# adonese's Blog > Technical blog by Mohamed Yousif. Writing about payment systems, fintech infrastructure, software engineering, and building reliable systems. Technical blog by Mohamed Yousif covering payment systems, fintech infrastructure, distributed systems, and software engineering. Author of noebs, an open-source payment gateway used by banks across Africa. Each blog post has a clean Markdown version available at the same URL with `index.html.md` appended. ## Blog Posts - [Payment for developers!](https://adonese.sd/book/index.html.md): 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 … - [Computer Use](https://adonese.sd/post/computer-use/index.html.md): I have been writing and documenting my ai usage here in couple of posts. Some patterns are emerging, for example I find great usage of AI in computer … - [Bugs and Time](https://adonese.sd/post/bugs-and-time/index.html.md): Some bugs haunt you somewhere in the future. Majority of them comes from technical debts. I.e. something you or your clanker must have overlooked or … - [Skill Atrophy](https://adonese.sd/post/skill-atrophy/index.html.md): I use ai to ask stupid questions that I’m (was) too ashamed to ask in a stackoverflow. I remember during my graduation year and while picking up … - [Wrong Bets or Why Mgmt Is Hard](https://adonese.sd/post/wrong-bets-or-why-mgmt-is-hard/index.html.md): I remember a conversation I had with a friend 8 years ago. Our CVs almost started to have some entries as we were substituting hoppies “i like … - [Throwing a Joke](https://adonese.sd/post/throwing-a-joke/index.html.md): One of the things i remember early from my early childhood is the concept of throwing a joke. The act of throwing a joke for a kid (myself) … - [Quick adventure](https://adonese.sd/post/quick-adventure/index.html.md): 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 … - [You need to care, really](https://adonese.sd/post/you-need-to-give-a-sh1t/index.html.md): 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 … - [No Textbook: lessons for fellow developers](https://adonese.sd/post/no-textbook/index.html.md): 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 … - [Software Design](https://adonese.sd/post/software-design/index.html.md): 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 … - [Sharp Decline](https://adonese.sd/post/sharp-decline/index.html.md): 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 … - [Tax Bracket Creep](https://adonese.sd/post/tax-bracket-creep/index.html.md): 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 … - [Gallery](https://adonese.sd/post/gallery/index.html.md): And then there’s this special person to my heart, mind, and soul - [Side Battles](https://adonese.sd/post/side-battles/index.html.md): 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 … - [Future and now](https://adonese.sd/post/fucurrent/index.html.md): Thinking too far ahead about one’s life while advisable can often yield wrong outputs. A simple strategy would be to diversify your portfolio … - [new year](https://adonese.sd/post/2024-01-01-new-year-post-war/index.html.md): 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 … - [Oh love oh life](https://adonese.sd/post/2023-04-27-oh-love/index.html.md): 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 … - [No thinking](https://adonese.sd/post/2023-04-18-no-thinking/index.html.md): 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 … - [Being the eldest brother](https://adonese.sd/post/2023-04-06-brothers/index.html.md): 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 … - [State of payment in Sudan](https://adonese.sd/post/2023-03-27-state-of-fintech/index.html.md): 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 … - [what makes a company culture](https://adonese.sd/post/2023-03-04-what-is-a-culture/index.html.md): 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 … - [insecurities](https://adonese.sd/post/2023-01-22-me/index.html.md): 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 … - [love life](https://adonese.sd/post/2023-01-20-happyness/index.html.md): 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 … - [State of open source in Sudan](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-09-30-oss-in-sd/index.html.md): 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 … - [BOK and trust](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-09-17-bok/index.html.md): 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 … - [quiet times](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-09-12-na/index.html.md): 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 … - [Harsh reality](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-08-27-harsh-reality-check/index.html.md): 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 … - [Software in Sudan](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-08-13-software-in-sudan/index.html.md): 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 … - [Software takes time. Tradeoffs are imperative](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-07-29-software-takes-time/index.html.md): 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 … - [Adulthood, and sins](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-07-01-sins/index.html.md): 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 … - [On reading](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-07-01-internet/index.html.md): 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 … - [Resignations](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-06-28-resign/index.html.md): 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 … - [Same day, no differences?](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-06-28-paycheck-to-paycheck/index.html.md): 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 … - [What are we cooking in noebs](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-05-30-what-is-new-noebs/index.html.md): 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 … - [Technology is scary](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-05-09-technology-is-scary/index.html.md): 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 … - [My birthday](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-05-08-birthday/index.html.md): 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 … - [Taking breaks](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-03-18-breaks/index.html.md): 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 … - [Robots](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-03-04-robots/index.html.md): 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 … - [A