Not So Null


Code += Play

2022 - A Retrospective

A year-in-review post, full two weeks late. Sue me, I guess.


Modern Database Desiderata

I've been working much closer to database systems in the past year or so. This has led to learning a lot about the things modern applications desire from their database systems.


Don't Sort Photos by Date First

Every photographer's organisation system that I've seen online has them sorting photos by date - and only date. This seemed obvious to me until recently, when I sat down to organise my own multi-hundred-GB photo collection before a backup.


On Five Years in Canada

Recently I completed my fifth year in Canada. I arrived in Ottawa in 2017, on a visa sponsored by a relatively-unknown Canadian software company and decided that I liked both the company and the country enough to stay-on full time.


Explained: binding.pry vs byebug vs debugger

I wrote this in 2019 to share with my team at work as a few people had mentioned being confused about Ruby debugging tooling. I am sharing it here as the information is generally useful.


Year in Books: 2021

In 2021 I got back into serious reading after about a decade. Technically, it happened in 2018, but 2021 is the first time I've met (and exceeded) my reading target in these past three years.


Implementing a Naive Bayes Text Classifier

Ever since I discovered spam filters, I have been extremely interested in natural language and making sense out of it. One thing that I have come to understand about language is that it is hard to make sense of.


Some Advice for CS Freshmen

If you don't really care about my rationale for writing this whole thing, you can jump straight to the list by clicking here.

Why should I care?

As I have grown older, I have realized that no amount of experience is a substitute for good advice from others.


Java is still alive, and it's kicking some serious ass

We are one fourth of our way through 2015 already, and I have not posted even once this year. So to restart on an interesting note, I’ll just put forward some of my overnight findings about the state of Java as a programming language and the community around it.


Dependency Injection: A Twenty Five Dollar Term

“Dependency Injection” is a 25-dollar term for a 5-cent concept. – James Shore

During the application period of GSoC, I gave a couple of interviews to my prospective mentors from MifosX.