The Reading List

A tribute to the two people who made every step possible: a wedding in 1978, a birth in 1979, and two decisions that changed everything. For Ammi and Abbu.

A single AWS region took a startling share of the internet down with it. The Cobra Effect of a default region: why everyone leaned on us-east-1, what actually broke, and how EU regulation accidentally kept Europe online.

In 2001, a university assignment introduced me to Java. Twenty-five years and eight major versions later, I am still learning the same language, and it is still teaching me.

I thought I understood gratitude. Then I lived in Japan and learned it as ritual: two phrases that changed how I move through meals, workdays, and the people I love.

Plot ten thousand numbers by one simple rule and the primes fall into spiral arms nobody put there. My father told me I was good at mathematics and hoped I would do good in life.

In 2002, three engineers built an AI trip planner, three years before Google Maps. An idea ahead of its time, and the father’s lesson that outlasted the grade.

A three-minute performance review told me the architect role was not for me. The two principles I refused to let go of, and why architecture is a mindset that designs focus, not a title someone grants you.

None of them are in the famous photographs. Chief Engineer Joseph Bell and roughly thirty-five men understood the mathematics before almost anyone else on board, and stayed anyway.

One evening in Munich, I asked my sons Danish, Harris, and Mustafa a simple question: what makes you unique? By the end of the night we had talked about self-actualization, failure, and three questions that can guide every choice.

Python, C/C++, Java, Kotlin, Swift: why programming languages rise and fall has nothing to do with syntax. It has everything to do with the ecosystem behind them.