.

Software in Sudan

Sat, 13 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most commonly used practice for developing software businesses is agile. At its core, agile is a process of iterating on a product. The industry has been heavily relying on agile for years it became the defacto way of building software. Even if a said organization didn’t adopt agile, they use some variant of it. What happen when agile fails us.

I have long been keen to collect feedbacks about why tech startups have failed in Sudan. I know the trivial answer would be financial reasons: lack of access to funds; inflations and market uncertainities. But what if the problem was much deeper than that. Tirhal at some point was evaluated for 7 figures (4M dollars), but now they are barely able to pay for their own employees. That definitely doesn’t comform to our trivial answer.

Software takes time. Tradeoffs are imperative

Fri, 29 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Software takes time and it can be quite unpredictable. I built the first version of noebs, a PoC that basically does nothing but acting as a reverse proxy to ebs in less than a week. It took some years later to add some functionalities that we initially created issues for them in ~ 2019. That doesn’t mean we necessarily spent the 3 years just trying to fix that– simply we shifted our priorities to other issues, or topics.

Adulthood, and sins

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

As a teenager, i grew very conservative. I only had my first girl-friend in first college year. Only to have my first kiss at my first year of having a full-time job, right after graduation. I never really liked parties or going out. A classic introverted person. My 16 personalities test is an INFP so yeah.

growing up

Nothing has changed really. I don’t smoke, i don’t do weed either, nor do i drink. That’s okay generally, there’s really nothing to do more with that regard. Smoking is not my thing really since i have terrible respiratory system. Getting high seems really good, but I am afraid it might turn super addictive, same applies to drinking. I have had terrible times getting up on my feet again and the only coping was to put more effort into my career and coding. Had i had that option of drugs or alchohol, things would have turned very South.

On reading

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

If you ever have a secret book, a secret twitter / facebook account or a blog. A secret place you share your VERY own stuff, please by all means I would be the happiest into being one of your readers! I love reading people’s thoughts. This is really the only thing i do so passionately and brings in about huge joy to my life. Books, articles, twitter-shitposting-accounts, whatever that medium that shows that encapsulates the you you! It is amazing and it is one of my sincerest hobbies.

Resignations

Tue, 28 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I have a decision making problem. I’m super good at making on-spot hard decisions. But i suck at making casual decisions: i take REALLY long time deciding between two types of water bottles.

A friend of mine resigned from their job and that took me by surprise. Never in my career had i resigned from my job, really.

2017-2018 first professional employment type: i worked as a part-time TA and researcher at UofK, my contract was for year. i didn’t extend it
2018-2019: worked as a software engineer at Ashrafcom. I decided not to renew my contract. I’m still good friend with the company’s directors and chair
2017-?: Established Shargii and founded several businesses within. In 2021, i no longer work as a full-time there, but i still have share there. That could be the closest i get into resigning
2021-present: tuti. i founded tuti and i don’t really plan on resigning from my job.

It could be that i mostly worked on my own startups that made it difficult to resign, but it still feels rather difficult for me to resign from a job.

Same day, no differences?

Tue, 28 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I have long since I lost the taste of days. Maybe it is just an age thing and Sudan is also too much. I often would find it too hard to recall what a day in a week we are, and in many cases I would find myself wondering it is actually Wednesday.

Weekends are my chill although I must say, I still find a reason to not chill. I only learned to say “Enjoy your weekend” quite late in my career in 2019, for me weekends were the bestest times you could achieve more in your tasks.

What are we cooking in noebs

Mon, 30 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

noebs is couple of yours old now, actually next October it will complete its 4th year. That’s a lot of years especially in Sudan, software are rather dropped quickly.

what is noebs?

noebs is an open source payment gateway. Currently it implements all of EBS services, it supports both EBS Merchant Web Services and Consumer Web Services. It also comes with a built-in support for the new Dynamic Fees model. We also support QR services and the new Merchant Web APIs. In that, I know of none that actually have such thorough level of coverage and actively being developed. So yaaay to us!

Technology is scary

Mon, 09 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Technology scares me, and don’t even get me started on how AI and that crazy shit have serious consequences that we are not adapted, that we have not considered at all. Tech companies emphasized their own revenue over making the humanity better – errr making its users better. And those incentives don’t align with what the actual users want.

For example, a keyboard software. Let’s say google’s GBoard. It is fantastic, it is smart enough to predict and corrects their typing mistakes. That is wonderful, amazing!

My birthday

Sun, 08 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I’m in awe. I’m grateful for all of you guys, I’m grateful to my parents, siblings, close friends and amongst them my online friends. I will write back about my feelings later. But you made a soul happy.