mattress](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-01-14-a-matt/index.html.md): 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. … - [what is the point](https://adonese.sd/post/2022-01-05-what-is-the-point/index.html.md): 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 … - [A Date](https://adonese.sd/post/2021-11-19-moving-on/index.html.md): 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 … - [A Date](https://adonese.sd/post/2021-10-22-a-date/index.html.md): 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 … - [hiring](https://adonese.sd/post/2021-10-09-lets-talk-about-hiring/index.html.md): 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, … - [bad practices and dirty code](https://adonese.sd/post/2021-10-02-dirty-code/index.html.md): 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 … - [love](https://adonese.sd/post/2021-10-01-love/index.html.md): 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 … - [Let us change the tone](https://adonese.sd/post/2021-06-19-ngos/index.html.md): 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 … - [I'm running out of descriptors](https://adonese.sd/post/2021-06-01-fd/index.html.md): 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 … - [Management, delegation, and people](https://adonese.sd/post/2021-02-21-management/index.html.md): - [API design](https://adonese.sd/post/2021-01-15-api-design/index.html.md): 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 … - [what is an api](https://adonese.sd/post/2021-01-09-what-is-an-api/index.html.md): 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 … - [The non-achievers](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-12-31-non-achievers/index.html.md): 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 … - [EEBAx: History](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-12-25-eebax/index.html.md): 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 … - [Capitalism, software and burnout](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-12-21-capitalism-software/index.html.md): 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 … - [Communications ettiqute](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-12-18-online-communication/index.html.md): Text based communication is far more difficult than verbal one. Context is mostly missing, and conversations can get heated faster than in verbal … - [Building against interfaces](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-11-24-building-against-interfaces/index.html.md): This post discusses technical details - [What are you testing](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-11-10-what-are-you-testing/index.html.md): 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 … - [Values and pointers: What could possibly go wrong?](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-10-30-values-types-and-pointers/index.html.md): 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 … - [9-5](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-09-04-work/index.html.md): 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 … - [On life and love](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-05-12-self-reflection/index.html.md): Relationships are hard to maintain. It touches very deep parts inside you, it makes you more insecure and usually more dumber. Relationships are hard. … - [Simple design: probably a good one!](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-04-08-personal-notes/index.html.md): 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). … - [Simple design: probably a good one!](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-04-03-simple-design/index.html.md): 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). … - [About Corona Virus](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-03-19-corona-copy/index.html.md): 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 … - [Stereotyping](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-02-09-stereotype/index.html.md): 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 … - [entrepreneurship the hidden side](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-02-03-enterprneurship/index.html.md): 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 … - [On being technical](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-01-20-on-being-too-technical/index.html.md): 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 … - [Airtime](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-01-17-airtime/index.html.md): Preface A subsidy or government incentive is a form of financial aid or support extended to an economic sector (business, or individual) generally … - [How to design libraries](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-01-15-refactoring-and-debugging/index.html.md): 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 … - [A premiere on system design](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-01-04-systems-design/index.html.md): 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 … - [On the joy of coding](https://adonese.sd/post/2020-01-04-on-the-joy-of-coding/index.html.md): 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 … - [Broken systems: e-purse considered harmful](https://adonese.sd/post/2018-12-02-broken-systems/index.html.md): 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: … - [A tale of three channels](https://adonese.sd/post/2018-11-19-how-to-design-bad-systems/index.html.md): This post is about systems, APIs, business decisions. Payment Nearly every transaction involves three parties: a merchant that accepts the card, a … - [A year at University of Khartoum](https://adonese.sd/post/2017-10-28-a-year-at-uofk/index.html.md): I’ve always been dreaming of teaching. I worked as a teaching assistant at University of Khartoum, Geomatics Engineering department. I’ve … - [Internships at gndi](https://adonese.sd/post/2017-10-08-internships_at_gndi/index.html.md): 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 … - [gndi E-learning Platform](https://adonese.sd/post/2017-06-01-gndi-elearning/index.html.md): 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 … - [A friend of mine was faced with his facebook's posts being printed on money papers](https://adonese.sd/post/2017-01-23-a-friend-of-mine/index.html.md): 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 … ## About - [About / Bio](https://adonese.sd/bio/index.html.md): Background, experience, and contact information ## Optional - [RSS Feed](https://adonese.sd/index.xml): Subscribe to new posts via RSS - [Archives](https://adonese.sd/archives): All posts organized by date - [Sitemap](https://adonese.sd/sitemap.xml): Full site structure