Random Thoughts

Welcome to my digital brain dump. Here's where I write about tech, life, and whatever else is on my mind. No filter, just raw thoughts from a caffeinated developer.

AI/ML•September 25, 2025

AI Agents in Production: The Reality Nobody's Talking About

Everyone's building AI agents. Most are failing quietly. Here's what actually matters when you're trying to ship agents that don't embarrass you in production.

AI/ML•September 24, 2025•11 min read

Prompt Optimization Just Crushed Frontier Models (And Made Them 90x Cheaper)

Databricks just proved you can make open-source models beat Claude Opus 4.1 with better prompts. No fine-tuning, no massive compute, just smarter optimization. The AI economics just shifted.

AI/ML•September 15, 2025•8 min read

Thinking Was Real. The Illusion Was Yours.

Apple published a paper called 'The Illusion of Thinking', raising concerns about LLMs collapsing on logic tasks. But many of its conclusions hinge on assumptions that don't reflect real model constraints. Here's a breakdown of why the paper's findings may not hold up under scrutiny.

Hardware•August 20, 2025•8 min read

Why Binary Won and Nothing Else Even Got Close

People always ask why computers only think in 0s and 1s. Short answer: everything else is garbage once you hit real-world constraints. Here's the messy but real explanation of why binary computing became the only game in town.

Startup•August 15, 2025•10 min read

AI Startup Benchmarks Are Brutal Now (And 'Good' Isn't Good Enough Anymore)

a16z just dropped new benchmarks showing AI startups hit $2M ARR in year one. That's not exceptional - that's median. The bar moved, and most founders haven't noticed yet.

Academia•July 30, 2025•12 min read

Georgia Tech's Online MCS: Midway Through, Here's the Real Tea

An unfiltered review from someone currently grinding through Georgia Tech's online Master's program. Spoiler: it's hard AF, but worth it if you're into that kind of pain.

Observability•June 25, 2025•12 min read

Attention-Weighted Retention: Logging Everything Is Lazy - Start Scoring What Matters

The default mode of log management today is basically dump-everything-and-pray. Most teams still run on this passive collection mindset where you throw all logs into storage, cross your fingers, and hope some future query will need them. It's less of a strategy, more of an excuse.

Viral on HN•May 18, 2025•6 min read

Typing 118 WPM Broke My Brain in the Right Ways (A Year-Long Journey)

How I went from 60 WPM to 118 WPM and accidentally rewired my brain for focus, discipline, and clarity. Spoiler: it wasn't about the home row.

Career•April 5, 2025•5 min read

Being Useful at Work: Getting Used or Leveling Up?

The trending 'if you're useful you're not safe' narrative smells real neat but also kinda lazy thinking. Here's why being useful isn't a trap unless you stay stuck there.

AI/ML•March 14, 2025•8 min read

Test Loss is Lying to You (And Here's How to Catch It)

Breaking down test loss into memorized and generalized components. Turns out your model might be cheating, and here's how to catch it.

Backend•February 20, 2025•10 min read

19 Raw SQL Hacks That Saved Me From Ugly Dashboards and Crying ETL Runs

This isn't another SQL tricks post about GROUP BY or joins. These are battle-tested hacks that saved real queries, real pipelines, and real dashboards from burning to the ground.

Dev•January 8, 2025•10 min read

Programming as Theory Building - The Death and Revival of Understanding

Peter Naur said programming isn't about writing code—it's about building mental theories. In the age of AI-generated code, that theory is disappearing. Here's why that's a problem and how to fix it.

AI/ML•December 10, 2024•9 min read

LoRa, VeRA, Delta-LoRa... AI Researchers Need to Chill with the Acronyms

Breaking down the alphabet soup of parameter-efficient fine-tuning methods. Spoiler: they're all trying to solve the same problem.

Algorithms•November 5, 2024•8 min read

Job Sequencing: When Greedy Fails and DSU Saves the Day

Why classic greedy job scheduling hits a wall at scale, and how a Kruskal-style DSU trick turns TLE into AC.

Dev•October 12, 2024•4 min read

Your Spaghetti Code is Killing Your Career (And Your Soul)

Real talk: writing bad code doesn't just hurt the project. It's sabotaging your future self in ways you don't realize.

Backend•September 8, 2024•8 min read

The Senior Dev Made Our System 30% Faster While I Watched in Disbelief (Kafka + Elasticsearch)

Watched a senior engineer fix our broken data pipeline in one afternoon. The solution was so obvious I felt like an idiot for not seeing it sooner.

Startup•August 14, 2024•10 min read

Built a Kids' App, Hit $900 MRR, Almost Burned Out (A 12-Week Reality Check)

The unfiltered story of building CCPlay from 'random idea' to actual revenue. Spoiler: kids are way cooler than adults.

Math•June 22, 2024•8 min read

ballgorithm: math vs math. cursed ping pong that almost never ends

Accidental weekend build of an AI vs AI ping pong game where two bots rally forever. Pure math, non-deterministic, ~80 lines of cursed code.

Opinion•May 20, 2024•6 min read

Stop Letting ChatGPT Write Your Thoughts (An Authenticity Rant)

Hot take: AI-generated content is making everyone sound the same. Here's why your messy, imperfect thoughts are infinitely more valuable.

Culture•April 15, 2024•5 min read

A Tamil Song Taught Me More About Life Than Most Self-Help Books

Sometimes the deepest wisdom comes from the most unexpected places. Like a classic melody that hits different.

Finance•March 10, 2024•7 min read

Built a Life Insurance Calculator Because Adulting is Hard

Turns out you can't just YOLO your way through financial planning. Here's how I figured out the actual numbers.