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Books & Learning

Books That Shaped My Thinking

A reading list isn't just a list — it's a fingerprint of how someone thinks. Here's what shaped mine.

// The Technical Core

JavaScript30

30 days of vanilla JS by Wes Bos. No frameworks, no excuses. This is where I learned that understanding fundamentals beats memorising libraries.

Crafting Interpreters

By Bob Nystrom. The book that made me build Ekam, my own programming language. Every serious engineer should write a language at least once.

OpenCL Parallel Programming Cookbook

GPUs aren't magic — they're math. Learning to think in parallel maps directly to distributed systems and scaling infrastructure.

// Machine Learning Foundation

Deep Learning Specialization — Andrew Ng

CNNs, sequence models, attention mechanisms. The mathematical intuition behind modern AI.

Machine Learning — Andrew Ng (Coursera)

Linear regression, gradient descent, neural networks from first principles. AI is applied mathematics — and as a math graduate, that clicked immediately.

// Design & Systems Thinking

Don't Make Me Think — Steve Krug

The UX book every engineer should read. Usability isn't decoration — it's architecture. I apply this to every product I build.

// The Big Picture

Sapiens — Yuval Noah Harari

How did we get here? Understanding belief systems, economics, and human coordination. If you build for people, understand how people work.

Bhagavad Gita

Duty, detachment from outcomes, discipline of action. A 5,000-year-old guide to focus — more relevant in the age of distraction than ever.

Glimpses of World History — Jawaharlal Nehru

Tracing civilisation from the Indus Valley to the Industrial Revolution. Polymaths connect dots that specialists miss.

Why this matters for consulting: I don't just write code. I understand systems — technical, human, and historical. That's what lets me see problems others miss.