Stories by Qasim Khawaja on Medium


<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*X-B8AIefJw-LttoH3PF0IQ.png"></figure><h4>Discovering Trends using NLP and Social Proof</h4>
<h3>Setting Context</h3>
<p>Next Trend is a mobile app that helps content creators, entrepreneurs, business owners, and marketers stay updated with their industry's current and potential future trends.</p>
<p>To accomplish this, we developed an end-to-end solution for automating social media monitoring and trend analysis. We use <strong>natural language processing (NLP)</strong> to analyze high volumes of social media posts to curate the <strong>hottest trends</strong> on the internet.</p>
<p>Intelligent content analysis helps users <strong>leverage social proof</strong> for their products and services and improve brand perception. It allows them to validate the real value of their offering and identify and preempt competitive challenges. It also provides <strong>actionable insights</strong> into their market, potential new markets, and what thought leaders and influencers focus on and predict in your product space.</p>
<p><strong>TLDR; </strong>Handpicked tools and techniques to extract viral business, technology, and public interest trends from social media posts. The components in our tech stack have been chosen to facilitate super-fast data extraction, intelligent categorization, and real-time notifications.</p>
<p><strong><em>Architecture Diagram</em></strong></p>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*spCI7f_Y0y4xj7bMcvgkyg.png"></figure><p>Before diving into this architecture, here is a brief overview of our tech stack.</p>
<h3>Tech Stack</h3>
<p>Next Trend is built on a modern stack that allows for speedy development cycles and is flexible and scalable. This flexibility allows us to experiment freely while developing a system that quickly responds to trend shifts.</p>
<h4>Mobile App built using Flutter.</h4>
<p>Google’s cross-platform Flutter SDK helped us easily create a user-friendly UI that renders uniformly across devices and OSs and does not rely on native code.</p>
<h4>Scraping Infrastructure built using FastAPI, Redis Queue, Redis Cache, and Postgres.</h4>
<p>To enhance performance, we chose lightning-quick FastAPI for the web layer, Redis because it’s lightweight and functions as a message broker and cache, and Postgres for storing time-series data. We used the <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/guide/architecture-styles/web-queue-worker">web-queue-worker architecture</a> to decouple long-running workflows like scraping and categorization to run on worker nodes.</p>
<h4>NLP API built using spaCy and FastAPI</h4>
<p>spaCy is one of the most popular NLP frameworks on the market. It has enabled us to successfully train our own Named Entity Recognizer (NER) model. Our NER can extract the most relevant entities from scraped data. spaCy also offers powerful word vector capabilities for the discovery of similar keywords.</p>
<h4>Admin Panel for Content Moderation built using Vue.js.</h4>
<p>Vue.js is a complete framework with essential built-in features and awesome style guidelines, allowing us to add new features and functionality on demand.</p>
<h4>Fast Reliable Document Storage on Firestore</h4>
<p>No-ops Firestore scales automatically, so it is ideal for storing all our trend data. Real-time updates and the ability to handle mobile data across OSs are critical for keeping our customers up-to-date. We also rely on Firestone’s offline support to mitigate the potentially detrimental effects of latency and poor internet connections.</p>
<h4>Synchronization using Google Cloud Functions</h4>
<p>Google Cloud Functions enable us to create relevant and synchronal notifications for customers about both interesting trends and critical events, enriching the streaming data experience in real-time. We also use cloud functions to synchronize our Firestore database with Algolia.</p>
<h4>Github Actions for CI/CD and Automated Releases</h4>
<p>We use Github Actions to automate our development, testing, and deployment workflows and support our internal environment for Agile development. Github Actions assists us in testing our codebase and automatically building and deploying our apps and services.</p>
<h4>Algolia for Full-Text Search</h4>
<p>Algolia addresses some shortcomings associated with database full-text search. Algolia is faster than many similar tools and is typo-tolerant, suggesting trends as the user types in their search. Algolia also allows us to customize criteria for ranking relevance, which helps us curate trends and suggest personalized trend recommendations.</p>
<h4>Notifications using Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM)</h4>
<p>We used FCM to enable push notifications for our users. We also created topics that allow users to personalize the type of notifications they receive.</p>
<h3>Overall Architecture</h3>
