Why do we want to go to Mars? It sucks. Here’s a letter from the Earth to all the humans who want to go to Mars.

After working with TypeScript for more than 5 years, I needed a refresher on JavaScript. So I picked up John Resig’s Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja. Yes, the same person who gave us JQuery.

Feature requests, bug reports, support calls, and an onslaught of customer requests. Is this what your typical day looks like? You are reacting to other people’s demands and needs, fighting battle after battle after battle. You spend the whole day on shallow, urgent tasks while losing track of important ones. Could there be a better way?

Earlier today, Stack Overflow announced on their blog that their product for teams will be free, up to 50 users. Here’s what that means.

I have started learning the Ruby programming language for one of my side-projects that uses Ruby on Rails. Now the project is simple enough so that I could get by without knowing Ruby. But I thought learning the language would be a worthwhile project in itself.

If you are using any Apple product (phone, tablet, laptop, computer), upgrade it ASAP.

I have finally made a switch to Hey for email. From now on, you can send me an email to akshay.khot@hey.com.

For the last few weeks, I have been programming while listening to the Harry Potter theme. It has done wonders for my productivity.

The trend catches on. On Friday, Spotify announced their “Work From Anywhere” program, which lets employees work from anywhere in the world, while still paying San Francisco and New York salaries.

Don’t you just love when your entire sign-up workflow is done in minutes, and your bank transactions involving money are done in seconds, but a simple ‘unsubscribe’ from the marketing emails may take up to 10 business days to take effect?

A brief summary of the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework.

If you are a solo developer working on a project, and need to push your changes immediately after committing them to the repository, Visual Studio Code has a shortcut that will make your life easier.

Derek Sivers has been writing his articles for the past twenty years. Here is a distilled summary of all the ones that resonated with me.

Search Engine Optimization is about helping Google understand and present your website so it’s shows up prominently in the search results. This is an overview of the basics of SEO according to Google.

Pratiksha drew a pair of paintings in the evening. Here they are.

Prof. Damodaran, who is my favorite finance writers, wrote a post on the classification of investments into assets, commodities, currencies and collectibles. Here’s a brief summary.

Strange things companies do to proactively lose customers.

Gone is the optimism of just a couple of years ago. All that remains is the delusion of grandeur.

Here is a list of all the books I read last year.

There was a young man who, in his youth, expressed a desire to become a great writer. When asked to define “great,” he said,

This morning, while reading one of Coding Horror’s classic blog posts on software schedules, On Our Project, We’re Always 90% Done, I came across an essay from Mary Poppendieck, which argues against rewarding team members by merit pay.

I am looking for a roommate to share my one bedroom apartment on Quadra-Mckenzie. It’s a semi-private room, most suitable for students who are looking for temporary stay.

I have been working from home this week. Though I miss my awesome colleagues at CityView, I am also enjoying the solitude and the quiet work environment at home, where I can work in a focused state for a couple of hours straight without constantly getting interrupted every 15 minutes.

Though I didn’t read as many books as last year, I read them with more focus and understanding. Here are all the books I read in 2019.

Rest In Peace, Jerry.

I have been studying Stoicism for more than 2 years now. The more I read Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, the more I realize how Stoic principles can be valuable when applied to programming. This post is a quick reminder to myself when I am writing software.

“It’s not the external events that cause us trouble, but only our perceptions about those events.”

History, it seems, is always ending today. It’s easy to imagine how much I have changed over the years. At 27 today, I have almost nothing in common with the 22-year old Akshay. Looking into the future, however, is quite a different story altogether.

I had a terrible day at work. Cannot think of a day when I have been so unproductive. I devoted less than 10% of my brain cells on any meaningful work. There are some definite patterns here. Calling these patterns out might help me avoid them in the future.

A question has been lingering in my mind for quite a while. Are software developers entitled for the time they put on at the work, or are they supposed to get money only for the work that actually goes on building the working product?

Here are some pictures I took of my desk at the GenoLogics office.

I leave for Canada tomorrow. It’s exciting. The year has gone by so fast. It feels like yesterday when I quit my job. So much has happened since then. Here’s a summary of my year so far.

I went to a study-abroad seminar hosted by GeeBee this morning. They did an excellent job of explaining the process to pursue higher education abroad.

After two weeks, I have left my job at Neeble Technologies. I feel exhilarated. The last four years of my life were dedicated to the single-minded goal of becoming a software engineer, get a high-paying job at an MNC, and live happily ever after. I don’t know what I am going to do next.