Taking breaks

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I argue engineers and managers to actively seek to shorten work days and work hours. 9-5 / 5 days is such an arbitrarily concept and it doesn’t translate at all to productivity, in fact counter to that it is the most unproductive thing we might ever have.

Apart from the common wisdom to avoid burnouts, breaks are really super important. I argue against us having 5-days work scheme. It is way too much, it is quite useless too, and we lose lots of productvity and peak-performance and creative thinking, just to ensure that employees stay longer in the offices. Now that i have several years of experience ranging between academic (2017-2018), big corp (2018-2019), and startups (2019-now), i can see i have experienced both: i perform well for even the strictiest 9-5 jobs. But it is just a above-the-bar kinda of performane. I performed magnificentely great during my own startup years where i was able to take days and almost weeks off as i please. I understand that taking hiatus is not very welcomed since we run through different tight deadlines as our business requires, but the strict 9-5 Sunday-Thursday is not better either.

Robots

Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I argue that people almost turn to the robot mode when they are subject to a very mundane routinic type of daywork. Robot or the executor mode is the safest bet: you don’t get to think a lot, you don’t get to take risks, you just rebeat and always take-on the easy routes. That is fine and can get things done. You don’t necessarily want your Tirhal driver to be creativing about driving…

A mattress

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I just noticed the single thing i have been dreaming to have is a matt. That is ridicluos i know, but I digged a little bit deeper to understand why.

Settlement. The reason i have been so focusing on the matt is that i truly wanted to settle, to have a home and the feeling that comes with it. But i couldn’t get anyone.

Now, i actually have the money to buy a matt, a nice lovely good one. But, i resent it. I’m not feeling well deep down and the matt (with all of the lovely feelings i imagine wih it) is totally against what my current state of mind is. I’m in a mess, a huge fucking mess…

what is the point

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A Date

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The fact i still have my ex’s gifts is nothing short of a surprise to me. i still have:

her mug
a lovely backpack
an oracle speaker
pocket
shoes
jalabya على الله

Up until a few days ago, i kept a present i was meaning to give it to her (though i didn’t), before i gave to a friend. The truth is, i suck at keeping things around, i mean even if i want to, it is just so difficult for me to keep things. i’m not that type of people, but when it came to her i just couldn’t. And it only gets weirder as i rarely use any of those items:

A Date

Fri, 22 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Just to confirm: i have dated before, i kinda did the whole process so i’m very well familar with how dates are practically been conducted. The only problem is i usually was more or less invited to the dates and that what is making things this complex.

Why dating has became more difficult? Or, is it just me? Well, this really and truly is a personal issue, but one way of reasoning about the issues i ran into – the bugs, is by speaking them out loud (usually to myself or with a colleague / friend, but you gotta do what you got.)

hiring

Sat, 09 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Let’s talk about hiring. Also hiring’s nuts. i have listened to Mohamed Mudather’s video about hiring (Kutti is the CEO of Orooma, popular recruitment company in Sudan). One of the things he mentioned:

you don’t have to have your guy at said company to hire you
and companies are struggling to recruit candidates.

So, if that was the case, then why engineers and even great ones are struggling to get hired? Well, Kutti noted companies hire based on internal recommedations, like let’s discuss tech companies and how the process usually work (from my own experience and some empirical observations):

bad practices and dirty code

Sat, 02 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

i’m back to writing again. Hooray! Something’s been coocked aight?

Today i want to talk about a few things i hate about programming. Lots of enthusiastic programmers fall into this trap that is: 🥁🥁🥁 clean code! I don’t know of anything that is as subjective as clean code. You just cannot say whether this code is clean or not. It doesn’t make sense at all.

java

fuck java. Honestly, whenever i have a conversation with a java developer and no matter how senior they are it is always the same topics: best practices, clean code, and design patterns. They are all shitty, 90s terminologies!

love

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

There is nothing inherently special about love. But it is still there, it hurts us, it touches us deeper than any feeling there is.

I wish i could explain what love is, i wish i could find that right formula to show y’all that this is love. But i don’t think i have that answer nor that i’m interested to acquire that answer anymore. in life you are always just one step further from meeting their love of life.

Let us change the tone

Sat, 19 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I worked with some Non Government Organizations (NGOs) for some time, not too much to draw any conclusion, but long enough to get to notice some patterns. They are all seem to be well spoken, smart, and have it figured out. They know what they are doing, and they all have this same accent, for the lack of a better word.

The problem when we all have the same perspective, the same way of thinking, the books method. That very structured way of thinking make it very hard to make breakthroughs, and, well, address problems that has not been address before. Addressing new problems is the core function of most of ngos since they deal with community problems, and community problems are always changing and quite very hard to model.

