Reflections

Understanding How Bank Payments Actually Work SWIFT, NPP, Clearing, Settlement and the Hidden Architecture of Modern Banking Most people think sending money through a banking app is simple. You open your banking app, enter the amount, press Send , and within seconds the money appears in the recipient’s account. But behind that simple action lies an extremely complex network of financial systems, payment rails , settlement services, and security layers . In this post, we will go through: The difference between SWIFT and NPP How modern payment systems work The meaning of clearing, settlement, and reconciliation The hidden architecture inside banks How engineers debug a failed payment Let’s start from the beginning. 1. The Different Payment Rails Banks Use Banks don’t use a single payment system. They use multiple payment rails , each designed for different purposes. ACH – Batch Payments ACH-style systems process payments in batches . These are commonly used for: Salary payments Utility ...

Understanding DDoS Attacks and How the Internet Survives Them The modern internet is an incredible engineering achievement. Every day billions of users access websites, APIs, and applications without realizing the massive infrastructure working behind the scenes to keep everything online. One of the biggest threats to online systems is the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. Let's explore: What a DDoS attack is How attackers launch them How companies like Cloudflare, Google, and Amazon Web Services defend against them The architecture that keeps modern applications resilient What is a DDoS Attack? A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack happens when thousands or even millions of computers flood a server with traffic, overwhelming it so legitimate users cannot access the service. Think of it like this: A restaurant has 20 seats . Now imagine 10,000 fake customers rush in at the same time. Real customers can no longer enter. That is exactly what happens to a server ...

🚀 Vibe Coding: Building a Home Library with Antigravity AI Software development is entering a fascinating new era where AI-powered tools are accelerating how applications are designed and built . Recently, I watched an insightful Malayalam livestream from Brototype that demonstrates this new approach through a concept which we are all familiar with called  “Vibe Coding.” In the session, the developers build a home library management application called Vaayana using modern AI-driven development tools. This post summarizes the key ideas and lessons from that livestream. Watch the full livestream on Youtube What is “Vibe Coding”? “Vibe Coding” is an emerging development approach where AI tools collaborate with developers to generate software quickly . Instead of manually writing every line of code, developers: Describe the application idea. Use AI tools to generate project structure and components. Review, refine, and integrate the generated code. This approach dramatically reduces ...

Understanding Large Language Models: A Practical Learning Path Recently, I have been spending time exploring Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models (LLMs) . There are countless videos, tutorials, and courses available today. While this abundance of material is exciting, it can also be overwhelming when trying to understand where to begin and how to learn systematically . Among the many resources I came across, the following video resonated with me the most because it provides a clear and structured roadmap for learning LLMs properly . 🎥 Video: Learning Path for Large Language Models 🔗 Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U07MHi4Suj8 Why This Video Stood Out Many people today are using tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other AI systems , but understanding how these systems actually work requires a deeper learning path. This video explains how to truly understand LLMs , not just how to use them. It answers questions many learners struggle with: Should you start ...

  Running AI Locally: My First Experiment As part of my journey to understand Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models , I wanted to go beyond simply using cloud-based AI tools. Instead, I decided to try something more hands-on: Running an AI model locally on my own machine. Running AI locally offers several advantages: More control over the models Better privacy No dependency on external APIs Ability to experiment freely Deeper understanding of how AI systems actually work This post summarizes the tools I used and the steps I followed to run AI locally. Tools and Technologies Used To set up a local AI environment, I used the following tools. 1. WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) Since I was working on Windows , I first installed WSL . WSL allows you to run a Linux environment inside Windows , which is extremely useful because most AI tools are designed to run on Linux systems. Benefits include: Linux development environment Better compatibility with AI frameworks Easier in...

 I worked on UI Automation using Cucumber, Java and Selenium in a company ( company name hidden due to confidentiality agreement). After creating the framework completely, when it was time to deploy to pipeline, I found we don't have devops team in the company. The devs were helping out by doing devops work in addition to their normal duties. They explained that they can help with C# code ( basically .Net core deployments into agents), but could not help maintaining agents which run JVM ( for Java code). It was time to switch to C#. I found Specflow is a C# implementation of Cucumber and we need Visual Studio ( Professional at least) to continue the work. The management at the highest level were very supportive and they were willing to spend the money and give me all the support to rewrite the entire framework in C#. It was time to make Automation a success in the company. And it was going to be more thrilling than any movie we can imagine with all the twists and turns.