Luck, Randomness and Success

Is success random? How important do you think luck is for achieving success? Now, you may be a self-hero, a believer in hard-work-brings-success philosophy; every morning you may look forward to reading stories of successful people who were certain of their successes from the start. To achieve success, you may even be sufficiently motivated to learn new skills, network madly, and work endlessly. After all, if you do all the things right, success will kiss you. See, you are feeling great already! Now that you are all set to achieve success, let us sit in a time machine and head forward three years in future.  ...  Read the entire post โ†’

Wonders of Probability

Lately, I have been reading a lot about Probability, Statistics and Machine Learning. These subjects always involve a kind of awe that one can only experience on understanding the concepts. I’ve developed tremendous respect for the people who understand probability, (Bayesian) statistics, learning theory and other related subjects.

I write this post to pose some probability (pseudo) paradoxes and problems to you. Even though these paradoxes are extremely simple to understand and comprehend, but their solution is completely counter-intuitive. I’ll admit that for some of the paradoxes/problems, even after seeing the solution I wasn’t able to figure out what exactly is going on. So, without further blabber here we go with the paradoxes: ...  Read the entire post โ†’

Music Genres and Programming Languages

Lately, I have been thinking that certain music genres correspond to the design, philosophy, practice and perception of certain programming languages. Let me know if you (dis)agree with me.

  • Pop is Java and .NET
  • Jazz is C and C++
  • Hip-Hop is PHP and Ruby on Rails
  • Electronica/Trance is Prolog, Lisp and other functional languages
  • Nursery Rhymes is Visual Basic
  • Classical is Fortran, Cobol and Assembly
  • World Music/Fusion is Clojure, Jython, etc.
  • Rock is definitely Python and Ruby
  •  ...  Read the entire post โ†’

    Golden Rule for Startups

    If you are like most of the entrepreneurs, you want to find a business idea which can change the world and make you a famous millionaire. Plus you want an idea which is not hard to execute so that you may have best of all worlds. There is nothing wrong with this thought, except that either it is impossible or you need heavy doses of luck to make it a reality.

    Easy to start and execute businesses rarely make it big. If you are thinking of writing an application which will revolutionize the web overnight, forget it. If you are thinking of coming up with a business model which will rock the world and make you arrive on the scene instantly, forget it. ...  Read the entire post โ†’

    Greatest Living Thinkers Today

    In no particular order, following are the people whom I consider greatest living thinkers today. These are the people who are trying to pioneer a paradigm shift in our thinking exactly the same way Einstein, Leonardo Vinci and other people did in their respective times. You will definitely find worthwhile to read about the (works of) following thinkers:

    Nassim Nicholas Taleb: debunking economists and their arrogance Richard Dawkins: pro-evolution and anti-religion

    Paul Graham ...  Read the entire post โ†’

    BarCamp at IIT-Delhi, India on 11-12 October 2008

    I am happy to invite you to the fifth avatar of BarCampDelhi, which will be held at IIT-Delhi on 11th and 12th October. With 100+ registrations already, the event is set to be super-exciting this time.

    For those of you who do not know what BarCamps are all about, check this wikipedia entry. Barcamps are mainly user generated events with no fixed agenda. All the attendees are invited to participate in the talks and whoever wants to voice his opinion on anything, he can. As the word goes around, “BarCamp is an event where no one is barred from speaking.” [Courtesy: Prashant Singh...  Read the entire post โ†’

    What Hackers Need to Learn

    To someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

    More than for anyone else, this is most true for hackers. If they have learnt a new technology or a new methodology, they subconsciously hunt for where they can apply that new-new thing. When they have a so-called epiphany, they work like asses to come up with self-contained solution, which they like to call as a startup. Then they enter into a cocoon thinking that auto-magically their startup will be next big thing and probably change the world.  ...  Read the entire post โ†’

    Vote for my Startup Kroomsa: Music for Help

    I’ve been nominated for the TATA NEN Hottest Startups awards. Brought to you by National Entrepreneurship Network and TATA Group, in association with Helion, Mint, Seedfund and Wadhwani Foundation, it is India’s only community-chosen awards for Indian start-ups.

    Vote for my startup Kroomsa (http://kroomsa.com/) online at NEN Hottest Startups or via sms by smsing HOT71 to 56767 (Indian numbers only!)

    Looking forward to your support.