srijanshetty

Front-end: - vercel.com - nginx load balanced next.js apps running on digital ocean

Back-end: - fly.io - nginx load balanced python/node apps running on digital ocean

A bunch of them:

grep/ag - text search instead of a big name startup. vim - for text editing. zsh/tmux - for terminal stuff.

Google Keep (replace with text files) - for TODO and not some fancy task management software.

All credits to: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Anoushk

Code on how to setup and properly clear an eventloop sidecar in python

Simple shell tricks to run commands on multiple hosts parallelly

I loved the combined view of reminders and email that 'Inbox by Gmail' used to provide, in the lack of a more sophisticated solution by GMail, I just email reminders and Snooze them to the appropriate day.

This little hack works really well and have given me decent mileage.

Never split the difference by Chris Voss - so many practical tips to ensure that you get the better side of a bargain.

Mythos by Stephen Fry - an irreverent take on Greek mythology which is fun and entertaining.

The extensions. I would love meetings to be time-boxed. A meeting more than 30 minutes serves no purpose.

I maintain a list of tools that I find really useful at https://srijanshetty.in/almanac.html.

Some of them are: - tmux, zsh, vi - fzf - zathura PDF reader - fasd - use frecency to jump around in the terminal - vcsh and mr to manage dotfiles

This is probably the most authoritative list I've seen:

https://www.the-paper-trail.org/post/2014-08-09-distributed-...

The books that really shaped my understanding of CS are:

- Theoretical CS: - Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (The Dragon Book) - Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Sipser

- Programming: - Java Concurrency In Practice, Brian Goetz - Generics in the Java Programming Language, Gilad Bracha - Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming - Unix for Poets - Modern C++

The interesting bit is that the original author's no longer feel that SICP is the right way to approach programming any more. In their words, we've moved to 'programming by poking' and hence the latest incarnation of the course uses python and not LISP.

I'm currently trying out https://covve.com. It has some of the features that I need like reminders, deduplication and CRM-esque features. I don't like the UI much but it's not that bad either.

I use Anki at the moment. Anki makes it easy to search, recall and recollect all the details.

I've toyed with GitHub, Evernote and markdown files but the greatest issues with all these topics is lack of active recall and that fact that I never came back to them. With Anki, I've been spending time daily so it's hard to forget these topics. If I do forget something, I can always look it up in my notes or just go to the internet again.

For most CS related content I prefer reading up, but there are particular domains which can't be captured by reading for example - fitness, analysis of movies, learning to play an instrument.

I was wondering about your rationale for not using another app like Anki. I'm a big fan of email and loved the integration of reminders with email of the like provided by Inbox (and sadly missing from Gmail as of today).

But I am also cognizant that there's a context associated with different apps. I've been using AnkiDroid for over a decade now and the context the app provides (mental context that I'm learning something) helps me focus better. Email is usually a stressful context in my mind which reminds me of deadlines and tasks to complete; so I like to keep both of these contexts separate.

I do the same but I also mix it up by running 10 miles every other day during which I reflect on the emptiness of the cosmos and our purpose as a tiny speck of imbued with consciousness but without an essence.

I completely agree, but we're constrained to two developers and won't hire anytime soon. So, monorep seems to be working great for us.

Office Space and to avoid the same we've been working out of cafes or piggybacking on the office space of other startups while we can (we hope to keep this culture going forward and encourage other early stage startups to work out of our office space once we establish ourselves).

I use the Kinesis Freestyle 2 keyboard which is a split mechanical keyboard and it has helped me keep my back ache in check as well.

Apart from the above, I ensure that I'm going to the gym/doing physical activities at least 4 days a week.

IMHO, journaling is just a means for honest, regular self-reflection. Some people like talking to themselves, some people like writing their thoughts down. Do whatever calms you, I personally like to write things down as it helps me organize my thoughts much better. By that I don't mean I journal everyday, but instead try to put my thoughts on paper whenever I have a difficult decision to make.

Almost everyone is on Java 8 now, and people are warming up to the new release cadence of bi-yearly releases of Java.

Even with Java 8, you get streams, lambdas and powerful Collection classes.

Personally, I've worked on sizable projects involving Java and have been amazed by it's performance and versatality. It's a construct that might go out of fashion for a while but will remain the backbone of most companies out there. My personal take is that Java is evoling at a rapid pace and this will only do good to the language.

I think developers all over are converging on the idea that we need type safety. Python has typing now, TS is JS with typing (pardon me for the oversimplification), and golang which is taking the world by a storm is a statically typed language.

Also, ease of typing has come a long way today with Type Inference in most languages with C++ leading the way with auto keyword and Java implementing local type inference.

Looks like we're Going back to the Future with static typing.

One controversial opinion: monorep which is ideal for small teams iterating really fast. The other one was figuring out 12 factor app by serendipity as we were focussing on keeping our operations simple.

I was in college, and I must admit it was one of the most transformational experiences of my life. A lot of fuss nowadays is about how colleges aren't worth it, but I would have to respectfully disagree, college isn't just about academia, it's also about the experiences that you share with a diverse set of people who are working towards the same goal of expanding the horizons of scientific understanding.

The economy has a track record of being cyclical, so if you ask a question whether a recession is coming on any day the answer would be - 'Yes, eventually'. But recessions correct themselves and after every recession we've seen growth cycle which takes the economy to new heights.

The only recourse humans have is to continue with their lives without paying heed to what's in vogue in the news cycle.

I'll confess that I haven't read "The problem with threads", my aha moment was the existence of 'happens-before' relationships and the Java Memory Model which for a good part of my life, I didn't know about.

"JCIP - Java Concurreny in Practice", finally was able to complete this monster and now I see the world differently. I had a aha moment, just like Neo in the Matrix.

"The Sandman: Kindly Ones" and "The Sandman: Wake", masterpieces from the master writer Neil Gaimann.

Reading "Never Split the Difference" which is about the art of negotiation and has been an enlightening read as of now. It argues negotiation isn't rational but is an affective exercise and I couldn't agree more.

I've learned a bunch of things on the job:

- Picked up Finance on the go as it was required for the job. - Learned a lot about concurrency, java, python3, modern C++, React as I needed them to get my projects to completions. - Another thing which was completely orthogonal was political philosophy and it's interplay with economics, and to extend it further, behavioural economics. - Then there are soft skills like writing concise emails, presentation skills and general witty banter which I picked up as well

My personal system is to create Anki flashcards as I'm in the habit of reviewing them everyday. My issue with other systems is recall and an inante understanding that I will never come back to them in the future due to the lack of context.

Anki has worked really well for me as I end up revisiting micro-concepts depending on how well I recall them.