https://outofdesk.netlify.appLatest posts from out.of.desken-usMon, 21 Sep 2026 05:46:57 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/how-the-garden-is-made/An interactive, beginner-friendly guide to the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript behind the landing-page timeline and Writing the Thing manifesto.Sat, 19 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/how-the-garden-is-made/DesignCSSJavaScriptWritingGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/what-work-for/This may be a question that each of us in knowledge or creative work is asking ourselves in the wake of AI. And if not, maybe we should. The point of hard problems When OpenAI announced that one of…Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/what-work-for/AIProductivityGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/discord-voice-outage-system-design/As someone who is as interested in the organizational forces of failures as the technical ones, I find studying incidents — and root cause analysis generally — highly meaningful. They expose causes…Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/discord-voice-outage-system-design/SystemDesignIncidentArchitectureDistributedSystemsGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/agent-harness-memory/Your harness, your memory , from the LangChain blog, argues that memory is a critical part of the harness, so anyone selling harness without memory baked into it is creating a lock-in that's not…Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/agent-harness-memory/AILLMsTechnologyBusinessGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/all-radar-no-compass/Claude Mythos Anthropic's latest model, Claude Mythos, made some headlines recently. It was said to be so powerful that the company decided not to make it generally available. They only gave…Sun, 12 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/all-radar-no-compass/AILLMsMindCognitionPsychologyPhilosophyGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/reservations-to-relationships/As I complete 9 years at OpenTable this month, I've been reflecting on the most productive time I've spent here — my time building and maturing the Hospitality line of business. I was a newly…Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/reservations-to-relationships/technologybusinessdatareflectionsGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/attention-series/My brother recently told me about an incident at his neighborhood park. A toddler was found crying, lost, looking for his dad. Someone noticed and called out for help. The dad was sitting a few yards…Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/attention-series/attentionselfsocial-mediathinkingAItechnologyGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/sources-truth-software/A few weeks ago, while reflecting on the importance of data models in a product, inspired by Matt Brown’s post, Your data model is your destiny , I became convinced that data is the source of truth…Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/sources-truth-software/softwarephilosophyengineeringproductdesigntechnologyGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/getting-carried-away/A few weeks ago, I read an article — A new navigation paradigm — that felt relatable, yet unsettling in a way I couldn’t fully articulate. I eventually stopped thinking about it, but the ideas…Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/getting-carried-away/navigationcognitionthinkingAItechnologyGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/writing-the-thing/A small manifesto about all the things that resemble writing, and the things that are writing.Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/writing-the-thing/WritingGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/performance-reviews-llms/I completed writing performance reviews for my team yesterday and I used very little LLMs for it. I had my notes from the year, their self-assessments, and 360 feedback. When I sat down to write, the…Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/performance-reviews-llms/LLMsGenAIWritingManagementLeadershipIntentionalityAgencyGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/mean-time-to-paper-speech-reflections/I had purchased four books to devour during the Christmas holidays as a way to recharge, learn and get ready for the next year. But a surprise spike in traffic to my blog (thanks to the Hacker News…Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/mean-time-to-paper-speech-reflections/ReadingWritingReflectionsGrowthImmigrantHackerNewsLanguageCommunicationGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/perfect-software/We have many names to describe personal tools. Malleable software speaks to how it behaves. Home-cooked software speaks to who makes it. I wanted a name that speaks to something deeper: how it feels…Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/perfect-software/SoftwareSoftwareDevelopmentMusingsJoyAutonomyGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/keyboard-faster-than-mouse/I was thinking about the acquisition of Bun by Anthropic and wondering what it really signals. On the surface, it’s an intriguing investment of an AI company in a faster JavaScript runtime. But what…Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/keyboard-faster-than-mouse/AICodingSoftwareDevelopmentProductivityFutureOfWorkMindGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/blurry-lines-copilot-autopilot/My kids and ChatGPT were born around the same time. For the last three years, just as my kids have been learning to navigate the world through imitation and experimentation, the world has been doing…Sun, 12 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/blurry-lines-copilot-autopilot/AILLMsSoftwareTechnologyProductivityIndividualityTasteInTechGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/reflections-running-solo-pursuits/As I turned 36 this week, I set a random, somewhat ambitious goal for myself - to run 36mi in a week. That’s the most I'd have run in a week in my nine years of running, and by far the most…Fri, 10 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/reflections-running-solo-pursuits/runningreflectionsvisualsketchesGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/flightstream-open-source-nodejs-flight-streaming/I'm