Explored cybersecurity and penetration testing. It served as an introduction to Linux, networking, operating systems and basic security concepts and was the beginning of my fascination with technology.

I had a few ideas that I wanted to bring to life, so I began learning web development. It took time (there was no AI back then!), and after exploring different tech stacks I finally settled on XAMPP as my tool of choice.

Alongside web development, I began exploring how I could build tools that would run on my laptop instead of on a webpage. I started out with scripting languages like Python, Perl, Batch and Bash and built a lot (hundreds!) of basic utilities to help me with various tasks. It allowed me to gain exposure to a wide range of technologies and frameworks, spanning topics such as macros, cryptography, file systems, and much more.

Revisited web dev with the intention of making websites that would provide services to users around the globe and hopefully prove to be a successful business model.

• I built a website called NCCBooks that residents of my apartment complex could use to order books from the home library my brother and I started. It was a great success and operated for about a year before we shut it down.
• ToastMail is an email reminder app I built back when I didn't have my own phone yet and wanted a way to remind myself of things via email. At the time I wanted to grow it into a popular SaaS, but I realised towards the end that the visual quality wasn't really up to par (it was my first major XAMPP project, after all) and being rather burnt out by the end of it, I never really attempted to have it gain traction.

Looking back, I think the most valuable part of this phase was that I used a framework like XAMPP that has fairly minimal abstraction. I had to build everything from stateful authentication to databases to user interfaces from the ground up, which gave me a good grasp of the fundamentals.

I wanted to try working on web development projects for real-world clients, so I set up a freelance profile over the summer. I got my first gig within a week and began building a website for an upcoming restaurant in my neighbourhood, which I went to deliver ahead of schedule. I noticed that compared to the websites I'd built previously, my current work had made significant progress in

• design and UX aesthetics
• runtime performance and SEO optimization
• development efficiency and code maintainability
• marketing optimisations for user satisfaction and conversions

Right now, I'm...

1. Jumping back into software systems, networking and cybersec. This time around I intend to focus on the real nitty-gritty details and build some solid original programs.
2. Building websites and other software that's useful to me and others.
3. Improving dev efficiency by learning more advanced technologies.
4. NLP research at LTRC, IIIT-H.