Some of my best received posts are
Writing
Best of Python 3 f-strings
This piece is primarily meant for those new to Python. These include mathematicians, economists, and so on who want to use Python within a Jupyter environment. Here is a quick guide on how to make Best of Jupyter.
Quick Primer If you are familiar with earlier Python versions, here are my top picks on how to move from .format () to this new one:
_fstring = f'Total: {one + two}' # Go f-string!
Writing
The Silent Rise of PyTorch Ecosystem
The Silent Rise of PyTorch Ecosystem While Tensorflow has made peace with Keras as it’s high level API and mxNet now support Gluon — PyTorch is the bare matrix love.
PyTorch has seen rapid adoption in academia and all the industrial labs that I have spoken to as well. One of the reasons people (specially engineers doing experiments) like PyTorch is the ease of debugging.
What I don’t like about PyTorch is it’s incessant requirement of debugging because of inconsistent dimensions problems.
Writing
Tech Talk Tips
Collection of the Best Advice on Internet that I know about on giving a tech talk. Based on responses from my question on Twitter.
Meghana gave a talk based on these tips at PyData Bengaluru
You: Hey, I know something better!
Me: Please tell me about it! Raise a PR. Or reply to the tweet above!
The Mindset Presentations Skills Considered Harmful tl;dr: Do not block the message with your actions.
Writing
Annual Letter: Diwali 2018
How are you?
I send these letters every year. This is a way for me to send thanks to all the mentors and friends who’ve been part of my journey so far. And I wanted to drop by and say
Happy Diwali :) What is up with you? Is there something I can do for you?
For what is up with me?
Health & Wealth Health Since the beginning of this year, I have tried ‘building better healthy habits’.
Writing
Picking a Startup Team You Want to Work With
Why we need to do a reference check on startup teams we work with? Great Startups always ask someone who is joining for a reference check. They speak to your previous managers and colleagues. There is no reason why candidates should not do the same. Many startup employees have more opportunity costs than the founders themselves.
I’m surprised by the lack of due diligence which candidates do when interviewing with us.
Writing
The Good Fight
In the first few pages of the book Born Standing Up, Steve says something poignant:
One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years.
He was someone chasing something external: fame, glory, money or a version of these. Yet, in his dusk years — once he had achieved some of those, he valued his struggle more than his fame and glory.
For Steve, it was not about achieving these, it was, as I have come to call it: a good fight.
Writing
The BITS Pilani Experience
There is a invisible binding thread among most BITSian’s - optimistic, easy going, but somewhat pragmatic. The sky is the limit, but most of them realize flying in hot air pockets is easy - it’s the takeoff that hurts.
I guess there is a flavour of cheerful pragmatism that is uniquely BITSian. You can get ice cream and ice cream shakes anywhere - but Sharma’s MNB is uniquely BITSian.
I am no longer in BITS Pilani.
Writing
How to prepare for a Data Science job from college?
A Getting Started Guide
Let us get our facts straight, shall we?
I am writing from my non-existent but probably relevant experience. I worked in a Machine Learning role at Samsung Research, Bengaluru. It is only 1 of the 4 research enterprises which hire Machine Learning researchers from Indian colleges — the other being Microsoft, Xerox, and IBM Watson.
I am now in a even more Computer Vision focused role for a small enterprise tech company.
Writing
The Case Against Work Life Balance
Note from Nirant: This is an archived blog post from here by Syam Sankar. I am not the author of this post. I’m keeping it here since the original source is no longer available.
I’ve taken the liberty to copy paste the raw text:
Given my journey, you can imagine my first reaction to questions of work-life balance is fairly unsympathetic. I want to protest that, by legitimizing such a false dichotomy, you’re pre-empting a much more meaningful conversation.