Kotli, the Internet, and Learning to Build
A short note on building a career from Kotli, Azad Kashmir — where the connection drops more than it should, and why that turned out to be an advantage.
I write this from Kotli, in Azad Kashmir. The internet here is good most days, fine most others, and gone for stretches nobody can predict.
I learned to build software in those gaps. You learn quickly that 'works on my machine' isn't funny when your machine might be the only thing working for the next few hours — and that a product which falls over the moment the network blinks isn't really finished.
That shaped how I think. Offline-first isn't a buzzword to me — it's a default. Graceful degradation isn't a nice-to-have — it's the point. The user shouldn't feel the network blink, and they should never lose work to it.
Most software is built where the network is taken for granted. Building from a place where it isn't has, somehow, been an unfair advantage.
