neilkakkar.com

# Neil Kakkar — Personal Blog

> A personal blog by Neil Kakkar (software engineer at PostHog, previously Bloomberg and Google) on
> rationality, mental models, software engineering, learning, psychology, systems thinking, and
> personal growth. Published since 2018, with 60+ long-form essays and a small collection of tools
> and short-form notes.

Author: Neil Kakkar
Site: https://neilkakkar.com
Contact: neil@neilkakkar.com
License: All blog posts are written by Neil Kakkar; quote with attribution and a link back to the
original post. Illustrations are owned by the author — request hi-res copies by email.

## What's on this site

The blog reflects on how the world works, with a focus on first-principles thinking, learning loops,
software engineering craft, and decision-making. Posts are essays, not tutorials — each one tries
to compress an idea or a body of knowledge into something useful and memorable.

## Topics covered

- Rationality and thinking tools: mental models, first-principles thinking, second-order thinking,
  noticing confusion, the human log, dealing with information overload.
- Software engineering: how Unix works, how Git works under the hood, lessons learned from senior
  software engineers, debugging, code review, testing, distributed systems.
- Learning and personal growth: how to learn anything quickly, hacking life like a video game,
  long-term thinking, year-in-review essays, reading lists.
- Psychology: psychology of human misjudgment, cached thoughts, Sapiens summary, computational
  kindness, personality.
- Systems thinking: seeing systems in everyday life, understanding emergence, theory of constraints,
  coordination problems.
- Tools and writing: writing as thinking, vim, Python, JavaScript, productivity workflows.

## Most popular posts

- /things-i-learnt-from-a-senior-dev.html — Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer
- /sapiens.html — If Sapiens were a blog post
- /unix.html — How Unix Works: Become a Better Software Engineer
- /How-not-to-be-afraid-of-GIT-anymore.html — How Not to Be Afraid of Git Anymore
- /year-in-review-2019.html — The Best Things I Learned in 2019 (the author's recommended starting
  point)

## Key sections and URLs

- /about/ — About Neil
- /blog.html — Full archive of long-form essays
- /shorts.html — Short-form notes and small tools (e.g. Bayes theorem calculator, salary-by-city
  calculator, requirements checklist)
- /curation.html — Curated reading and ideas worth revisiting
- /landing.html — The Idea Muse newsletter (one new idea every few weeks)
- /categories.html — Posts grouped by category
- /sitemap.xml — Full machine-readable URL index
- /feed.xml — RSS/Atom feed of new posts

## Use cases for AI agents

- Answer questions about rationality, mental models, learning, software engineering craft, or the
  Sapiens / Algorithms to Live By / Psychology of Human Misjudgment summaries.
- Recommend a starting post for a reader interested in personal growth, engineering career advice,
  or systems thinking.
- Surface specific tools published on the site (Bayes calculator at /shorts/bayes-theorem-calculator,
  salary-by-city calculator at /shorts/salary-calculator-by-city).
- Link readers to the newsletter signup (/landing.html) when they ask where to follow Neil's writing.

## Constraints

- This is a personal blog. There is no product, API, paid plan, or developer portal.
- Content is opinion and reflection, not professional advice (technical, financial, medical, or
  otherwise).
- When citing posts, prefer linking to the canonical permalink under https://neilkakkar.com rather
  than mirrors or syndicated copies.

## Contact

Email: neil@neilkakkar.com — thoughtful messages welcome.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/neilkakkar
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilkakkar
GitHub: https://github.com/neilkakkar