I'm running out of descriptors

Tue, 01 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Ok, that was really too dumb of me. But let us see how sockets, files, and all that works. AND HOW things go south. I will basically walk you through my thinking process to get into this error.

6:00 AM

I was called very early in the morning from the client. That is usually a bad sign. The client was complaining that the server was down. In fact it is never the server is down. That never is the case, but there is that. I took it from there and sshed to the server. Strike 1: we don’t have any monitoring system in-place to alert for any such incidents. If i make those into 7 strikes, i will confess to my crush – back to business.

Management, delegation, and people

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

API design

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This post serves as a walkthrough for noebs sdks. Noebs is an open source payment gateway with large support and adoption from many corporations in Sudan. Our goal is to make payments secure and simple, and we want to do that super fast. To this end, we started rolling out our sdks. SDKs are fancy way of saying libraries, a code that others can import to interact with our services. Noebs sdk is derived from our code, and it is being used in prod for a while now. The code for all of these sdks are available here

what is an api

Sat, 09 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

So essentially your mobile is somewhere, with an ip address right? And we are pretty much familiar with ip addresses, domain names and stuff, we type in google.com and we are welcomed with google search, and so on. This process is technically called http request. Http cause is the protocol that was used to make the request happens, protocol is really just a fancy way of saying “hey dude, umm can you tell me how are you going to send me your bytes”–everythying is a byte.

The non-achievers

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

So it is a new year, huh? You suddenly find your friends achieving really cool things and you feel like you have not done any thing. This post is for you, for US.

I don’t think life is a discrete function, and treating it that way might be the source of this optimizing for dopamine.

Success is not linear, in the journey of your life you will have far more failures than your successes.

EEBAx: History

Fri, 25 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I surprisingly had a few jobs in my career. Beside my own startup, i only worked to Ashrafcom. EEBAx was my first startup that i build with Mohamed Jaafar, https://eebax.com.

I’m going to go back to ~ 2013 and how it all started.

This website was made by Mohamed Jaafar (the one on the left, obviously 😂), in 2015.

In 2014, i had the shortest conversation with Mohamed. I told him i don’t think i can fit into Surveying and I want to shift career to software, in a professional way. So in order to do that, we had to build a portfolio, and in order to do that we have to have a domain name (duh!) so we can enlist our projects and show what we are capable off. So, at the end of 2014 school year, we decided to collect some money to make our company. My father secured me my first job at his company, he had me cut my hair as a precondition to get the job! I was Soo into getting the money that I sacrificed my hair. The job was quite simple, I just had to install windows on variety of company devices and install office products too. It didn’t take much and by afternoon I finished the job. There was the boss pc and i just couldn’t install windows in it, so I told them I’m gonna install linux here. They asked me if it runs word AND had Arabic keyboard. I made sure both were there. Now that I remembered it, they had really beautiful IT employee! She’s so beautiful I actually couldn’t focus on work, I asked her about her work and she said she’s a designer and she did various designs and stuff for the company, the weirdest thing is that she asked me whether I have Photoshop and actually told me she didn’t have any and asked for courses about it. You’d be wondering how a designer don’t have photoshop but she’s an exception 😂😂

Capitalism, software and burnout

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Or really, publish or perish.

Let’s set the stage for this: you don’t have to learn a new thing every day. You don’t have to produce a fancy thing every day and you definitely don’t have to be at your best every day. People are humans, and humans by nature have their ups and downs.

Chill, take some time off. Enjoy the little things, get away from your laptop. You are not a robot. God, even machines perform much better after a reboot.

Communications ettiqute

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Text based communication is far more difficult than verbal one. Context is mostly missing, and conversations can get heated faster than in verbal ones.

It makes sense to suggest readers to always assume the best intent and be explicit and ask if they didn’t get the intent. But I want also to focus on the writer part. How do you communicate with text in ways that is clear and not rude to your readers.

Building against interfaces

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This post discusses technical details

What are you testing

Tue, 10 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Testing in EBS

Ultimately security tests in EBS are meant to assess PCI compliance of an organization, to this end, PCI DSS requirements are:

Install a firewall
Change all default passwords on network-connected devices
Protect stored cardholder data via encryption, hashing, or other data protection methods
Encrypt cardholder data in transit
Install malware protection
Patch vulnerabilities in all systems and applications
Restrict access to cardholder data to authorized personnel
Control and restrict system access
Control and restrict physical access to cardholder data
Monitor access to data
Test security systems regularly
Maintain an information security policy

Let us go through them one by one, they are not that hard eh?

