Public posts

New Software Engineering The new era of software engineering is characterized by two major currents in computing today: 1. End of Moore's Law: This means everything is embedded programming, including even server side programming. Doesn't matter if you have terabytes of RAM and hundreds of powerful CPU cores, you budget as if you are programming limited resources embedded hardware. 2. Agentic coding: There two schools of thought here. First says that humans will not directly interact with code. Instead all interactions with code will be through AI agents, just like today we don't write assembly code but use compilers. Second school counters this by pointing out that compilers are deterministic while AI agents are non-deterministic. Therefore, it's okay to get AI to generate code but human should fully review and own that code before sharing for broader review and eventually merging.

My incomplete list of highly recommended places in Bay Area for visitors: SF: - Golden Gate Bridge + Muir Woods - Bay Area Discovery Museum - Exploritarium - California Academy of Sciences - Lands End - Lombard Street - Pier 39 - Treasure Island for a view of SF skyline - SF Zoo Coast: - Highway 1 drive from SF to Half Moon Bay - Moss Beach - Pacifica Pier - Half Moon Bay Rest of valley (sorted North to South): - YouTube Office (obviously) - BayFront Park for SFO Plane Spotting - Coyote Point Recreation Area - San Mateo Park, Japanese Garden - Stanford University - Walk on University Avenue in Palo Alto - Drive on Sand Hill road if you know its significance - Hike in the Stanford Dish area - Facebook HQ - Shoreline Park, Shoreline Lake boating, biking - Googleplex - Computer History Museum - California's Great America, Santa Clara - Apple Visitor Center, Cupertino - Rose Garden - Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose - Children's Discovery Museum

My list of kids places in Bay Area (sorted South to North) - Jungle Island, San Jose South - Oak Meadow Park, Saratoga - Emma Prusch Farm Park, San Jose - Children's Discovery Museum, San Jose - Guadalupe River Park and Rotary PlayGarden, San Jose - KidsTopia, Fremont - Central Park & Library, Santa Clara - Ortega Park, Sunnyvale - Golfland Mini Golf, Sunnyvale - Shoreline Lake and Kite Flying Area, Mountain View - Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo, Palo Alto - Magical Bridge Playground, Palo Alto - Cheeky Monkey Toys, Menlo Park - La Petite Playhouse, Redwood City - San Mateo Central Park + Japanese Garden, San Mateo - Hop-n-Play - San Bruno - San Francisco Zoo - California Academy of Sciences - San Francisco - Bay Area Discovery Museum - Sausalito

This is beautiful! Really worth five minutes "Typography is the work of typesetters, compositors, typographers, graphic designers, art directors, manga artists, comic book artists, graffiti artists, and now—anyone who arranges words, letters, numbers, and symbols for publication, display, or distribution—from clerical workers and newsletter writers to anyone self-publishing materials. Until the Digital Age, typography was a specialized occupation. Digitization opened up typography to new generations of previously unrelated designers and lay users, and David Jury, head of graphic design at Colchester Institute in England, states that “typography is now something everybody does. As the capability to create typography has become ubiquitous, the application of principles and best practices developed over generations of skilled workers and professionals has diminished. Ironically, at a time when scientific techniques."

"Being a programmer for nearly 35 years and still being able to get things done and ship is still fun and I’ve been able to work on amazing things over the years. But I can still feel the regret of not seeking the challenge of just leadership. In some ways programming was the easy choice. Given how close I got to the whole Dotcom timeframe, or even the return of Steve to Apple, and still had recent leadership experience, I could have been almost anything." http://thecodist.com/article/my-biggest-regret-as-a-programmer

My idea of an ideal social network: - Only Text. No photos or videos in the feed except those small profile pictures which would serve as icon to identify the person at a glance instead of reading the whole name. - No ASCII graffiti allowed. - No notifications about birthday reminders, page invites, group invites, unsolicited events. - No commercial or political accounts. Social Networking should be about your friends, not what the propaganda backed by big bucks. - No notifications about what your friends liked about your non-friends. - Simple Privacy controls: either something is strictly visible to your friends only, or visible to everyone - no complicated rules which determine something valid for one person and not valid for another, or somehow changes over time. The user may be powered to opt in for some advanced control. - Apps should have limited control about what they can pull from you. The user should be clearly conveyed what data they are giving about themselves and to whom. I just realized that I unwittingly described Facebook of 2007.

Two years completed at Google. Some things I've learned in addition to what I wrote last year: - Writing helps a lot. Writing helps you generate ideas. Writing also helps you recall what you've done and sometimes keep you motivated by reminding you that you are making progress and doing a good job. Before I started writing this post, I had a feeling I haven't learned anything in the past one year. - The twice-a-year performance review to write self assessment and review peers forces you to write, which has a lot of benefits. - Specially learning diplomacy is not required when your disagreements are for the sake of betterment of product, end-users or overall well being of people around you. People can easily sense whether you are coming from your ego or you genuinely care and react accordingly. - A small act of appreciation can turn acquaintances into friends who'd go out of their way to help you. Don't hesitate to appreciate people whenever they deserve it. - Best advice for getting promoted is written in Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends & Influence People -- read it, again. - Be the person who'd everyone would want to refer to, both for competency as well as attitude.

While entering through my office's gate, I noticed that I was being followed by a woman. I suspiciously looked around her waist to find any badge she might be wearing and sure enough after moving my head a bit here and there, I saw it under her purse. I looked up to smile at her to let her in but then my smile faded away as she smiled back. I said, "Hi Susan, sorry about that". And the CEO of YouTube replied back with a gentle smile "It's OK. You should definitely check the badge".