· 4 min read
The Math Doesn't Exactly Math
A lifelong Vijay fan tries to explain an election result that defies explanation.
Blog
Thoughts, ideas, and things I've learned.
· 13 min read · Understanding LLMs · Part 2
How LLMs Answer
How LLM inference works step by step: prefill, decode, the KV cache, sampling, tool use, and the engineering that makes it economical.
· 14 min read · Understanding LLMs · Part 1
How LLMs Get Built
Inside the months-long pipeline that turns trillions of words of text into a deployable LLM: data, tokenizer, pre-training, alignment, and shipping.
· 18 min read · Understanding LLMs
Understanding LLMs: The Map
From raw text to streaming response - every step of how large language models are built and how they process your prompts.
· 25 min read
How Programming Languages Actually Work
From the text you type to the binary that runs - the full compiler pipeline, type safety ladder, and patterns every developer should know.
· 10 min read
Naval on Health: The Priority That Orders Everything Else
Naval's framework for making health non-negotiable - from concentric circles to daily practice
· 11 min read
A Third Path, Paathuklam
Sridhar Vembu says programmers should consider alternative livelihoods. He's right about the disruption - but how you sit with this moment matters more than what the moment is.
· 6 min read
Naval on Happiness: A Practical Philosophy
Naval's framework for training happiness - from desire as a contract to peace as the goal
· 8 min read
The Jevons Paradox of AI
A documentation project that grew into an MCP server, a competitive landscape analysis, and a realization about what AI actually does to software demand.
· 7 min read
The Hidden R&D Giants of Tamil Nadu
A fan buying experience led me to discover local companies doing world-class engineering that most of us don't know about.
· 5 min read
The River That Came Back
A city forgot its river was a river. Then it remembered.
· 6 min read
The Leader Makes the Difference
Two stories from different worlds - a startup ecosystem and a Christmas carol competition - that reveal the same truth about leadership.
· 5 min read
Two Tales of Marketing: A Tourist Trap on the Way to Mysore Zoo and a Sweet Surprise in Madurai
What a Diwali trip taught me about the extremes of marketing - from deception to delight.
· 6 min read
590x More Test Code Than Production: Is SQLite Insane or Genius?
SQLite has 92 million lines of tests for 155K lines of code. A Twitter debate made me rethink what balanced testing really means.
· 1 min read
Hello World
Welcome to my blog! This is where I'll share my thoughts, learnings, and things I'm building.