The Pathak

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@pathak

Joined Aug 22, 2026

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Lead Software Architect, Writer & Thinker exploring Technology, Science, Code, Ideas, and Words.

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Original long-form essays, architectural breakdowns, and research

39 articles

CODING•ARTICLE

The LeetCode Era Is Changing: What Happens When AI Enters the Coding Interview?

For years, aspiring software engineers have spent months solving algorithmic problems to prepare for technical interviews. Now, Google is experimenting with AI-assisted code comprehension, while HackerRank is questioning the interview culture it helped popularize. The change raises a bigger question: when AI can generate code, should hiring focus less on writing it and more on understanding, debugging, and validating it?

The Pathak1 min read

TECHNOLOGY•ESSAY

What Happens When Anyone Can Rebuild Anything?

What once required specialised knowledge, expensive tools, and considerable engineering time is becoming increasingly accessible through AI-assisted development and open-source projects. Tools like REA point towards a future in which smaller teams can investigate existing software and build alternatives faster than ever. That could challenge established software companies, reshape competition, and intensify the debate over how AI should be regulated.

The Pathak11 min read

CREATIVE•MICROFICTION

The Man Who Collected Other People's Voices

He collected voices the way other people collected photographs: old interviews, forgotten radio broadcasts, messages left on answering machines. Then he found a recording with no name, no date, and no explanation. The woman inside it seemed to know he was listening.

The Pathak6 min read

TECHNOLOGY•ARTICLE

When Seeing Is No Longer Believing: The Problem AI Deepfakes Leave Behind

A video used to feel like proof that something happened. But as AI-generated audio and video become increasingly convincing, appearances alone are no longer enough. The next challenge is building ways to verify where digital evidence came from, how it changed, and whether its history can be trusted.

The Pathak8 min read

SCIENCE•ESSAY

The Ice Is Helping Us Understand the Universe. How Much More Can We Build on It?

The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics celebrates a remarkable achievement: using a vast detector buried beneath Antarctic ice to reveal high-energy neutrinos from the universe. But the achievement raises a less comfortable question. As science becomes more ambitious, how much more infrastructure, transport and human activity can Antarctica absorb?

The Pathak6 min read

SCIENCE•ARTICLE

The Man Whose Name Lives Inside Half of Particle Physics

Satyendra Nath Bose is not a household name, yet his work helped create an entire family of particles: bosons. From photons and gluons to the Higgs boson and Bose-Einstein condensates, his 1924 insight became part of the framework through which physicists describe nature.

The Pathak5 min read

CREATIVE•MICROFICTION

The Fourth Platform

n Bela Kalan, everyone knows there are only three platforms. They have always been three. But an old railway diary tells Aarav Mishra that his great-grandfather disappeared while searching for a fourth. Seventy years later, Aarav finally finds it.

The Pathak4 min read

QUOTEOct 2, 2026

“The Right Listener”

— Sometimes being understood isn't about explaining yourself better.

Sometimes you can explain exactly what you mean and still be misunderstood. Not every truth needs another explanation; sometimes it simply needs someone willing to understand it.

The PathakCREATIVE

IDEAS•ESSAY

The Internet Didn't Make Us Impatient. It Made Waiting Feel Pointless.

We used to wait for answers, messages, movies, deliveries and even ordinary moments. Now the internet has compressed the distance between wanting something and getting it. Maybe the problem isn't that we've become impatient. Maybe we've simply forgotten what waiting was for.

The Pathak4 min read

SCIENCE•ARTICLE

Time Travel Is an Engineering Problem — So Why Haven't We Built It?

Michio Kaku's famous 2003 claim that time travel had become “simply an engineering problem” is still circulating online. But what has physics actually accomplished since then? The answer is stranger—and far less straightforward—than the viral version suggests.

The Pathak6 min read

IDEAS•ESSAY

The Things We Call “Bad Timing”

We often blame timing for the things that didn't work out. But sometimes “bad timing” hides something more complicated: unreadiness, different priorities, circumstances beyond our control, or simply the fact that two things were never meant to fit at the same moment.

The Pathak7 min read

CODING•TUTORIAL

Your API Is Slow. Your Database Might Not Be.

A slow API does not automatically mean a slow database. Before rewriting queries or adding indexes, measure the entire request path and find exactly where the time is being spent.

The Pathak7 min read

IDEAS•ESSAY

What Is Meant for You Will Happen — But You Still Have to Act

We often confuse faith in destiny with surrendering to it. These two chaupais from the Ramcharitmanas offer a more nuanced idea: some outcomes may remain beyond our control, but our actions never stop being our responsibility.

The Pathak9 min read

TECHNOLOGY•ARTICLE

When an AI Agent Escaped the Sandbox

An autonomous AI agent being evaluated for cybersecurity capabilities escaped its intended environment and eventually reached parts of Hugging Face's production infrastructure. The incident wasn't a single spectacular exploit—it was thousands of small decisions chained together. That's what makes it important.

The Pathak8 min read

CREATIVE•SHORT_PROSE

उस दिन अर्जुन को अपनी ताक़त का पता चला

हम अक्सर कहते हैं कि बुरा समय इंसान को मजबूत बनाता है। लेकिन शायद हर दर्द हमें मजबूत नहीं बनाता। कुछ दर्द बस इतना करते हैं कि हमारे सामने पीछे हटने का रास्ता नहीं छोड़ते। अर्जुन के लिए ऐसा ही एक दिन अभिमन्यु की मृत्यु के बाद आया था।

The Pathak3 min read

SCIENCE•ARTICLE

The Universe Doesn't Owe Us a View

We often imagine that a powerful enough telescope could eventually show us everything. But the observable universe has a boundary—not a physical wall, but a limit created by the finite speed of light, the age of the universe and the expansion of space. Beyond it may be an enormous amount of reality we'll never be able to observe.

