• The Water was Never the Question

  We do not have to say goodbye to fresh water because we build an AI data center. We might, however, make an entirely avoidable mistake if we approve the wrong cooling system in the wrong place, drawing the wrong water at the wrong time.

  Counterpoint BD

• The Hidden Curriculum: What We Really Taught

  Tales from the Tech Trenches.

  Medium

• It Was Finished. It Just Wasn’t Finished Out Loud.

  The same discipline runs in reverse. “Got it.” “Saw it, on it.” Two words, and the loop closes from both ends instead of hanging open on one.

  Counterpoint BD

• Two Weeks to Sharpen Bangladesh’s AI Budget

  The budget should tie its connectivity targets to affordability so that rural and low-income citizens can actually use what is being built, not just live within range of it.

  Counterpoint BD

• The One Percent Imperative

  With Shah Yunus. Why Bangladesh’s failure is architectural, and what its remedy actually requires.

  Counterpoint BD

• Long Live the Software Engineer. Anybody Home?

  Michael Lawrence has been writing software for twenty-five years. In May, he published a piece in Level Up Coding about a refactor he had…

  AI in Plain English

• The Loop Might Close On Its Own

  Or: AGI never left. It just got a new name and a research budget.

  Medium

• The Art, Science, and Magic of Debugging

  Tales from the Tech Trenches.

  Medium

• The Talent Paradox: Why I Often Preferred Fresh Graduates

  Tales from the Tech Trenches.

  Medium

• Debugging in the Age of Distributed Everything (Including Intelligence)

  From Tales from the Tech Trenches.

  Medium

• We Keep Renaming It Because We Don’t Know What It Is

  Most tech terminology fights take years. Vi vs emacs. Tabs vs spaces. REST vs GraphQL. You pick a side, you defend it, you die on that…

  AI in Plain English

• Software Development Is Dead. Long Live Software Engineering.

  Or: How I Stopped Worrying About AI Taking My Job and Started Worrying About Whether Anyone Knows What the Job Actually Is.

  AI in Plain English

• Bangladesh’s Draft AI Policy: Vision Needs Velocity

  Success depends on three commitments that cannot be deferred: Speed. Visible, funded action in year one. Not plans for action. Action. Resources. Specific, budgeted commitments, not proposals.

  Counterpoint BD

• What Does It Actually Mean to 10x Your Mind?

  Five hard-earned lessons on leverage, systems, judgment, and learning velocity.

  Medium

• Beyond Fault Lines: Bangladesh’s Intolerance Problem

  What if Bangladesh’s problem isn’t the divides themselves? Secular versus religious. Bengali versus Muslim. Shahbag versus Shapla. Aspiration versus stagnation. What if the real problem is our inability to tolerate disagreement at all?

  Counterpoint BD

• What Gantt Charts Don’t Know How to Draw

  Why projects finish late while staying under budget and what Gantt charts fail to measure.

  Medium

• Five Years Later: What I Got Wrong, What I Missed, and What’s Coming

  Five years ago, I made predictions. Most aged like milk. Here is what I got wrong, what I missed, and what’s next.

  AI in Plain English

• On Mudi, Tong, and the Perils of Asking Simple Questions

  A simple question about roadside stalls spirals through Mughal grain storage, Gujarati traders, and Dune linguistics. Still no exit.

  Counterpoint BD

• Agile vs. Predictability: The Art of Flying a Startup Plane While Installing the Wings

  A field note from the trenches on why Agile and predictability are not enemies, and why engineering needs rhythm to avoid flying blind.

  Medium

• Will AI Fix Bangladesh’s Inequality or Automate It?

  AI systems don’t operate in a vacuum. They operate on people and amplify the society beneath them. That brings us to the uncomfortable question at the heart of Bangladesh’s AI future: if we deploy these systems on top of our existing inequalities, do we fix them or automate them?

  Counterpoint BD

• Bangladesh’s AI Policy Needs an Engine, Not Just a Map

  A policy without execution mechanisms is not a plan. It is a press release.

  Counterpoint BD

• A Polyglot’s Journey: 40 Years, 15+ Languages, One Stubborn Obsession

  Forty years, fifteen languages, and one simple truth: I still tidy code that runs fine, because discipline outlives hardware.

  Medium

• Tales from the Tech Trenches: From VI to AI — 30 Years of “Just Typing”

  30 years of building the web — from VI to AI. Tools evolved, but the responsibility for what we build never did.

