Looking for patterns in chaos
When ChatGPT was launched, it was the very first time most of us interacted with AI. We talked with intelligence using a prompt. The internet was flooded with the perfect prompt to get results. That model looked something like this - Prompt <=> AI Pretty soon everyone got past the world model embedded within the LLM and we needed to provide more context for AI to use intelligence for our specific…
Hasn't it happened forever? The invention of the wheel, farming, the Industrial Revolution, and computers. So then the question is, where will it get absorbed? One topic that often comes up is how AI will affect jobs at scale, increase ARR per employee, and reduce the amount of workforce needed. That all seems plausible. But development is all about solving problems at the edge. AI will change…
"I am wired that way," we used to say. But with LLMs, we now have a better way of modeling our brains. We can now say "I am weighted that way.". Our brains are not wired. They are weighted. It is not the connections of neurons but the relative weights and strength of those neurons. This new way of thinking about how we think can be truly enlightening. Wiring is not something that can easily be…
The primary job function of software architects must be to reduce the amount of code being written. You could extend it to reduce internal communication, reduce dependencies, reduce complexity, and even reduce the number of components. This way of defining an architect's role makes their engagement more relevant throughout the development process. Every code review now is an opportunity to…
Bootstrapping a business in some ways seems more like solving chicken and egg problems. It is harder to hire since you don’t have a team. Harder to build a team since it is hard to hire. Harder to get customers since you don’t have customers. You don’t have customers since it is harder to get customers. You don’t have credibility since you don’t have enough customers. You don’t have enough…
Why model Knowledge, Understanding, Expertise, and Innovation? Modeling is a logical simplification of something that in reality could be quite complex, intangible, or abstract. A model then allows us to logically work with these concepts and influence them in a desirable way. When it comes to the logical progression from Knowledge to Understanding to Expertise, understanding them in a way we can…
I have used this term i call "Butt time productivity" as a way to model how some managers view productivity. This becomes really relevant in the software world, where the outcome is not dependent on time spent in front of computers and the best code is probably written when taking a walk or may be in the shower. Consider two employees, I will call them H and S. H is the hard worker. He is in…
There is a lot of magic that goes into Machine Learning and AI. So it feels great the first time you work out all the math physically and do a prediction given some data. I set out to implement the Naive Bayes on the pima-indians-diabetes dataset (Google it and you can fine it). There is a lot of greek that goes into understanding the formulae's but for those like me whose dictionary has "greek"…
To scale yourself, hire people. To scale with people, build teams. To scale with teams, build processes. Above all, build right culture. It scales everything best.
Almost every SaaS product was once a little application running on localhost of someone's computer. The journey from here to being a SaaS product that works at scale is unique for every product but also similar in many ways. Having worked on both sides of the spectrum and in the transition here are few things I have learned along the way. These are nowhere close to being comprehensive and omit…
Who is the 10x programmer? How do you know one from the other? How do you hire a 10x programmer? There is this perception I have seen about the 10x programmer who is this insane work machine, who can spit out code faster than most can type. I feel the term is highly misunderstood. Lot of people think developing software is a linear task. That productivity is directly proportional to number of…
P1: I want to see 1, 2, 4 and 5. D1: print 1, print 2, print 4, print 5 ... P2: I want to see 3 D2: print 3 P2: 3 should be after 2 and before 4 D2: output.replace /(2) (4)(.+)3/\1{3}\2\3/ ... P3: I want to see 6 D3: WTF
Like a typical hacker mindset, I am always on lookout for patterns, formulae's and hacks for life and work around me. When I moved into managing teams, I had to apply this thinking towards people, team building and processes to optimize the organizational code at work. I have learned and changed a lot in the process but my train of thoughts still revolve around those original traits of a hacker…
Product architecture reflects the communication structure of the teams. Interestingly, the reverse is true as well.
Reactjs is built on a simple foundation of separating DOM mutations from the Views of the application. A typical SPA application renders and re-renders parts of DOM by a process of setting innerHTML on parent elements. This approach though simple and works for the most part, is mainly a hack around Web 1.0 applications where web pages were primarily rendered at the server. The browsers thus are…
Product Development Iteration After an initial spurt of development and v1 of a product, software engineering processes and product life cycles kick in. We move into an iteration phase where a product undergoes continuos improvements and changes to serve its customers and their changing needs. Processes of scrum and agile steadily fit the product to its current and future customer needs. A product…
In the scrum world, we typically divide our stories in to bugs, features and chores. I find this classification limiting and that it does not address all the work that should be implemented to deliver an awesome product. The problem here is not that any task cannot be classified into one of these categories. The problem is that these categories are typically owned by different people. The product…
While browsing through my archives, I came across this Project Time Tracker I had developed many years back while working at UCLA. We had zero systems for tracking any kind of work, tasks or people and so I hacked this one up for use with my own team. Above is a screen shot of it (its the only thing I have now) which hints at the feature set it provided then.
Building software at scale has been a slogan in enterprises for some time now. With the advent of Internet and applications that are used by a world of users, scalability has became extremely important. Building systems that can support millions of users and peta-bytes of data has become critical to enterprises building software at scale. Since over a decade now, IaaS and PaaS have become the norm…
Space has always interested me and for the longest time I have followed news related to NASA and lately SpaceX. I read all these articles around the search for alien life, I look up in the sky and ponder about the vastness of this Universe. There are estimates about how many stars there are in the Universe and it makes me think, so what is outside of that cluster of stars! When someone spots a…
I always thought so but never had a good reasoning. The following diagram is an analytical representation of why relying on news sources for knowledge is bad. If the happenings in the world is represented on a bell curve, the red circular areas above represent what the news sources will cover. Why? Because that portion is part of the outliers and thus provides the necessary spice that catches user…
I read this article on why rating systems don't work and it got me into thinking what rating system would work. The current rating systems are based on average rating and thus can be easily gamed. Every business can ask their well wishers to rate high on their listing and offset the few genuine raters. One alternative is to consider rating during a fixed time period and average based on period…
Why is the iOS so much better than Android? What makes a good website, good app or a good product? How many times have you made a new year resolution and given up on it? One of the connecting threads in the above questions I believe is the laziness factor. It is an acceptance of the fact that human's are inherently lazy and will tend to do things and use products that let them be that way. This…
Technical debt is something programmers deal with all the time. Everytime we want to ship something faster, we make a compromise with the design patterns. Everytime software is used for a while, we realize that an alternate pattern would have been a better fit. We then decide to patch up and move on or do it the "right way" by refactoring the code. Refactoring most of the times is a scary deal.…
I recently switched from iPhone 3G to Nexus S and boy I started appreciating Apple so much more. Before these I have used Blackberry, Motorola Razr and the Nokia 3310. I build web apps for work and fun and reading and thinking about user interface has been part of my work life. But I am not a designer. Typography and colors is not my forte. I know what the golden ratio is but I haven't seen any…