Journal · 60 posts · 19 of 60

Notes & Essays

Short, honest writing about shipping product, building teams, and the stack I use in production.

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Engineering & Stack

Next.js vs React in 2026: Which One Should You Actually Learn First?

Apr 16, 2026 · 8 min
Apr 16, 20268 min read

Next.js is not a "version" of React and choosing wrong will cost you three months. This is a practical 2026 breakdown of what Next.js actually adds on top of React, when plain React is still the right call, what the App Router really means for beginners, and the exact learning order that takes you from zero to shipping a production Next.js site in 60 days.

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AI & Future of Work

Prompting Is the New Literacy — And Most People Are Writing Badly

Apr 15, 2026 · 8 min
Apr 15, 20268 min read

Typing used to be a paid skill. Then everyone learned it and it disappeared below the line. Prompting is on the same arc in 2026 — except most people are still writing prompts the way they write Google searches. This post unpacks what actually separates a good prompt from a bad one, why context beats cleverness, and the five-line structure I use every day that turns "meh" AI output into "wait, that was actually useful."

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Startup & Execution

The Real Cost of Building an MVP in India in 2026 (Stack-by-Stack Breakdown)

Apr 14, 2026 · 9 min
Apr 14, 20269 min read

How much does it really cost to build an MVP in India in 2026? This post breaks down actual 2026 market rates for a full-stack web MVP, a React Native app, a Flutter app, a WordPress landing site and an n8n-automated internal tool — including the hidden costs founders forget (QA, hosting, domains, payment gateways, design, post-launch bug fixing). No pitch-deck numbers, just what projects actually cost this year.

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AI & Future of Work

The Stack Overflow Generation Is Ending

Apr 12, 2026 · 7 min
Apr 12, 20267 min read

For twenty years, learning to code meant learning to Google the error message and read strangers arguing on Stack Overflow. That pipeline is quietly dying — AI ate the first three results. This post looks at what we lose when new developers never learn to read bad answers, argue with the top reply, or recognise the smell of a dated solution, and what the new entry-level path should look like instead.

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SEO & Marketing

SEO for Developers: Rank Your Next.js Portfolio on Google in 30 Days

Apr 11, 2026 · 10 min
Apr 11, 202610 min read

A concrete 30-day SEO sprint for developer portfolios built in Next.js. Exact steps to fix the metadata API, add JSON-LD structured data, generate a real sitemap, write content Google can rank, get indexed in Search Console, and earn the first few backlinks — without buying a single course. Tested on a real portfolio that now ranks for "Siddharth Puri" and several tech queries in India.

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Freelance & Services

How to Start Freelancing from India in 2026 — A Developer's Playbook

Apr 9, 2026 · 10 min
Apr 9, 202610 min read

The honest 2026 playbook for Indian developers who want to freelance — how to pick a niche, set rates that do not embarrass you, land the first three international clients without begging on Upwork, open a foreign-currency account, legally receive USD/EUR in India, and avoid the three tax traps most Indian freelancers hit in year one. Written from Delhi, where I run a freelance engineering team doing exactly this.

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AI & Future of Work

AI Agents in 2026: What They Can Actually Do (And Where They Still Fail)

Apr 8, 2026 · 9 min
Apr 8, 20269 min read

Every AI company shipped an "agent" in 2025. By 2026, most of them are quietly quiet. Here is the honest map of what AI agents can genuinely do today — browse, research, draft, code, schedule, automate tickets — and where they still faceplant (tool reliability, recovering from failures, long-running tasks, cost control). Written for people deciding where to actually bet, not people writing pitch decks.

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Career Craft

Why Most Developer Portfolios Look the Same (And How to Actually Stand Out)

Apr 6, 2026 · 7 min
Apr 6, 20267 min read

Dark background, cursor trail, three project cards, a contact form that does not work. You have seen this portfolio one thousand times. This post is an honest teardown of why developer portfolios converge on the same template in 2026, what hiring managers and founders actually look for in 11 seconds, and the five small decisions that make a portfolio unforgettable without redesigning it from scratch.

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