Week #116

Well, it was kind of a boring week. No collegues to talk to, everyone on leave. Sigh! But it was Dusherra week. I read and learnt a lot about Ramayana. Completed a book of Ramayana from Sita’s perspective, Sitayan, Forest of Enchantment whatever you call it. It was beautiful.

I will soon raise a blog for my review on reading books. I already have 20 books read this year, still 2 months to go!

I was realizing this week that software might be solved, but engineering is not. Like I am still not seeing people’s perspective on software change right? It means people are not going to learn software engineering, rather it will make it harder to learn anything in the future, because we will be focused on the outcome and not the process.

Quote of the Week

“We must understand and respect the values that drive our loved ones. We must want what they want, not what we want from them”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

I will attach a quote that I found reverberating in me throughout the week. What a beautiful way to put it. I was in awe with this. If we love our family or our children, we must let them do what they want and not what we want for them. I think it gets in the way of someone’s desires or the way of attaining liberation. In this context, it was Sita’s lesson when Kaikeyi had banished Ram for her own son’s benefit. Her perception of his son, Bharat was flawed, she thought the good for him, but her “good” was not his “good” right? We can present them our opinions but not force them to do it. It might be called greedy love or haste in making them happy.

Read

  1. Commune has an API, Substack doesn’t: API Evangelist (Kin Lane)

    1. A good observation. Irony of posting this on susbstack. I might try commune this weekend. I like the process of automation, but is that hosting the newsletter and the services for free?
    2. The networking aspect is not a concern for me, as I rarely have subscribers, but I am writing for myself. (That’s a lie I tell myself after disappointing 2 years with barely 10 subscribers)
    3. API is something that makes business sustainable. I am glad that I expose my blog over API, it makes me feel available to other people who want to discover me. apis.meetgor.com/docs

  2. You’re still going to have a job in 5 years, software engineers

    1. True. “a computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision”.
    2. This is correct, but what if the fundamental assumption that software needs decision is flawed? Do we really need to worry how its architect-ed when we can simply let the agent build it.
    3. The concern of ownership is what I think makes it good point, the understanding of tradeoff is something that can make it sustainable.

  3. World Model Terminal: A 360M model that spits like terminal

    1. This is so cool. We are living in a fictional world, wow!
    2. I wanted to have this, like a agent who can work in the terminal and do anything for me, jarvis yes, but more personal and simple.
    3. I don’t want it to think for me, but to work out the grunt stuff for me and lay the information in a understandable and readable way.

  4. Do we have a moral obligation to improve software with AI

    1. This is a bit of a flaws take right? I mean yes I sometimes wondered this in the 1st quarter of the year, but then there was no going back.
    2. Once I got access to claude and cursor agent, it was a matter of time, I did everything I used to do manually with them, they were not perfect, but I learnt a lot doing it that way, maybe even less, but it helped me build the right thing, fast. I think that is the point for software developers?
    3. Speed is taking the precedence over Understanding, maybe its good in the short term, but I am seeing my skills atrophying quickly. I cannot write a program by hand anymore if asked.
    4. The point is, will someone ask? Maybe yes, but what is the point of it? Are you checking my skills to write a for loop, how quickly I can remember the exact syntax of a language. I think that era is over right?

Watched

  • Vector Database for system design

    • This was a insightful video on what topic you need to know if you think you are an AI Engineer. I haven’t interacted with Vector databases, I want to, but it just feels like we have just forgotten the engineering aspects.
    • Everything I see today is about agent, harness and that crap. Like I think we left engineering principles and research 6 months back or even a year back. Where is RAG, where are the traditional software engineering principles, I am sure they are used by agents. But what about innovation and improving the thinking of our own. I think that is the role of engineering left now.

  • Demitri Spanos on A Life Engineered Podcast about AI and changing software

    • It was a relieving interview. I ache for the sentence “I think we are over the point where companies can think they can eliminate software engineering teams” ouch. Yes, you cannot eliminate teams, but a chunk of team.
    • The point that 3-4 engineers with AI is better than 10 engineers is a good contention, but those 3-4 engineering team should be well versed with AI tools right? or with software fundamentals? or experience? What is the expectations now? We are all skewed up.
    • The point that we are still using the apps that we used 5 years back or even 10 years back is just astonishing and relatable. I am of the same mindset. If software is cheap or commoditized where is all the software? Is AI eating it away, oh I thought it was supposed to eat software developers. I think it forgot developers.

  • I’m tired or pretending

    • Yes, we all are tired and exhausted of pretending that AI is doing the work and we are just herding them right?

Tech News

  • eMudhra Certificate Exploit

    • eMudhra generated 8 weak cryptographic keys for intermediate Certificate Authorities (CAs) on 30th April 2025! Wow, we survived for over 18 months on this?
    • The weak randomness made the private keys easier to guess or recover, which means anyone can fake HTTPS certificates to any connection that used eMudhra certification authority.

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That’s it from the 116th Edition of techstructive weekly. I hope you found it helpful, and relaxing. If not please drop any suggestions, feedback or discussion about certain things you want to in the comments or drop me a message on my socials.

Thank you for reading,

Until next week.

Happy Coding :)