<p>Next Trend’s architecture is designed around enabling four core functionalities:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Extraction</strong></li>
<li><strong>Categorization</strong></li>
<li><strong>Moderation</strong></li>
<li><strong>Notification</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>These processes provide a completely <strong>automated workflow</strong> for intelligent data extraction, predictive analysis, and custom reporting for trends found on social media platforms.</p>
<p><strong>All without human intervention.</strong></p>
<h3>Extraction and Categorization</h3>
<p>In today’s world, it’s tough to tell what the next big trend will be. Trends come and go with surprising regularity, and it can be difficult to sift through the noise and determine which keywords are likely to be major winners. This is one of the reasons why automating extraction and categorization was important for us from the beginning.</p>
<h4>Extraction</h4>
<p>The central hub of the Next Trend system is the <strong>Scraper Worker</strong> process. Its main function is to extract keywords and their data and pass it along to the Categorization Worker process. This data is collected from social media platforms, complemented by third-party SEO data and additional information from topic-specific news and blogs. Previously stored data provides insights into historical changes and trend patterns over time.</p>
<p><strong><em>Sequence Diagram for Automated Keyword Research</em></strong></p>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*HCo36GyEIendHZDL"></figure><p>We deep dive into extraction in this post:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/next-trend-deep-learning-approach-extracting-keywords-qasim-khawaja/?published=t">Next Trend: A Deep-Learning Approach To Extracting Keywords From Text</a></p>
<h4>Categorization</h4>
<p>The <strong>Categorization Worker’s</strong> function is to parse and categorize relevant data passed from the Scraper Worker and filter out winning trends using social media metrics and search interest. These workers also perform housekeeping tasks (for example, storage and backup), define system workflows, and effect a series of deep content analysis processes. We employ sentiment analysis methods and use social media indicators to filter users’ tone and intent intelligently.</p>
<h3>Content Moderation and Reporting</h3>
<p><strong><em>Screenshot From our Admin Panel</em></strong></p>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*tjO76RgU76swh3Rf"></figure><p>Newly scraped trends are pushed in real-time to the Next Trend <strong>administration interface</strong>, where our editors can customize trend data and add editorial comments.</p>
<h4>Notifications</h4>
<p>The final piece of the puzzle is to send push notifications to users, for example, a new trend in their business niche. Users can <strong>customize their notification experience</strong> by setting the threshold for receiving notifications and the frequency and category of trends.</p>
<figure><img alt="An image of a card board phone displaying a notification." src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/500/1*ifnZ36g2Qocp5Pn8eYn1GA.png"></figure><h3>Closing Remarks</h3>
<p>As a University student, Next Trend was the most challenging project I’ve worked on by far because of the sheer number of things I had to learn along the way. However, it’s also been so rewarding seeing it all come together in the end. I hope this deep dive provides some insight into the bigger picture of how we’re building Next Trend into a complete trend research platform.</p>
<p>If you’re curious about anything I’ve mentioned in this post, feel free to connect with me on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/qkhawaja/">LinkedIn</a> and shoot me a message!</p>
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Automating Trend Research: A Technical Deep Dive of Next Trend


<h4>A Gentle Introduction to Source Code Internationalization, Localization, and the Purpose of a Translation Memory</h4>
<figure><img alt="A painting of the world with the title “G11N: The Gateway to Software Globalization”" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*Mxc-0b39nliiKkBMOxZ4mQ.png"></figure><h3><strong>Table of Contents</strong></h3>
<p>· <a href="https://medium.com/@qasim-khawaja?source=rss-13fead449d44------2#5278">Table of Contents</a><br>· <a href="https://medium.com/@qasim-khawaja?source=rss-13fead449d44------2#e262">Introduction</a><br>· <a href="https://medium.com/@qasim-khawaja?source=rss-13fead449d44------2#3b94">Demo</a><br>· <a href="https://medium.com/@qasim-khawaja?source=rss-13fead449d44------2#cd7d">What is g11n?</a><br>· <a href="https://medium.com/@qasim-khawaja?source=rss-13fead449d44------2#a0dc">Challenges in Creating a Global Software Product</a><br> ∘ <a href="https://medium.com/@qasim-khawaja?source=rss-13fead449d44------2#82b8">Common Problems</a><br>· <a href="https://medium.com/@qasim-khawaja?source=rss-13fead449d44------2#f78a">Creating Software for Multiple Locales</a><br>· <a href="https://medium.com/@qasim-khawaja?source=rss-13fead449d44------2#9704">Source Code Internationalization (i18n)</a><br>· <a href="https://medium.com/@qasim-khawaja?source=rss-13fead449d44------2#45fc">Content Localization (l10n)</a><br>· <a href="https://medium.com/@qasim-khawaja?source=rss-13fead449d44------2#c882">Translation Memory (TM)</a><br>· <a href="https://medium.com/@qasim-khawaja?source=rss-13fead449d44------2#08f0">Conclusion</a></p>
