• Some rain this week on Tuesday. Cloudy week. Not bad. Running after the rain when there are no dust particles in the air is already pleasant.
• People are still very confused about AI. What should it be used for and how much? What are its real benefits?
  • I wish there is little less AI content on my feed. LinkedIn is bad again but in a different way. HN and lobste.rs also have way too much AI on front-page. Some reddit communities are doing well but someone will mention AI somehow on every tech thread!
• I’ve got GSTIN this year since I am mostly working as contract/freelance roles.
• My phone has been misbehaving in mysterious ways for a few weeks now. Pressing call icon doesn’t work unless I restart!! GMail app is crashing when I try to open right panel, MS Team doesn’t sync calendar with system calendar anymore. Google Play complains that I am not logged-in but shows my google profile picture anyway and also refuse to show me “Log In” button because I am logged in. BHIM refuses to open unless I login to google play service but google won’t let me because I am also logged in and not-logged in at same time! A bit like Schrodinger cat. I am almost sure that these small small bugs are due to AI slop and compounding now. I hope this all ends badly soon enough so we can move on.
• Skill rot due to AI use is real (at least for me). I am finding it very hard to write code manually now. The struggle to type by hand is mostly psychological. Like trying to wash dish by hands when you’ve gotten used to dishwasher and it working well, or driving manual after driving automatic. These analogies are from people on podcasts, and somewhat true. AI is mostly convenience driven programming.
• This week I didn’t read anything carefully.

• No rain this week either! And the raw mangoes that I plucked last week are still sitting pretty in basket.
• [jj](https://steveklabnik.github.io/jujutsu-tutorial/) promises to be a simpler git. I played with it this week but I still don’t get it. I like what they are selling though!
• At work, I got my first MR merged into the codebase! Totally hand-written code, AI was used for on-boarding and rubber-ducking.
• I vibe-coded a moderate complexity project — a PCB router like freerouter. I doesn’t work. The UI is excellent and it looks like that it almost work but it doesn’t. Now every prompt is like shouting into the void, things changes but were not fixed at all.
• The successful vibe-coded projects and web-pages are working fine and looks OK as long as you don’t read the code carefully! I usually don’t notice big issues when skimming but as I soon as I try to understand the code, …!
• I am going to write write most of the code by hand since it is quite possible at my new job where the codebase is managed by folks that are older and more conservative than me. Each MR goes through 5 to 6 reviews and it is expected that I understand every bit of it. So far, I am not convinced that I can “understand” a AI written code by reading it faster than writing it myself.
• I love that I can treat AI an average senior developer who is always available to answer anything about the codebase and never judge you. Moreover, you are not scared of asking the dumbest possible question. It can also be used to learn patterns in the code-vase without mastering git grep and other search tools. And get a decent review of your MR.
• Another good use case: it can copy-edit your first ‘vomit’ draft. Please write you own text. Then ask AI to copy-edit your brain vomit. DO NOT violate the first principle of writing — spend more time writing a text than others are expected to spend reading it. AI can also be used to rewrite your text for different type of users, e.g., add a “KT” focused post for fellow maintainers that highlight “how the code-base story is changing with this MR” (don’t use this exact phrasing in your AGENTS.md).

Reading list

• https://matklad.github.io/2026/05/12/software-architecture.html has some excellent reading list on software development.
• https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/the-view-from-mumbai-matchbook-graphic-design-130426 talks about matchbox designs (India specific). HN has a good thread on it!

• No rain this week either!
• At work, my week was spent learning codebase and getting access. I finally have required access. I am dealing with a very large Rust codebase which is going through architectural refactor. Interesting times ahead.
  • After working with claude for a month, copilot feels like a little under-performer. Good thing is that I can avoid using AI agent at job if I want to. copilot could not even do a rebase with main!
• I’ve been learning a bit about investments e.g. PPF, SSY and other fixed rate schemes. HDFC bank keep updating its app. New iteration has more pixel porn, and more stupid notifications over functionality and it requires too much resource. Fortunately, I’ve to use it occasionally. BHIM upi app is also slow and mild mannered as late Mr. Atal Bihari Bajpayee.
• I plucked a few raw mangoes from the tree outside. Perhaps make some pickle?!

