About
Who I am, what I do, and what I care about.
Background
I'm Prajwal. Software engineer with a background in CS and a strong lean toward security and systems work.
Before grad school, I spent close to three years as a software and cloud engineer at Opslyft. I learned a lot there - production systems, customer-facing architecture, real constraints. Then I went back to do my Master's at Purdue Fort Wayne, where I spent the last year researching adversarial ML and malware detection under Dr. Zesheng Chen.
Dr. Chen had one question he kept asking: "Why are you assuming that's the right approach?" That question changed how I think about almost everything.
How I Think About Building
I don't have a favorite language or a preferred stack. Python, Go, Rust, AWS - none of them are sacred. I use whatever fits the problem.
What I care about is writing code the next person can read without wanting to rewrite it, and building systems that fail loudly instead of quietly. Silent failures are the worst kind. Complexity is a cost. I try not to spend it unless I'm getting something real back.
Outside the Terminal
Gym and books. Not things I decided to be into - just things that stuck around. The gym taught me something about consistency that I haven't been able to learn any other way.
The books I keep coming back to are the ones that change how I think, not just what I know. Kahneman on how we reason, Newport on how to actually do deep work, Aurelius on not complaining about things outside your control. That kind of reading compounds in a way that technical books alone don't.