I am a software engineer and an angel investor based out of the San Francisco bay area. This page is mostly a collection of curated articles that I have written and tools that I have built.
More professional info is on LinkedIn. You can email me at ashishb AT ashishb.net.
Blog posts & Tools
Infrastructure
If you are an infrastructure engineer consider my Docker 101 blog post and then read how you can deploy web services essentially with zero fixed costs. Afterward, you might like reading about the pitfalls of Docker’s scratch image. You might love or hate me for questioning the serverless functions lock-in.
Tools
- My dotfiles contain some of the best tools and setups for an engineer related to Android, infrastructure, and Web3 engineering
- A backend template to kickstart Go-based projects on Google Cloud Run
- A date parsing library for Go that guesses the format and parses any dates
Go Language
If you use the Go language, you would enjoy reading the most common concurrency pitfall of the Go language for beginners. Or how to do inheritance in Go. Or writing Generics in Go like Java and C++.
DevOps
If you are a DevOps person, you would enjoy the common pitfalls of GitHub Actions. If you use bash, consider making it more robust, this check would have prevented me from deleting my full disk! I did that once.
DevOps Tools
- GitHub Actions Boilerplate generator
- CircleCI analysis tool
- Spammy/dead outbound link checker for your blog
Testing
- Always test code along the axis of minimum change.
- Test resumable uploads/downloads – this will save bandwidth and latency for both you and your users
- Check for missing network timeouts in your network requests
Android
If you like Android, you would enjoy my critique of React Native. A more technical reader would enjoy how to catch NDK crashes and how to catch crashes on the Javascript-to-Java bridge. An old but still relevant article on using Android Fragments without crashing the app. Or how to architect Android apps from emerging markets.
If you are an Android user who loves listening to music or podcasts, consider switching to MusicSync, here’s my reasoning behind building it.
Android Tools
- adb-enhanced is a swiss-army knife for Android development
- Auto Translate Android app GitHub action to translate non-English languages. I use it for MusicSync and VoiceNotes.
- androidtool – a better Android CLI tool
- Collection of live Android malware samples for research
- The most comprehensive Android Security tools list
Android apps
- VoiceNotes – A quick and easy Android app to record location-tagged voice notes on the go
- MusicSync – A Google Play Music replacement Android app that can play files from SDcard, Google Drive, the web, and podcasts
UX
If you are a Product Manager, you would enjoy reading some of my product-related posts
- Why indeterminate progress bars are bad
- How to write better emails to users
- Why audio startups fail
- When marketplaces work and don’t work
Productivity
- AutoSnoozer to improve batch processing of emails and
- Mindful Reading to maintain one’s own custom RSS feed for reading.
Travel
I enjoy traveling and writing travel blogs. Check out my travel blogs or reviews on TripAdvisor.
Hi Ashish,
Came across the gyanbuddy website, which lead me to this page. Curious to know which of the programs are currently active, and if there are any groups in San Diego. Found your website to contain a lot of interesting things, in terms of India, books, travel, etc. too. My parents are in the Bay Area, so am a regular visitor but probably harder to stay involved remotely.
Hope to hear from you!
Sarika
Hi,
I like the format of your website and the articles are very informative.
My interests are Computer and Network security.
Keep up the good work!
Regards
Nithin
Hi i really like your writings, they are useful. I saw your post asking for someone who can maintain your iitkcampus intranet blog. i am interested in that.
Hi
Thanks for the summaries.
I am rhe only one in my team who doesn’t read books (I watch videos 🙂 ) and your summaries help me to to be up to speed.
Summary from a book The Result Take Care of Itself reminds me of a this paper Value Maximization, Stakeholder Theory, and Corporate Objective Function
and
Reminds me of system integrity = performance = workability.
Basically if we want anything to be in integrity and have maximum performance we should give our attention to the workable parts of the whole system and aim to get them to their highest possibilities.
Anyway, thanks for the book summaries, they are really helpful.
Nemanja
cowibo.io
Hi Ashish…
Very nicely summarised book.. great work..
Hi Ashish,
I came in here to ask you questions about the Guatamala vsia process and ended up spending 30 minutes reading through your short stories and I must say you have some amazing stuff!! I thought your poem on nationality/ identity is VERY cool!
Hi|
You Really Post informatiive Article.
Keep Going.
Thanks
Hi Ashish,
How are you. I saw your note regarding Android webview debug and would like to chat with you.
Sure, email me