I fucking hate non-technical founders looking down on the tech team as if it we're dispensable, and as a result, undervalue us in terms of money and equity.

Thinking of getting some T-Shirts made...

The entire reason I became a developer was so that I could one day build something that I can say has/had a handful of users, that I could build something that helped save someone's life, that helped someone in their time of need.

That reason was fulfilled when I built my only successful and proudest project during a cold night in 2011. I was 16 at the time, and here in South India, there was a major cyclone affecting a portion of our country (Chennai/Tamil Nadu). A lot of my family were in affected areas, and I didn't know what I could do being so far away (around 400kms/250mi away, in Bangalore).

I stayed up all night to build what was then known as ChennaiRains.org. It was a simple website, a directory and a safe house for everyone's information. Whoever needed help, whoever was ready to give help, whoever was volunteering their travel, their time. I didn't think it would help much. I just wanted to make a small difference.

Next morning, after the hangover of the all-nighter I pulled faded away, I see that the website went viral after a few shares on Twitter. The community was so supportive of my little project to help my family and friends. It caught a peak traffic of a million users overnight, no ads, no money made from this, I just earned the experience of a lifetime. It eventually helped a lot of people in need, connected a lot of volunteers and victims.

It has been the epitome of my life. It's the reason I still develop applications to-date, even if they are simple. Somewhere out there, someone needs it, and I want to be able to help to them :)

*taking interviews of freshmen for the computer club in college*

Me: What languages do you know?
Freshman #1: C, C++.
FM #2: C, C++.
FM #3: C, C++.
...
FM #83: C, C++.
FM #84: Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, English.

I shot myself in the head after that last one.

2010: PHP, CSS, Vanilla JS, and a LAMP Server.

Ah, the simple life.

2016: Node.js, React, Vue, Angular, AngularJS, Polymer, Sass, Less, Gulp, Bower, Grunt.

I can't handle this, I'm shifting domains to Machine Learning.

2017: Numpy, Scipy, TensorFlow, Theano, Keras, Torch, CNNs, RNNs, GANs and LOTS AND LOTS OF MATH!

Okay, okay. Calm down there fella.
JavaScript doesn't seem that complicated now, does it? 🙈