Juan Pan: Keep open, Stay tuned open source opens up a whole new world for me | TiDB Hackathon 2021 Judge Interview

It has been less than two weeks before the 2022.1.8-9 competition day. I think all the contestants have already geared up to prepare for their own projects.

While waiting for the final game day, the TiDB community interviewed a female judge in this Hackathon. She has worked in the database field for many years, from DBA to entrepreneur, with a legendary life experience.

We recorded her understanding and perception of open source through interviews, and discussed the significance of Hackathon activities, as well as extremely important suggestions to contestants. Players participating in this year's Hackathon or friends who are interested in Hackathon, it is worth seeing.

The answer is revealed-the invited judge is SphereEx co-founder & CTO Pan Juan, she is also Apache Member & Apache ShardingSphere PMC, Apache brpc (Incubating) Mentor & Apache AGE (Incubating) Mentor, AWS Data Hero, China Mulan open source community tutor. He was responsible for the design and development of JD Digital's database intelligent platform, and now focuses on distributed database & middleware ecology and open source fields. Was named "2020 China Open Source Pioneer", 2021 OSCAR pinnacle open source figure.

The following is an interview with Pan Juan:

Q

When was your first contact with open source? What do you think is the core spirit of open source?

Pan Juan: Because I came from a DBA, the first open source product I came into contact with was MySQL. In my spare time at that time, I also participated in some MySQL-related translations, such as the translation of the latest published articles.

I think the core spirit of open source is quite complicated to define, but the core element is an open ecology. Based on this openness, people with different backgrounds, different ideas, and different voices can be connected together. We share our ideas with each other, create something together, and strive for an ultimate goal. This is what I think is the charm of open source.

Q

You have successfully transformed from a senior DBA of JD Technology to a development engineer, and now you have embarked on the path of entrepreneurship. Many people in the industry regard you as a legend. Can you share your mental journey along the way?

Pan Juan: I went from DBA human operation and maintenance to semi-automated operation and maintenance, to later creating AI intelligent DBA operation and maintenance, and finally entering the world of developer to do database and distributed database-related things. There are many challenges at this stage. First of all, we must face choices in different fields, and in each process, we must master the skills required at different stages.

From my point of view, there are two core factors that enable a person to stick to his choice:

First, you find it interesting, what you want and want to do. For example, someone who can play games all night at night must be a pleasure.

Second, you think it is valuable or necessary for your growth. Just like why everyone has to prepare for the college entrance examination and various exams so hard, it is because you think it will give you great value and even benefit you for life.

For me, this path can persist, intertwining the above two factors. Only if you really feel that you want to do this in your heart, will you be willing to continue on the long road that no one understands.

Q

What motivation or trend did you see that made you choose an open source project to start a business?

Pan Juan: I think open source is very helpful to my growth. The DBA world is relatively niche and closed, but when I decided to enter JAVA or distributed database development from DBA, open source really opened up a whole new world for me. You will find that you are linked to Global and the world, and everyone shares their ideas with each other. In the process of open source, you can get in touch with big cows from all over the world, and they are willing to give you guidance and help you grow. In this process, in addition to gaining professional skills and career development, you can also meet a group of like-minded people and even become friends.

I remember once, when I went to Nanjing to share, I had a meal with a Committer in the ShardingSphere community who had never met before. This kind of thing may not have been imagined before. I crossed a city, and I could still talk to someone People who have never met go to dinner together. This is what open source brings to us. I think in addition to the accumulation of code and technology, it is more emotional support, so I think it is a combination of rationality and sensibility. This is why I think open source and its commercialization are a challenging and fun journey for me.

Q

You have also worked as a DBA before, and DBAs are currently facing many challenges. What advice do you have for them?

Juan Pan: From my personal point of view, with the development of Cloud Native and the popularity of Kubernetes, I think the DBA job category will have a trend of decline. If you agree with this premise, the next suggestions I can give may still be the most old-fashioned-the question of breadth and depth. On the one hand, you can do some more in-depth DBA things. For example, what you did was originally only the use and operation and maintenance of DB. In the future, you can do research and development in related fields, and even the development of DB surrounding ecology, such as DB management and control. DB governance, DB high availability, etc. On the other hand, you can expand your own breadth. For example, I have learned that many DBA students have begun to turn to be solutions, architects, and even test leaders and evangelists. They use their original experience as the basis and combine with the knowledge of other fields around them, thus expanding the breadth of their entire career.

Therefore, I think everyone should combine three aspects when considering the DBA career plan: first, the width and depth of the career; second, your own interests; third, the true level of the individual, to make a comprehensive consideration and choose.