excited to share FlightStream 🚀, an open-source Apache Arrow Flight streaming Node.js framework I've been working on for the last couple of months. FlightStream addresses a current gap…Sat, 26 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/flightstream-open-source-nodejs-flight-streaming/analyticsapachearrowapacheflightnodejsdatastreamingopensourceGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/engineering-fast-analytics-columnar-storage-explained/At OpenTable, my team builds a guest data platform that helps restaurant customers understand their diners through real-time analytics and segmentation dashboards. Coming from a traditional product…Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/engineering-fast-analytics-columnar-storage-explained/databaseanalyticstechnicalcolumnarGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/thinking-outside-the-doc/I spent a good amount of time last week preparing material to present to my upper management. What began as an exercise in articulating a complex idea turned into a reflection on how we think,…Fri, 04 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/thinking-outside-the-doc/writingAIgrowthmindGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/data-structures-reclaim-attention/This is not a post about attention as mentioned in the Transformer architecture . I'm talking about real attention, - the mental resource we're increasingly running short of - and how…Tue, 11 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/data-structures-reclaim-attention/attentioncomputer-scienceproductivitymindGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/assumptions-kill/"In an investigation, assumptions kill" , is something Jack Reacher says often in the series Reacher . They don't do much good in software development either. You assume you know the…Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/assumptions-kill/reflectionssoftware-engineeringGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/change-over-time/This post is derived from my notes of the book Being Mortal , by Atul Gawande, a fascinating book on medicine, aging and mortality. I don't like to travel anymore. Saying it feels like betraying…Wed, 26 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/change-over-time/timemortalitybook-notestravelmeaningGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/but-thats-not-an-ai-problem/When you talk about AI's negative impacts, people often counter with "But that problem has always existed" as an easy way out. While often true, it misses the point: something…Sat, 22 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/but-thats-not-an-ai-problem/AIreflectionscritiqueGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/reciding-code-to-building-software/My reflections on the gaps between a traditional computer science education and the dynamic nature of the technology industryTue, 04 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/reciding-code-to-building-software/reflectionseducationindustrysoftware-engineeringtechnologyGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/weekly-reading-digest-1.0/The True Self is the Person You Want Others to Believe You Are Summary The central argument of the article, supported by research, is that what we perceive as our authentic self or "true"…Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/weekly-reading-digest-1.0/weeklyreading#psychologyGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/forced-disconnections/I realized something counterintuitive about productivity the other day. My wife was upstairs reading to the kids, I was sipping coffee after work, and had a moment to think about a habit I've…Wed, 08 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/forced-disconnections/originalreflectionsmotivationproductivitymindGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/people-i-want-to-follow/A few people that I wanna follow closely. They do the things I want to do, or generally espouse the values I hold dearFri, 03 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/people-i-want-to-follow/inspirationspeopleGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/tools-and-technologies-2024/Obsidian for note-taking has been a game-changer. The customizability it offers, mainly in terms of look and feel, and extensibility, from its rich plugin ecosystem, sets it apart for me. Notion, to…Sat, 21 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/tools-and-technologies-2024/toolstechnologyproductivityreflectionsendofyearGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/separating-storage-and-compute/What it is and why it's a big dealFri, 13 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/separating-storage-and-compute/data-engineeringGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/data-mesh-economic-systems/In the world of enterprise data management, there has been a paradigm shift recently similar to the historical evolution of economic systems. Traditional centralized data architectures, which have…Sat, 23 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/data-mesh-economic-systems/data-engineeringdata-mesheconomyGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/long-context-and-its-implications/Commentary on the predictions and speculations about what long context makes possibleFri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/long-context-and-its-implications/AIcommentaryGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/digital-garden/The idea of a digital garden is about having a space in the digital realm where ideas, thoughts, or knowledge, are seeded, tended to, evolve and flourish. While the term is a few decades old, the…Mon, 30 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/digital-garden/#productivity#growthnote-takingpkmwritingGaurav Rameshhttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/notes-why-ai-isnt-going-to-make-art/Art is notoriously hard to define, and so are the differences between good art and bad art. But let me offer a generalization: art is something that results from making a lot of choices. This might…Mon, 30 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://outofdesk.netlify.app/notes-why-ai-isnt-going-to-make-art/AIarthumanintelligenceGaurav Ramesh