Notes & Essays

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.