Values and pointers: What could possibly go wrong?

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This post highlights a weird and expected behavior we encountered while using Go’s encoding/json library.

In go, we pass by value, that really means this:


type User struct {
 Name string
}

func changeMe(u User) {
 u.Name = "New Name"
}

func main(){
 u := User{Name: "mohamed"}

 changeMe(u)
 log.Printf("The user is: %s", u.Name)

 // mohamed
}

To change by value, we must pass a pointer, we can change the code to be something like this:


func changeMe(u *User) {
 u.Name = "New Name"
}

// same code

 u := User{Name: "mohamed"}

 changeMe(&u) //<--- we made a change here! We should pass the memory address to user
 log.Printf("The user is: %s", u.Name)

 // New Name

But in go, we slightly use a different syntax for this, we use a method receiver on the struct. More like method to classes on other languages.

9-5

Fri, 04 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I have not written any post recently (4 months since my breakup post). I want to use this article to discuss some of the ideas i have about “work”, and by work i mean professional work. I won’t be citing anything (at least for now since i’m using this post to get away from working so yeah), so take everything here with a hugge grain of salt.

Corona has changed a lot and many of big software companies have moved to a permanent remote work setup. That actually makes sense as software can be done remotely and for that we have really built awesome infrastrucutre supporting this: from email, to Slack and Zoom. Everything we do in software is inherently remote-friendly.

On life and love

Tue, 12 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Relationships are hard to maintain. It touches very deep parts inside you, it makes you more insecure and usually more dumber. Relationships are hard.

It is extremely rare in nature to have two independently actors to align and to keep on that. It is often each partner in a different stage in the relationship than the other. The expectations change and so are the responsibilities. We are human and it is imperative we are insecure and subject to external factor. I have been telling my friends I cannot even plan for tomorrow’s dinner let alone my life goals. It is just too hard to get it right. And i settled from the easiest path; I didn’t plan for anything, nor did i commit. Relationships are not for everyone.

Simple design: probably a good one!

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This article is intended to be rather short ™. I will discuss my latest tool [https://github.com/adonese/ebs-live](ebs live dashboard api consumer). As the name suggests, this tool simply converts EBS’s website into an API. Pretty simple right.

the problem

we have an html document
we want to parse it
to extract some text, v

We can use Go’s excellent x/net/html library to parse the html. html package provides the following:

proper utf-8 encoding
html body node traversing (e.g., it does exactly what your browser do with manipulating and accessing the DOM)

The code for this part is really simple so, i won’t go into it at all.

Simple design: probably a good one!

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

the problem

we have an html document
we want to parse it
to extract some text, v

We can use Go’s excellent x/net/html library to parse the html. html package provides the following:

proper utf-8 encoding
html body node traversing (e.g., it does exactly what your browser do with manipulating and accessing the DOM)

The code for this part is really simple so, i won’t go into it at all.

About Corona Virus

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This will be a rather short post on Corona Virus you can read more on Wikipedia. My take on corona is from a slightly different perspective, an econmoical one. I’m neither a physician nor an economist, so take everything you read here with a huge grain of salt.

You can help yourself and the community a lot by following public health regulations. Cleaning your hands with soap and self isolation can be very helpful in reducing the number of Corona cases and avoid excessively overwhelming the health system.

Stereotyping

Sun, 09 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

stereotyping is bad

I do computer programs. i have a long hair, and it is quite usually messy. i fit quite well into the typical computer guy geeks. I have seen many people making that note: hey you look like a geek!

Working on so

entrepreneurship the hidden side

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The gem of this post is that entrepreneurship is not exactly what it sounds, and there is nothing inherently bad about employment. The effort it takes to build a successful startup is far more great than “just being an employee”. Startups are not actually for everyone, and that doesn’t make them any better than well established companies.

On being technical

Mon, 20 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

You are too technical

This week was a little bit fun for me. I had this incident where one of our clients has had a meeting with us and in the process he made joke about my technical skills–as in they the business owners use us the coders to do their stuff. It was indeed a bad joke, but it led me into writing this post. I wanted to share with you how extremely excited I am of being a programmer and the myth behind “technical term”.

Airtime

Fri, 17 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

A subsidy or government incentive is a form of financial aid or support extended to an economic sector (business, or individual) generally with the aim of promoting economic and social policy¹.

MOBILE money in Africa comes in different flavours. The sophisticated sort, exemplified by services such as M-Pesa in Kenya[…]. This sort uses pre-paid mobile-airtime minutes as a de facto currency that can be transferred between phones, exchanged for cash with dealers…²

How to design libraries

Wed, 15 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This post is about how to design libraries. It can help you write good code that you can reuse it in other different parts.

don’t do too much

We will take examples to make it more clear. When working with Cashqbot our Telegram Payment Bot. We have /rate feature which allows our users to get the USD rate of today Thanks to the folks of price today. I will just go through how we implmeneted this feature and what we can learn from that.