<h3><strong>Introduction</strong></h3>
<p>When I first started my internship with the Globalization team at Intuit, I had no idea how huge tech companies released software that worked across multiple regions in multiple languages. Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to learn more about how software globalization works. In this post, I provide an introduction to some important terms in the hopes of helping others in a similar place to me a year ago. Just for fun, I also decided to apply some of these concepts in my own personal portfolio project.</p>
<h3>Demo</h3>
<p>This is my personal portfolio site built on the Next.js/Vercel stack using <a href="https://locize.com/?lng=en">locize </a>for localization management. The idea was to create a multi-region multilingual portfolio site.</p>
<blockquote>Here is a link to the site: <a href="https://qasimkhawaja.com/en-CA">qasimkhawaja.com</a>
</blockquote>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*_ekyZZK8EDI5OBvEKkkAoQ.png"></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*SSKA6KoNnkqsUO-xIiffQg.png"></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*0S9PelL8BnsBdZwi4YS6jA.png"><figcaption>Demo: Grid of 3 different versions of the site. The versions from left to right: English Canada, English Pakistan, Urdu Pakistan</figcaption></figure><p>I have also attached the full source code to the project including documentation for anyone that’s interested in the implementation.</p>
<p><a href="https://github.com/qasimy123/g11n-portfolio">qasimy123/g11n-portfolio</a></p>
<h3><strong>What is g11n?</strong></h3>
<p>Globalization (g11n) of software is a combination of internationalization, localization, and translation. Internationalization (i18n) includes designing software in a way that can support expansion across multiple locales. Localization (l10n) is the actual process of building a product to serve a particular locale or language. From the lens of software engineering, if localization is the implementation, then internationalization is its interface. The abbreviations of globalization (g11n), internationalization (i18n), and localization (l10n) follow a simple pattern where the digit in each term corresponds to the number of characters between the first and last character of the term. For example, localization has 10 letters between the “l” and the “n” so it becomes “l10n.”</p>
<h3><strong>Challenges in Creating a Global Software Product</strong></h3>
<p>Software that supports the region’s local language attracts a large number of native customers. This is because users feel more comfortable using something that they understand better.</p>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*Wk87kh8rxs-DEH3zh5Lnsg.png"><figcaption>An example of Airbnb’s interface in another language.</figcaption></figure><p>Companies like Intuit, Microsoft, Apple, and Google do not limit themselves to their original country and language. Instead, they innovate on optimizing the localization process and prioritize Globalization as foundational to their growth. This is because sales generated in other countries have the potential to eclipse the revenue of the product in its original locale. However, creating software that supports multiple locales is a challenging task. Here are just a few common problems that occur in this journey:</p>
<h4><strong>Common Problems</strong></h4>
<p><strong>Uneven space is occupied by characters and screen orientation for different languages:</strong> A phrase in English may occupy more words than its equivalent in Japanese. Screen design needs to consider spacing requirements for different languages.</p>
<p><strong>Data format differences:</strong> Date format in the United States is <strong>“mm/dd/yyyy”</strong>, while in many other countries, it is<strong> “dd/mm/yyyy.”</strong> Western numbering systems also deviate from eastern (such as in countries like India and Pakistan) from the 5th power of ten. Different countries have different currencies and measurement units. Some utilize daylight savings time, while others do not. Another common problem is address standardization as most code validations only adhere to U.S. states and zip codes. Address formats differ significantly, even amongst western countries.</p>