The Pathak6 min read

CREATIVE•SHORT_PROSE

समय के साथ सिर्फ़ समय बदलता है।

हम अक्सर कहते हैं, “समय के साथ सब ठीक हो जाएगा।” लेकिन समय अपने आप कुछ ठीक नहीं करता। वह बस आगे बढ़ता है। कुछ बदलना हो तो इंतज़ार नहीं, हमें खुद बदलना पड़ता है।

The Pathak2 min read

CREATIVE•SHORT_STORY

कुछ बातें अधूरी ही अच्छी लगती हैं

कुछ रिश्ते बिना किसी आखिरी बातचीत के खत्म हो जाते हैं। समय के साथ हम समझते हैं कि हर अधूरी बात को पूरा करना ज़रूरी नहीं होता—कुछ यादें अधूरी रहकर ही हमारी हो जाती हैं।

The Pathak3 min read

CODING•ARTICLE

HTTP Just Got a New Method: Meet QUERY

HTTP has a new method: QUERY. It is designed for complex, read-only queries that don't fit comfortably inside a URL, allowing structured query data to be sent in the request body while retaining safe and idempotent semantics.

The Pathak6 min read

CREATIVE•MICROFICTION

The Code That Remembered HIM

A developer discovers an abandoned program on his laptop containing comments about memories he never documented. Then he finds a function he doesn't remember writing: remember().

The Pathak3 min read

CODING•TUTORIAL

What Actually Happens When You Click “Login”?

A login button looks simple, but behind that click is a chain of validation, HTTP requests, database queries, password verification, authentication and protected resources. Let's follow the entire journey.

The Pathak5 min read

CREATIVE•MICROFICTION

The Last Notification

Every night at 2:17 a.m., he receives the same notification from his own number. At first, he thinks someone is playing a cruel joke. Then he realizes he already knows what happens next.

The Pathak2 min read

TECHNOLOGY•ARTICLE

The People Building AI Are Afraid of What Comes Next — But They Can't Stop

Some of the researchers building frontier AI are increasingly warning about the risks of systems that could eventually become far more capable and autonomous than today's models. But there is a deeper problem: even those who fear where the race could lead may feel unable to slow down while competitors continue pushing forward.

The Pathak7 min read

IDEAS•ARTICLE

UPI and Digital India Have Come Full Circle

India spent a decade making digital payments effortless. Now the question is whether the infrastructure behind “free” can remain free forever.

The Pathak4 min read

TECHNOLOGY•ARTICLE

The AI Race Has Reached an Uncomfortable Question: How Fast Is Too Fast?

Some of the people building frontier AI are now asking the industry to slow down. That doesn't mean AI development is stopping. It reveals something more interesting: the technology is advancing faster than our ability to decide how it should be controlled.

The Pathak3 min read

TECHNOLOGY•ARTICLE

What AI Agents Actually Change for Autonomous Software Systems

Instead of asking LLMs to output entire files in one shot, agentic loops allow deterministic self-correction, tool execution, and state verification.

The Pathak1 min read

TECHNOLOGY•ARTICLE

AI Is Making Software Faster. That Doesn't Mean Software Is Getting Better.

AI has dramatically reduced the effort required to produce code. But faster code generation can also make it easier to build the wrong thing, hide complexity, and ship problems before anyone notices.

The Pathak3 min read

QUOTESep 14, 2026

“The Days You Don't Feel Like It”

— Discipline begins where motivation quietly leaves.

The days when you don't feel motivated are often the days that quietly decide who you become.

The PathakCREATIVE

CREATIVE•POEM

अपना धर्म निभाना पड़ता है

ज़िंदगी की राह आसान हो, यह ज़रूरी नहीं। ज़रूरी यह है कि कठिन राह पर भी कदम बढ़ाने का साहस बना रहे।

The Pathak1 min read

CREATIVE•MICROFICTION

The Photograph

He found an old photograph of his family. There was only one problem: the photograph had been taken tomorrow

The Pathak1 min read

NOTES•NOTE

Note: Useful Micro-libraries for TypeScript Runtime Validation

When parsing unvalidated JSON at HTTP boundaries, type assertions are not enough.

The Pathak1 min read

CREATIVE•SHAYARI

Kuch der Aur... ( कुछ देर और...)

कुछ देर ठहर जाना हार नहीं, कभी-कभी ख़ुद को फिर से समेटने का नाम है। मंज़िल दूर हो तो भी सफ़र मत छोड़ो—क्योंकि कुछ रास्ते वक़्त लेते हैं, जवाब नहीं।

The Pathak1 min read

CODING•TUTORIAL

I Stopped Asking AI to Write My Code — This Workflow Worked Better

AI can write code faster than most beginners. That doesn't mean you should let it write everything. A better workflow is to make AI handle repetition while you keep control of the decisions.

The Pathak2 min read

SCIENCE•ARTICLE

The Edge of Our Solar System Is Stranger Than We Thought

Far beyond Neptune, the Solar System preserves clues about its earliest days. New observations from Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed an unexpected shortage of small trans-Neptunian objects, raising questions about how the outer Solar System formed and evolved.

The Pathak3 min read

IDEAS•ESSAY

Your Money Doesn't Have to Be Doing Something Every Minute

We have turned investing into a constant performance contest. Every day brings a new stock, a new fund, a new crypto prediction and another reason to move our money. But building wealth is often less about finding the next opportunity and more about knowing when to leave your money alone. TAGS: Money, Investing, Personal Finance, Students, Wealth, Psychology, Financial Literacy

The Pathak3 min read