A premiere on system design

Sat, 04 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We run noebs and it is by far the most feature complete payment middleware in Sudan. Noebs is used by different banks and other payment providers, in addition to us. This post is not about that, I want to discuss more on what is it like to build such a system.

When doing software, we almost always tend to make more features, and many times it is because of the sheer joy of doing so. Fixing bugs is boring, and optimizing the system to gain more performance is quite hard. The easiest thing is to just build a new feature! This is also very clear when adopting a new technology or maintaining the old one. We all love the shiny new thing.

On the joy of coding

Sat, 04 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I love coding and I’d argue it is one of the most joyful things to do–it has its rough edges, but still though. If you take joy out of programming it becomes a task, and people often times don’t love tasks, or the obligation there of.

I came from engineering background, with some academia background as well. I could not handle acdemia, I wanted to build stuff. Well, after all i’m a hacker. I love to tweak parameters and play with different settings. Maybe that’s why my career in academia never took off.

Broken systems: e-purse considered harmful

Sun, 02 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

E-purse

Types of cards

There are mainly three types of cards, depending on the way money is withdrawn to the merchant’s account:

debit card: where the money is automatically deduced from your bank account. It is directly linked to your account, which means you need to have a enough money or an agreed upon overdraft 1.
credit card: they are not linked to your account, they allow you to buy things immediatelly and pay for their costs at a later time. I find the urge to elaborate more on this part as it is quite interesting. You have a credit score

It’s a cumulative number that measures your success relative to others, in this case grading you as a credit-worthy individual. 3

A tale of three channels

Mon, 19 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post is about systems, APIs, business decisions.

Payment

Nearly every transaction involves three parties: a merchant that accepts the card, a bank that issues it, and a payment network that facilitates the transaction between the first two parties. You hear the term PCI a lot.

The standard was created to increase controls around cardholder data to reduce credit card fraud. ~ Wikipedia

We (financial institutions) offer our clients (card holders) these services to ease their access into their accounts. In most cases, the bank takes the liability for any frauds that happen. So, PCI standards are used in the whole payment process, in the card, POS, and the payment network itself, EBS. It is the industry best practices for the security.

A year at University of Khartoum

Sat, 28 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve always been dreaming of teaching.

I worked as a teaching assistant at University of Khartoum, Geomatics Engineering department. I’ve TAed different classes–mostyl computational/programming ones. It was very nice experience, I couldn’t be more happier. Though, I have some notes.

National Service

The national service is the single most evil, human rights violation thing has ever been done. Our governers are literally using us to cover for their economical failures. The national service is a one year that each graduate student should serve in military. Usually, people prefer to do their national service in non-military places. That was exploited pretty well bad by the government sector. In my case, I wasn’t physically fitted to do my national service in a miliant facility. Luckily, I met all the requirements to be accepted at UofK.

Internships at gndi

Sun, 08 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We are very pleased to announce new internships at gndi.

G&I (gndi for short) is a tech company that provides a wide range of geospatial solutions and services for corporates and for individuals as well.

Why is that?

This initiatives came as a response to one my posts. Clearly there is a problem in our system. There is no systematic way of getting a job. Every year, tons of peoples are graduating from colleges. Industry cannot cover this number of graduates.

gndi E-learning Platform

Thu, 01 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

E-learning rocks

There are several reasons to use e-learning based system as oppose of the classical ones. Hosting all the course materials online can help our students a lot. They will find the materials of the course available 24/7. But that will also help us, too. As an instructor (for both G&I and UofK), I found it to be very time consuming to maintain a class. However, when we moved our works online, things have changed. The online forum accompanied with the website help students answer each others’ questions–that saved me lots of time, and helped the class understand the materials much better. Not only that, I found it to be much easier to respond to the class questions. Students know where to write their problems, I know where to find them. I now know what questions (what part of the class they suffer at it much), and how can I address such problems.

A friend of mine was faced with his facebook's posts being printed on money papers

Mon, 23 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Money’s paper is a special type of papers that only used by authorized companies. It is typically used in the company’s official documents e.g., contracts.

A friend of mine (a bad one that actually thinks our governors are villain, screw you anti-progression), he was being summoned in response to his recent posts. Anyways, once he got there, he found his own posts were printed on money papers. Those were bloody valuable posts he got.

Mohamed Yousif

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Building payment systems that work when everything else fails