<blockquote>Example: Western number systems typically use new definitions for every third power of ten, such as million (10⁶), billion (10⁹), trillion (10¹²), and so forth. Eastern systems in the subcontinent employ new definitions for every second power of ten (10^(5+2n)), such as lac (10³), crore (10⁵), arab (10⁷), and so forth.</blockquote>
<p><strong>Cultural differences:</strong> Phrases, symbols, and greetings may have different meanings in different cultures. Idiomatic copies do not translate well. Images, symbols, colours, and text are sensitive to locales.</p>
<p>Example: Many U.S. forms use ‘×’ to mark as correct (especially ballot papers). However, in many other countries, the ‘×’ mark is a concept of negation.</p>
<p>The checkmark ‘✓’ typically means affirmative in the English speaking world. However, in Finnish, it means wrong as it resembles a slanted ‘V’. In Japan and Korea, ‘o’ means correct, and ‘×’ or ‘✓’ means wrong.</p>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/900/1*J179B30B3aRZ1lXP2eP-vQ.png"><figcaption>Example: Confusion with a checkmark in Finnish</figcaption></figure><p><strong>User experience:</strong> UI design needs to accommodate variations in spacing, density, and also consider languages that write from right to left.</p>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/998/0*C_BOWXXHb4GzrU_r"><figcaption>Example: Screen design needs to render correctly for right-to-left oriented languages, such as Arabic.</figcaption></figure><h3>
<strong>Creating Software for Multiple L</strong>ocales</h3>
<p>A user will always feel more confident using the software in their native language and may prefer such a product over similar competitor products, with all other things being equal. Customers are more likely to buy products from websites or apps developed in their native language. Tailoring the product to the target market’s language is critical for the success of a global software product.</p>
<p>A locale defines a region where people speak a language or its variants. A locale is not only specific to a country, as many countries have multiple languages, and many regions have their own languages. Localization (l10n) includes adapting the original content to be relevant in the target locale.</p>
<p>A product that supports internationalization (i18n) is easily expandable in multiple geographies and across various demographics.</p>
<p>The best time to support i18n in the product is in its initial design phase. Redesigning software to suit multiple languages is a costly process that often requires budgets and resources equal to the original effort. It's also crucial to remember to not only translate the software’s active screens but also supporting material like help, manuals, API’s, and any other supporting material.</p>
<h3><strong>Source Code Internationalization (i18n)</strong></h3>
<p>Any language specifics should not be hardcoded in the source code. The ideal way to do this is to write utility methods to fetch locale-specific data from a data dictionary. Data dictionaries typically consist of key-value pairs specific to each locale. The value corresponding to the key is the actual text that displays on the screen. The dictionary is usually a set of files in JSON, YAML, PO, or one of the other standard formats.</p>
<p><strong>A few tips for internationalization:</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>Order the dictionary and avoid duplicate keys in it.</li>
<li>Do not concatenate strings and include punctuation as part of the copy.</li>
<li>Pass dynamic data to translation methods as it interjects well in the dictionary itself.</li>
<li>Word orders and sentence structures are essential and need translation experts. It is best to store sentences and paragraphs in the dictionary to maintain its meaning.</li>
</ol>
<p>Screen design requires considerable thought due to languages that support right-to-left writing and the variation in word count to convey the same meaning. You need to know the encoding of a string to interpret it or display it correctly. That's why it’s important to specify the character sets used for the pages.</p>
<p>Currency symbols, date formats, and measurement units also change with locale. Some languages or i18n libraries provide useful methods to solve this.</p>
<p>For example, display timestamps dynamically as they change with locales.</p>
<p><a href="https://github.com/qasimy123/g11n-portfolio/blob/master/src/components/Lists.js#L230">qasimy123/g11n-portfolio</a></p>
<h3><strong>Content Localization (l10n)</strong></h3>