  Medium

• Tales from the Tech Trenches: When Your Compiler Betrays You

  In grad school, a bug led me to discover the compiler was wrong. The lesson? Sometimes it’s not you.

  Medium

• Part 2: When Big Data Meant Big Iron

  Earlier, in Taming a Million John Smiths, I shared the first half of this two-part story in my Tales from the Tech Trenches series, the…

  Medium

• Part 1: Taming a Million John Smiths

  Solving the ‘John Smith’ problem across 100M+ papers in the early 2000s, before deep learning, earned us two U.S. patents.

  Medium

• From Galaxian to Rocket Blast: A 42-Year Feedback Loop

  It all started: a TRS-80, BASIC, and a memory leak from 1983 — my attempt to clone Galaxian becomes a classic Tale from the Tech Trenches…

  Medium

• Your Gantt Chart and Jira Board Aren’t Enemies — They’re Dance Partners

  Stop treating Gantt charts and agile tools like enemies. Here’s how smart teams make them work together for predictable delivery.

  Medium

• What I Wish My Junior Self Knew About Code Hygiene: Lessons from a Reformed Code Slob

  Code hygiene lessons from someone who learned the hard way. Your future self (and teammates) will thank you.

  Medium

• How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the AI: Managing Your Silicon Junior Developers

  How I learned to stop worrying and love the AI: what managing silicon juniors taught me about building solo with LLMs.

  Medium

• What Bangladesh’s AI policy must get right

  Bangladesh’s AI future won’t just be written by chance — it’s up to us to shape it.

  Dhaka Tribune

• When the Standup Becomes a Sermon: Agile Rituals and the Death of Agility

  When Agile becomes all ritual and no reflection, standups turn into sermons and agility dies. Here’s how to bring it back to life.

  Medium

• A Question at the Cafeteria

  A cafeteria boy’s innocent question reveals my BUET journey from bridge-playing truant to BUET teacher.

  Medium

• The big leap to smarter healthcare

  Building AI that understands Bangladesh’s medical needs. This is the concluding part of yesterday’s two-part series on healthcare.

  Dhaka Tribune

• Simple steps to smart healthcare

  How QR codes can transform Bangladesh’s medical records. This is the first part of a two-part series on healthcare.

  Dhaka Tribune

• One Kilobyte to Copilot: My journey through programming history

  From 1KB BASIC to AI coding assistants: how the digital dark ages molded better programmers and why that still matters today.

  Medium

• The AI Overwhelm: A Story of Finding Focus in the Age of Rapid Change

  In the flood of daily AI breakthroughs, an entrepreneur’s cry of confusion leads to a way of finding focus in the AI revolution.

  Medium

• Bangladesh’s AI moment

  The transformative power of artificial intelligence is undeniable, but it is not inevitable. It requires intention, strategy, and collaboration.

  Dhaka Tribune

• How I Really Interview: It’s Not What You Learn, But How You Learn

  I hire thinkers, not memorizers. Learning > knowing. If you can teach, question, and adapt, we’ll get along just fine.

  Medium

• Welcome to Costco. I love you.

  From Idiocracy’s satire to AI’s reality, we’ve traded thinking for convenience. It’s all fun, until our brains hit “screensaver” mode.

  Medium

• Altitude and Attitude: Lessons from the Climb

  Success is less about the climb and more about the journey — every lesson, detour, and milestone shapes the evolving story of our lives.

  Medium

• A letter of hope

  Reading the recently shared White Paper on the state of the Bangladesh economy has made me realize how urgent it is to stop pointing fingers and start meaningful changes.

  Dhaka Tribune

• The Hats, the Cats, and the HR Dance

  Startup life: many hats, herding cats, and moonlighting as HR. One rule? No ghosting. Transparency and respect equal better hiring for all.

  Medium

• AI Prognostications for 2025: “Is it me, or my AI Doppelganger?”

  2025 will be a defining year for AI as innovations move from speculation to transformation. My top 10 predictions, ranked by plausibility.

  Medium

• The production of progress

  How human history is defined by transformative revolutions.

  Dhaka Tribune

• What Happens After Hiring? Growing Talent for the Long-Term

  What happens after you hire? The real challenge is transforming your team into consummate tech professionals.

  Medium

• Getting into the AI business

  What AI means for the future of Bangladesh’s BPO industry.

  Dhaka Tribune

• Design for Necessity, Not Anxiety

  In software development, the best principles are often the simplest. Here’s my humble addition: ‘Design for necessity, not for anxiety.’

