Technical Writing

I’ve always been drawn to great technical writing. From high school through my career, I distinctly recall specific books (and even chapters within them) that changed how I understood a subject like Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science. What stayed with me was how an author could take something difficult and make the ideas seem inevitable.

In 2026, a lot of writing is generated with LLMs. You can often recognize it immediately on LinkedIn or technical blogs from the punchy phrasing and excessive use of dashes. To learn something, it can feel like wading through mud and then keep engaging with LLMs in an endless loop of haphazard exploration.

I pick up a technical book to break through a subject. I am eager to understand the core ideas quickly and decisively in the authentic voice of an expert who is passionate about teaching. Quickly doesn’t mean minutes, it means hours and perhaps days. Yes days! If I can reach in days, the same level of understanding that took someone years, isn’t it a terrific bargain? A $25 book, in that sense, has outsized impact.

I need books that start from first principles and build mental “models”. And I need the models to extend to other related concepts. It’s a high bar.

When I read such a book, the exact words are eventually forgotten, and what remain are a series of ideas and mental models, and very strong memories of the moments when something clicked.

Why (yet another) technical blog

My eventual goal is to write a lasting technical book on a topic related to the areas of my expertise: storage, analytics, cloud, machine learning. I’m no Feynman, but I can always aspire to be a writer like him! Writing in public will force me to refine my process.

What to expect

Long posts that take a subject of my interest and explain it from first principles.