Aaryamann Challani

Engineer and amateur cook writing about privacy, cryptography, and distributed systems

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Introduction

I currently work as a Junior Software Engineer at a hybrid fund-operating company, my roles being to develop highly available systems that hook into blockchains.

How did I get here? I often think about this. Guess I was in the right place at the right time 😅


Pilot

The first time I was experienced to code was when my elder sister was working on a school project. I was amazed by how you can write absolute gibberish and it performs the operations as needed!(if you've written it right 😉)


Part One

In the eighth grade we had a choice to choose an elective, and I knew I had to take CS. They started us off with C++(which is crazy in retrospect 😲).

I'm sure none of use knew what we were doing, just copying code off the monitor into our books(and vice-versa). We then moved onto Java which was taught a little more in-depth with concepts such as OOPs covered(which was a solid foundation for things to come 🧱)


Part Two

In High School the focus was shifted to C, a low level language which allows you to break a ton of things if not written correctly! Moved on to SQL and Info-Sec from there


Part Three (Present)

Joined college with Mechatronics Engineering as my Major. We had the opportunity to learn about data structures like graphs, trees, etc, however, it felt like we could have had an extended course on the same. Fast forward to 2020 - Covid happened 🦠. We all rushed back home at the earliest.

After being at home stagnant for a couple months I decided to give crypto trading a try, profits were good but I felt something was lacking. I was investing in protocols and chains I knew nothing about.

Decided to take up a course on Blockchain on Coursera by UB, SUNY. Was hands down one of the best decisions of my life. It introduced me to cryptography, Solidity and the joys of being decentralized.

Fast forward a couple months, and I managed to get my foot in the door with the CTO of the company I currently work at. Started as an intern there, and now a Junior Software Engineer. 🚀

My Stack Now -

  Node.js
  Solidity
  The Ethereum Virtual Machine(EVM)
  SQL/noSQL
  GraphQL
  Kubernetes and Microservices
  GCP
  Docker
  Rust
  Data Analysis in Python(numpy, scipy, pandas, the works)
  React
  Linux Sys-Admin Stuff

Roadmap for 2021 -

  Hasura
  SubGraphs
  Zero Knowledge Proofs
  Roll-Ups on Ethereum

That's my genesis block. 📦