I'm Ashwin, a senior software engineer based in Australia. This blog is my digital lab notebook for documenting interesting technologies, patterns, and discoveries I encounter while building software and exploring computing.
I share these explorations because they might help fellow developers, but honestly, I write primarily for myself. As Rick Rubin says in The Creative Act, "When making art, the audience comes last". Just real experiments, honest reflections, and the occasional breakthrough worth remembering.
How Zod (TypeScript) and Pydantic (Python) solve the same core problem: runtime validation of untrusted data, through real-world use cases like API inputs, configuration, and transformations.
How David Beazley's functional programming course revealed the patterns I'd been unconsciously using in JavaScript for years—from simple closures to mind-bending parser combinators
How I built a local video transcription tool that turns any video into searchable text while keeping everything private and cost-free
A comprehensive guide to Simon Willison's llm CLI tool for integrating AI models directly into your command-line workflow
A practical guide to switching from pip to uv - the Rust-powered Python package manager that's revolutionizing Python development with blazing fast performance and unified tooling