Apple and the Optic Nerve For my entire life my eyesight so bad that I couldn't even read the license plate of the car in front of me. It seemed like the entire world was in on a cruel joke to make every sign just a bit too small. But last week I had my corneas cut open
Musicians are the luckiest people One of the most awe-inspiring things to watch is a skilled musician performing live music – especially when they play the piano or guitar and sing together. How can anyone not admire that level
Shaping my personality via osmosis The popular adage "you're the average of your five closest friends" is extremely overlooked. The people I interact with the frequently tend to shape my worldview to a terrifying extent, however the amount
Solving hard problems To solve hard problems: Simplify the problem as much as possible. Get rid of any extraneous parts of the problem and try to get to the core.Look for similar problems that've already
Alexandria – a lightweight Library Genesis ebook browser Alexandria is a desktop-based ebook browser powered by Library Genesis.
Improving Large Video Calls Today's video calls suck for large group calls. When someone is speaking in a large Zoom call, they're the only person speaking in the entire room. They hold the metaphorical conversational lock and
Golden Era of Productivity Tools I've used many productivity tools over the years, and I think I've finally been able to refine my workflow to 3 tools that each serve a specific need. Roam ResearchThe first one is
The Startup Operator's Manual This is a collection of mental models and frameworks I frequently come back to when I'm thinking about how to run a startup.
super Developing an API for human behavior What if humans were as programmable as computers? Imagine being able to shape your own behavior by making API calls. Let's say you wanted to go to the gym every single day. All you would have to do is write the following code.
You Need to Ship Faster You need to be going faster. The rate at which you're iterating on your product is too slow. You have a limited amount of runway left and if you don't move fast enough, you'll go broke. To avoid going broke, and to build a product that people love, you must ship faster.
super Going Super: Quantifying and Optimizing Your Life A while ago I read about a study with 2 groups of people trying to lose weight. The control group was told to continue living their life as usual, and the test group
Is this a Bug in React, Chromium, or the HTML Spec? I came across what I thought to be an interesting bug in React, only to realize it was really a bug in Chromium, only to realize it was really a bug in the
The Hard Things I Want to Do I've come to realize that I'm most fulfilled while making progress towards very hard goals, the kind of goals that you're afraid to tell other people about. I'm a firm believer that anything
Life is Great, So Damn Great This post is an unfiltered stream of consciousness. If you're expecting to read about software or startups, or even anything remotely insightful, then I'd recommend skipping this one. Today I woke up and
Using Cognitive Dissonance to Shape Your Behavior Cognitive dissonance theory states that when two thoughts are in disagreement, or dissonance, then we must reduce the gap between them. For instance, when we believe we are a bodybuilder, yet we do
Startup Questions to Answer If a startup idea were so obviously good, it would’ve been done already. This means it's probably a bad idea to judge a startup based on your first impression. For example, Twitter
Metaprogramming and Reinforcement Learning Let's say you spend your days assembling RC quadcopters. It's fun, but eventually you get bored of it. So you decide to build a small factory that builds the quadcopters for you. You
Twitter is far too expensive Twitter introduced me to my best friend, investors in my startup, and many super smart people. I attribute a lot of the success I've had to Twitter. It did a better job of
Happiness vs. Fulfillment I don't think happiness is the metric I should be optimizing for in life. Instead, I believe a much better gradient to climb would be that of fulfillment. Looking back at the things
Move to your optimal city If you still live in the same city you grew up in, you should probably move. There isn't anything inherently wrong about your hometown, I'm sure the local Applebees there is fantastic, but
Theory: How to become a billionaire without being lucky I believe the average person has the aptitude to become a billionaire. We live in a dynamic world filled with dynamic people, meaning if I'm just an average person and I suddenly have
about About me Hi, I'm Sharif.I'm the founder of Debuild – a tool that aims to make building valuable software significantly simpler (we're hiring)! I previously founded Vectordash, a cloud gaming company backed by Y Combinator,
