What I'm Doing Now

This is a now page, and if you have your own site, you should make one too!

केल्याने होत आहे रे । आधी केलेची पाहिजे ॥
य़त्न तो देव जाणावा । अंतरी धरिता बरे ॥

~ समर्थ रामदास स्वामी

My translation of this couplet is as follows:

Things get done when you do them, you must take action first!
The work itself is the worship, internalise this you must!

~ Samartha Ramdas Swami

2024

Work: I am working as a coach!

This year, I'm taking my informal mentoring and coaching sessions to the next step. I want to better understand the problems that other builders face, and I think I can help them. Personally, I want to apply my skills to solve different kinds of real-world people + computers problems!

Learn: Things I want to learn this year, in no particular order:

  • Computing on the edge (Workers, Databases, Super-powered static sites?)
  • At least two Frontend ecosystems from (React, Svelte, HTMX, Elm)
  • Some system programming to go along with edge-computing
  • LLMs: what are they and how do they work?
  • Automerge (continuing exploration of CRDTs)

Do: My brother is getting married at the end of the year! I want to lose 10 kg by then and get in shape!

2023

Work: 2023 was all about Salher Trails!1

Praj, KK and I worked hard to get it into the hands of students and help them, and we learnt a lot about why the Ed-Tech space is so difficult.

But more on that in some sort of retrospective piece someday later.

Learn: I learnt a ton about business and felt all grown up.

In a nutshell, Technology is the least important part of what I was attempting. It is a Marketing, Operations and Sales game. I viscerally understood the importance of these bits in 2023.

Do: I didn't do anything other than work in 2023. I put on a lot of weight. I did enjoy it though!

2022

Work: I quit Helpshift in March 2022, and did the Spring 1 batch of the Recurse Center2 from Mar 2022 to July 2022.

My journal from the time is full of incredible ideas, projects and lessons I learnt from some deep experts. I'm grateful for that time and the joy I felt was something I will cherish for years to come.

Learn: 2022 was the year of experimentation and learning!

I absorbed a lot of data and experiences over that year and it made me a better person.

Do: Living in New York for 3 months with Kaushal, Pooja and Anjanay was an absolute privilege! I loved it, and I'm so grateful that I experienced it!

This was followed by a month with Aditya, Shraddha and baby Aarush in Chicago and another month with a motley crew of friends in the Bay area.

I wonder why Neha and I waited so many years before treating ourselves to a vacation like this!

2010-2022

The Helpshift years (and the ones before) are lost to the fog of memory! Very briefly, I helped design and write some of the code that runs Helpshift.

I'll create archives of my writing from these years and update this page with the appropriate links eventually :)

Footnotes

1 The marketing copy of Trails is at: https://www.salher.ai/salher-trails

2 Recurse is a retreat for programmers. See more at: https://www.recurse.com/about

Published On: Thu, 11 Apr 2024. Last Updated On: Wed, 15 May 2024.