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Busy work or Productive work?

Whenever I used to get stuck in some situation then I used to ask my mentor on what needs to be done. To make it very easy, I used to ask things like * Should we add this feature? * Should we ask for more time? * Should I tell client that we

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100x Developers - Why they vanished?

First version of Git was written in 2 weeks. Did Linus used Agile, Scrum, Waterfall or any other model? No, Linus had a problem while maintaining source code of Linux kernel on BitKeeper. So he solved the problem by coding Git and moved on to solve next problem. Sometimes I

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Best way to learn programming

I was not too fond of programming in college. The reason was not the code but the way in which I was learning it via books, inheritance, polymorphism. I was more interested in building inverted pyramids on screen. It was a dry, dull, and syntax overload process. On the first

Journal

Abstractions in coding are bad but also good

Whenever I learn new technology, abstractions act like best friends. Just type a function and the database is now connected, type another command and auth layer is up. It's like an old man's co-pilot. Within a week I declare myself an expert. But whenever I have

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GDPR from developer's perspective

GDPR in real world

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UX evolving backwards

touch screens in cars - good UX?

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Three Qualities

A couple of weeks back,  one of my friends asked what are the three qualities that I want to develop in my team. And honestly, I was short of just three. So I made a joke about him (benefits of good friends) and diverted the topic. Over the next few

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How does the database Index work internally?

Find the answers to - How do database indexes actually work internally? and why your queries are slow even after defining indexes.

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Positioning Lessons from Maggi

Maggi at launch (80's) was targeted to working women. It was positioned as a meal replacement for busy women. Nestle failed in this attempt as this was a big behaviour change for people eating rice and wheat. Few iterations later, they discovered the hidden spot. Rebellious children who

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Why do washing machines have a window?

The front-loading washing machine at my home has a window but the top-loading machine at my in-laws doesn’t have any see-through panel. What’s the advantage of the see-through panel in front-loading machines? I did a quick search and there are a lot of theories on it. Some say

Journal

Replacement or Enhancement?

I remember some of my friends from the manufacturing industry who were doing daily health checks for machinery. It was a standard routine to look at the gauge and feed it into the logbook. I came across a Japanese company Lilz who's upgrading these legacy systems with a

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Is Amazon stealing strategies from AWS?

Want computing power, use EC2 Want storage, use S3 Want a database, use RDS AWS is a platform that enables customers (Netflix, LinkedIn, Twitch), you can buy services like ingredients and make your own recipe. But what if you want to buy recipes instead of ingredients? Amazon is now planning

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Dotcom bubble v2 ft. web3-blockchain

It's funny how the whole premise of blockchain-based web3 is on criticising the web2 structure and yet in crisis, it exposes how it's all web2 just wearing cool clothes. Govt may declare the money in your Coinbase wallet doesn't belong to you in case

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Video Conference - Why no one has fixed it yet?

Imagine sitting in a conference room, brainstorming the next year's strategy. One person is shouting all the time, another one just barely whispers, and you just see lips moving. Sounds frustrating? Yet, it happens daily in our virtual calls. I see a lot of features being added like

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Following UX Best Practices?

I was activating my EPF account today. The primary mandatory field doesn't allow pasting. I had to type in the whole number digit-by-digit from another screen, which had more chances of error. I could find no reason as to why would you disable pasting. The only reason I

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Handsfree Driving – What will change?

Once we achieve Level 5 autonomy, the travel activities inside the car will change drastically. Apple’s recent focus on car play in WWDC signals the race to capture such changes. I was discussing this with my friend Mahesh. The phase one shift will be when the infotainment screen again

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Death of the Internet?

Recently came across a conspiracy theory, that says the Internet died in 2016 and now it's full of bots. Any content that you consume (including this post) is by AI. I can solve fire hydrant captcha easily so you never know if I am a bot. But there&

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Rediscovering web development?

I was going through Fresh, the new web framework of the Deno ecosystem. Some highlights are * Selective hydration * Server-side rendering with no-js shipped by default It reminded me of the early days of web development with PHP. When everything was actually rendered server-side, javascript was the second-class citizen and jQuery

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GitHub Copilot - There's no going back

For the last two weeks, I am writing code using Github Copilot and it's addictive. The context it picks from existing code is mind-blowing. It's not a regular autocomplete model trained on Stackoverflow. Here's one example where I intentionally left the whole program blank.

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5 lessons I learnt after coding for 10 years

What you are going to read is not advice or suggestions, it's things that I learnt the hard way. It's the anti-conventional-wisdom list so I hope some of the things will offend you and boil your blood. Since it's my career summarized in a

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My opinion on opinion

I love grey colour, I hate cats, democracy is bad, eating animals is okay These all are opinions sorted in controversial order. But what are opinions? How can someone justify eating animals?

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Redefining fever after 150 years ft. Covid 19

US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advise that a person who has a temperature of 100.4° Fahrenheit or above has a fever. This was from research done in 1868 (154 years ago). 100.4° F is the tipping value that security guards look for when you enter a hotel,

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Who owns the Biological Scissors?

This week USPTO concluded [https://www.scribd.com/document/561762623/106-115-Decision-on-Priority] that Harvard and MIT will have patent rights to CRISPR instead of UC Berkeley. CRISPR let scientist edit the blueprint of human life ie DNA. It can cure a lot of diseases like HIV. Why this ruling is interesting

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UX at Hardware

Every car on road is not Tesla, so we are getting small tweaks in non-Tesla cars for assistive driving. One such case is when you miscalculate the next turn and will end up in an accident. This is where AI comes in and does course correction (literally this time). Make

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UX = Do what I mean!

Remember the last time you heard a new word and didn't catch it on the first go. What happened next? You asked the person to pronounce it slowly, so you can record it in your brain. This sounds obvious, we do it naturally. This is exactly what Google