<p>Localization (l10n) is the actual adaption of the content to suit a particular locale. It may include writing code that will dynamically pick translated text and symbols of a particular locale. Localization often requires linguistic experts who have a deep understanding of the language and culture. A translation memory is helpful to store repeated data and ensure uniform translation by a set of experts.</p>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1009/0*T9zY7zBNyH7dP0Ce"><figcaption>Example: Idiomatic text and word to word translation rarely produce a correct translation.</figcaption></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*a_6MwYBVGxtfw2UB"><figcaption>Example: Localizing a string for the PK region.</figcaption></figure><h3><strong>Translation Memory (TM)</strong></h3>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/900/1*L3U89X3V_LGKmnj07Av-tw.png"><figcaption>Example: A simplified flow of how a Translation Memory(TM) is used.</figcaption></figure><p>A translation memory (TM) is a database that stores previously translated sentences, paragraphs, and segments of text to aid human translators. A translation unit is an entry in the translation memory, which includes the original language segment as the source and its translation in the destination language as the target. <strong>A translation memory automatically suggests previously-stored identical or similar matches while translating new documents.</strong> It is an essential aspect of localization that improves the speed and quality of translation.</p>
<p>The benefits of using a translation memory are complete document translation, acceleration of the translation process, cost reduction, and consistency when employing several translators. Translation memory systems tend to be centralized server-based although there are some that are serverless as well. They use textual or linguistic parsing, segmentation, alignment, and term extraction to provide perfect or partial matches based on their employed algorithms.</p>
<p>A translation memory also requires a tool to provide automatic retrieval and substitution of text while a translator moves through the document. This software repeats the old translation for exact matches, which may be contextually wrong and need a manual translation by a reviewer.</p>
<p>Literary or creative text, which expects accurate translation of the text’s message and not just its component sentences, requires manual translation. Technical manuals or text with highly repetitive special vocabulary may be more successful when using translation memory.</p>
<a href="https://medium.com/media/053153ef0a158576cc5196570b1be79e/href">https://medium.com/media/053153ef0a158576cc5196570b1be79e/href</a><h3><strong>Conclusion</strong></h3>
<p>In an ever-expanding world, it is imperative for software products to engage users in their native languages. Software globalization (g11n) allows for designing and building software that both feels local and expands globally. Although it is challenging to develop software that runs in various locales, the result is worth the effort. For a business that aims to expand globally, and even regionally, it is necessary to solve the language puzzle. A robust globalization ecosystem is crucial to building localization efforts in a generic way to conquer the speed and scale frontiers.</p>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/900/1*9PIu8tyPP00xgQnvIpJ-rw.png"></figure><h3>References</h3>
<p><a href="https://revelry.co/implementing-g11n/">Implementing Globalization (G11N) in Software Applications</a></p>
<p><a href="https://angular.io/guide/i18n">Angular i18n</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/intro-i18n/">Introduction to i18n</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.i18next.com/">i18next</a></p>
<p><a href="https://marketfinder.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en_us/guide/how-to-approach-i18n/#design-localisation-friendly-UI">How to approach an international strategy — Market Finder by Google</a></p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_memory">Translation memory</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.sdltrados.com/solutions/translation-memory/">What is Translation Memory?</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-i18n">Localization vs. Internationalization</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/difference-between-g11n-i18n-t9n-l10n-satish-singh">Difference between G11N, I18N, T9N and L10N</a></p>
<p><a href="https://quickbooks-engineering.intuit.com/intuits-evolution-from-content-management-to-content-engineering-part-1-7bb5ad06fcf1">Intuit’s Evolution from Content Management to Content Engineering — Part 1</a></p>
<p><a href="https://quickbooks-engineering.intuit.com/intuits-evolution-from-content-management-to-content-engineering-part-2-528cbf1fab83">Intuit’s Evolution from Content Management to Content Engineering — Part 2</a></p>
<h3><strong>Helpful Resources for Demo</strong></h3>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/@jbesw/found-in-translation-going-multilingual-with-serverless-dba88f5e9d02">Found in translation — going multilingual with serverless</a></p>