  Medium

• How I Do Tech Interviews: It’s Not What You Know, But How You Think

  In my 30-plus years on the professional circuit, I have sat at interview desks several hundred times (Or more. Who is counting?), sometimes…

  Medium

• From set in stone to rolling with the unknown

  Ever put ‘be spontaneous’ on your to-do list? Here’s how I tried bringing Agile principles home.

  Medium

• Apple questions AI’s “reasonable”-ity

  Apple’s research: AI models may be mimicking, not thinking. Time for an AI rethink?

  Medium

• The path forward

  The Bangladesh 2.0 reset has begun, but the nation stands at a precipice. This is a unique opportunity to break free from the cycle of authoritarianism and build a genuinely democratic future.

  Dhaka Tribune

• The Death of Authenticity

  Everyone’s suddenly writing like Shakespeare, perfectly polished and flawless. But in this rush to perfection, we’ve lost something raw…

  Medium

• Out of sight but not out of mind

  In today’s hybrid work world, finding the right balance between synchronous and asynchronous communication is key. How do we blend both?

  Medium

• From Cantonment to Internment

  My memories from the time my family and I were confined to an internment camp in West Pakistan during Bangladesh’s Liberation War.

  Medium

• A second chance

  Over the past decade and a half, the instruments of the state, from the police to the bureaucracy to the judiciary, have been systematically subverted.

  Dhaka Tribune

• AI Crossroads: Utopia, Dystopia, or Our Choice?

  The AI revolution is upon us. Are we heading towards a utopian dream or a technological dystopia?

  Medium

• The String Theory of Language: “Strings in, Strings out”

  Can machines truly understand language?

  AI in Plain English

• Of Components, God Class, and Modular Design

  I’ve been reflecting on the role of components and architectural design in software. Check out some of my thoughts.

  Medium

• AI: The Ultimate Anti-Climax

  Join Dr. David Nerdlinger, whose hopes of world domination are crushed as his AI Assistant…. A Sci-Fi parody.

  Medium

• The dark side of AI

  What’s driving the rise of the emerging AI oligopoly?

  Dhaka Tribune

• From Dial-up to Viral-up: The History of the First Ever Website About Bangladesh

  Did you know the first ever web page on Bangladesh is about as old as the web itself? Here is the story of the birth of Virtual Bangladesh.

  Medium

• Generative AI Cooking

  Using generative AI, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), is similar to cooking. You don’t just throw a random assortment of spices…

  Medium

• Intergalactic Intervention in the Bangladeshi Countryside

  It’s a sunny day in a Bangladeshi village, perfect for… an intergalactic intervention? A story I first wrote in 1992.

  Medium

• RWHO

  This is a story I wrote in the early 90s. Working on my PhD late at night in lab, my imagination took a scary turn. Read on.

  Medium

• Learning leadership: strategies for success

  Leadership can be learned.

  Medium

• Rubber Duck Chronicles: Coding, Debugging, and Friendship

  Join me in a story of friendship and coding as I reminisce about the early days of debugging, before smart IDEs and Google.

  Medium

• Blind pants! Blind Pants!

  A wild but true story from forty years ago. From disaster, there is always room for growth, strength, and a good laugh.

  Medium

• The first rule of coding is not to code

  Embrace the first rule of coding: don’t code! Instead, plan, design, and learn. It’s time to create efficient and elegant software.

  Medium

• The Dark Side of the new AI: AI Oligopoly

  Until the OPEC crisis of the 1970s, a powerful cartel of just seven oil companies (the “Seven Sisters”) controlled roughly 85% of the…

  Medium

• Too Trite to be Too True

  Decades ago, while still in high school, I used to write short stories and have them published in a local English daily.

  Medium

• Culture shock, part un

  Nothing shocks me these days. With a million miles under my peripatetic feet, I feel more wonder than shock. But, that one day on Main…

  Medium

• 27 Hour Days: Getting Things Done

  I am a start-up co-founder of a company that is no longer a start-up but still carries on the start-up ethos. I probably wear more hats…

  Medium

• Work in the time of the Corona

  On how Infolytx, an AI solutions company, transitioned to remote operations without dropping a beat.

  Medium

• Vision 2020: What’s Coming in Artificial Intelligence

  Five predictions for where AI will take us in 2020 and technology trends in general for the upcoming year.

  Knowtomation

• Five Artificial Intelligence Predictions for 2019

  Knowtomation

• AI and Machine Learning in 2018: Looking Back and Forward

  Knowtomation

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