Reading list

• Why Async Rust is a great post on, well, “why async rust”. It covers a bit of history as well, and talks about the design choices.
• Zero-cost futures in Rust — why golang like “green threads” were not chosen for Rust. Some interesting bits from the post.
  Things really start getting interesting with futures when you combine them. There are endless ways of doing so, e.g.:
  • Sequential composition: f.and_then(|val| some_new_future(val)). Gives you a future that executes the future f, takes the val it produces to build another future some_new_future(val), and then executes that future.
  • Mapping: f.map(|val| some_new_value(val)). Gives you a future that executes the future f and yields the result of some_new_value(val).
  • Joining: f.join(g). Gives you a future that executes the futures f and g in parallel, and completes when both of them are complete, returning both of their values.
  • Selecting: f.select(g). Gives you a future that executes the futures f and g in parallel, and completes when one of them is complete, returning its value and the other future. (Want to add a timeout to any future? Just do a select of that future and a timeout future!)

• Two mild shower this week! Enough to clean my car and trees but not enough to clean roads. Still waiting for a proper rain.
• I’ve to tweak my working setup quite a bit this week. I am working from home at my current role. I don’t/can’t use work laptop for personal stuff. I bought a KVM switch to share the keyboard, a few peripheral devices and screen with both work and home computer. It worked almost flawlessly. On macos, you may have to ensure that KVM is powered either via one of peripheral or via dedicated usb-c cable!
• I also got a basic Yubi key (finally). I’ve using bitwarden and Zoho Vault my password manager. I prefer Zoho Vault since I can easily afford its paid plan. Zoho Vault doesn’t do well with Firefox profiles. This key is working fine except for GitHub which is refusing to save passkey to this key! Not sure why!
• I’ve been thinking what side project to do this month. The AI has taken all the fun out of writing code. I hope this is temporary else I am in for a tough time. There hardly any other thing that I enjoy more than writing code with my clothes on. Well, hiking, cycling and cooking are fun but I can’t do them whole day!
• I’ve been feeling a little low on energy for past few moths. Finally talked to a doctor. Lets see what comes out of my blood tests.
• The income tax portal still not open for filing ITR. It says it will open “soon” but doesn’t specify dates! Some Reddit post claims that it will open by June 1, 2026! Though I find income tax dept websites and UPI infrastructure to be world class, they can be a little better at communicating changes.

Reading list

• I learnt quite a bit about async Rust — a few things about snoozing futures, development history. A few more articles to read over this weekend.
• Rust has been discussed in ACM quite frequently but a pedagogical article is not what I was expecting to see there.

• I spent this week on-boarding at Toyota Connected India (TCIN) Bangalore office. At TCIN, you are expected to spend 5 days a month in office, either in one go or spread across entire month e.g. 1 day a week. My team prefer to gather in Bangalore office for a week and this was the week. So I went to office all 5 days to spend face-time with each of them even when most on-boarding call was from Chennai office.
• The on-boarding week is relaxed but packed: meetings with HR, Admin, Finance, Legal etc. Each of them spent approximately an hour with me. Also at least one meeting per day with my team-mates on KT and codebase. I also get to see the hardware that runs Toyota dashboard.
  • TCIN office also has lunch inside the office and that solves a lot of problems for me. I can leave early to avoid traffic without having breakfast and have a light breakfast in office.
  • My experience at TCIN is pleasantly different than my last on-boarding at Veeam where I was mostly on my own to figure things out! I didn’t even know I had an HR at Veeam, he didn’t meet!
• Ookie switched to a new school this week which has better activities and communication patterns.
• Rains are still absent and temperature is soaring in Bengaluru. I hope mangoes will be sweater! Every year, in this month, I read about Bengaluru climate and weather and then forget all about it later. What causes rains in April? Returning Monsoon timelines?