Q

We have also seen that the attitude of domestic users towards open source is changing in the past two years. As the founder of an enterprise-level service company, what do you think is the attitude of Chinese enterprise users towards open source software? What has changed compared to the past?

Pan Juan: I can clearly feel the support for open source in recent years. In 2018, when the ShardingSphere project wanted to enter the Apache incubator, it was really hard. We even wanted to give up at the time, because it was difficult to find a mentor who could help us enter the incubator, and no one gave us guidance on open source. This road was entirely our own. Looking back now, most developers have heard of open source communities, open source projects, especially domestic Apache incubator projects. I am also a mentor of the Apache incubator. If you have a project and want to enter the Apache Foundation, I can also help.

On the other hand, the country is also encouraging open source, and open source has been written into some of the country's rules and regulations. At the same time, because I am also doing open source commercialization here, I see that VC has a high degree of recognition for open source projects.

Therefore, the entire trend of open source is developing in a positive direction. But I have to add one point, because I will also be exposed to some overseas open source-related entrepreneurship and investment, and I will find that the domestic open source situation is still quite different from that of foreign countries, and there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Q

Do you think TiDB and ShardingSphere can be combined?

Pan Juan: I think there are quite a lot of points that can be combined. I am often asked what is the difference between Apache ShardingSphere and TiDB. I think the difference is quite big. First of all, everyone's positioning is different. The core of Apache ShardingSphere is to do Database Plus, which is the interaction layer and ecological layer on top of DB, so our attitude towards DB is very tolerant and open. It is equivalent to a unified DBMS for our interaction and storage. On this platform, we will build a standard layer and protocol layer of Unify, and add many plug-ins to it. The Sharding plug-in is just a plug-in for the entire platform layer or access terminal, and this part overlaps with TiDB. In addition to Sharding, ShardingSphere can do many things, including data security, data encryption and decryption, multi-tenancy, distributed user authority control, and even full-link database pressure testing and data isolation. Therefore, I think TiDB and Apache ShardingSphere have many ways to cooperate in the future.

Q

TiDB Hackathon is an important event for the contributors and developers of the TiDB community every year. Some people also jokingly call PingCAP a Hackathon-driven company, which shows its importance. As an in-depth participant of multiple open source projects, do you have any suggestions for the participants?

Pan Juan: First of all, I think it is best to participate in Hackathon with goals or expectations, so that you can more easily get what you want in the process. Second, I think it is to keep open, keep open. Because only when you stay open, you will not be so aggressive, and you will have more opportunities to absorb other people's ideas and get to know more friends.

Q

We see that the current Hackathon contestants are still mostly men. For female contestants, do you have any suggestions or encouragement for them?

Juan Pan: I quite support everyone to participate. Before, everyone ridiculed that GitHub is the world's largest same-sex dating community. By analogy, if more female contestants can join it, they can become both same-sex and opposite-sex. Community of friends. In this process, you will find that although men and women have different physiological structures, everyone's IQ level and EQ level are basically at the same level. In this case, I don’t think there is anything to be afraid of, or what you think it should be like. One of my favorite words is: Follow your inner thoughts, and be the kind of person you want to be. This will make your life more enjoyable.

Q

As a judge of this year, what do you expect from this year's Hackathon?

Pan Juan: The same sentence: Keep open, Stay tuned. First of all, you must stay open so that you can absorb more ideas; second, you must keep glowing for a long time, and you will get a very satisfactory result if you accumulate to a certain level.

TiDB Hackathon 2021

The theme of this year's Hackathon is "Explore the Sky", which will be developed during the 2022.1.8-9 two competition days, with online and offline linkage. From the Ti planet to the firmament of the universe, we use Hacking to connect to a wider range of ecology, giving the contestants imagination space to fully develop. In this edition of Hackathon, we have fully upgraded the track and opened up four major tracks: kernel, tools, ecology, and "∞". Participants, whether they are database developers, database upstream and downstream ecology, or database users, can find suitable ones. In the field, explore unlimited possibilities around TiDB.

TiDB Hackathon 2021 will officially start registration on December 9. Contestants can form a team of 1-4 participants and complete their work within the competition period. The winning team will receive bonuses, technical and resource support. The competition invited well-known experts in the database field, community technology experts, and top investor representatives to serve as judges to provide comprehensive comments and guidance on the project, eliminate knowledge blind spots, and escort the experience of the event. In addition, there are top investors who sit here all the way, so that your strength can be seen by more people.

For more details: Explore the Sky丨Come to TiDB Hackathon 2021 to explore infinite possibilities