<p><a href="https://github.com/isaachinman/next-i18next">isaachinman/next-i18next</a></p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/@saif.as/localization-react-i18-next-and-rtl-support-including-material-ui-to-a-react-project-eeab31817467">Localization (react-i18-next), and RTL support(including material-ui to a React project</a></p>
<p><a href="https://lazertechnologies.com/blog/how-to-add-localization-to-your-nextjs-app">How To Add Localization To Your NextJS App</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.freeformatter.com/pakistan-standards-code-snippets.html#dateformats">Pakistan — Formatting standards &amp; code snippets</a></p>
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G11N: The Gateway to Software Globalization


<h4>STEM books don't have to be boring.</h4>
<figure><img alt="The 6 books  laid out on a table." src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*HhFRJ47O5CM2QO1tobzEEg@2x.jpeg"></figure><p>Hey there, I’m Qasim Khawaja, a tech geek who loves to read! I’m passionate about the ever-changing nature of technology. This same ever-changing nature of our tech-powered world demands that we change along with it. Grow with it. So, what’s the best way to grow? Reading!</p>
<p>That’s why, today, I’m going to give you a run-down of my six favourite books that inspired my interest in STEM and Computer Science.</p>
<h3>1. Cosmos by Carl Sagan</h3>
<figure><img alt="The cover of “Cosmos by Carl Sagan”" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*MqyezBPdL7jlsgmEOQPPTw@2x.jpeg"></figure><p>This was one of the books that changed my life more than any course I’ve ever attended despite being one of my first reads. The book explores the concept of humans and cosmic evolution through a neutral eye. Sagan effectively summarizes 15 billion years of history into a single book. The book covers everything from cosmetology to anthropology and everything in between.</p>
<p>Sagan enforces that the sheer vastness and complexity of the universe permits the existence of many intelligent alien life-forms, but there is little evidence that any of them ever visited earth. Unlike many scientific writers, Sagan is a superb writer who makes this book fascinating from start to finish.</p>
<p><a href="https://amzn.to/3f47QmL">Link to this book on Amazon!</a></p>
<h3>2. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking</h3>
<figure><img alt="The cover of “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*VFYm0ZN-RxLPGFn2cEsI1g@2x.jpeg"></figure><p>Originally published in 1988, A Brief History of Time has sold over nine million copies worldwide. When initially released, the book covered everything there was to know about the universe. As technology grew, many of Stephen Hawking’s predictions and theories about the world that Hawking had predicted almost a decade ago. This was the very book that kindled my interest in the world of quantum physics, which only pulled me in further as the years went by.</p>
<p>Although the success of this book is not unprecedented by any means whatsoever, throughout the book, you get a glimpse of the rarely seen side witty, humorous side of Stephen Hawking. Making this book the perfect read for any novice venturing into the complex world of quantum physics.</p>
<p><a href="https://amzn.to/3hMadwp">Link to this book on Amazon!</a></p>
<h3>3. Leonardo DaVinci by Walter Isaacson</h3>
<figure><img alt="The cover of “Leonardo DaVinci” by Walter Isaacson" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*5Gr5vjZT0mjl4IvksNlXkQ@2x.jpeg"></figure><p>Out of the all the DaVinci biographies I’ve read to date, this one certainly does justice to Leonardo and his art. DaVinci, the engineer, is often overshadowed by DaVinci, the artist. This book dissects Leonardo’s personality in its all glory, highlighting the traits that made him one of the most famous men in the history of humanity.</p>
<p>It emphasizes how traits like passionate curiosity and observation of the world around him allowed him to surpass his own potential. These are skills that we can use in our repetitive, mundane lives to be better versions of ourselves. The book beautifully ties together Leonardo’s art and engineering, which are often regarded as different aspects of his personality.</p>
<p><a href="https://amzn.to/3jNJt0n">Link to this book on Amazon!</a></p>
<h3>4. Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom</h3>
<figure><img alt="The cover of “Superintelligence” by Nick Bostrom" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*iuuSynb1hMYZAtspgxxQuQ@2x.jpeg"></figure><p>I read this book when I was in high school, and it definitely had a profound impact on me. The math was way beyond my understanding at the time, but I tried my very best to take notes and Google all that I couldn’t understand. The book answers a very fundamental question, can robots surpass humans in the future? A sentiment that Hollywood loves to exploit.</p>
<p>Nick Bostrom also does a wonderful job of explaining how we can stop a potential robot take-over by building fail-safes within artificial intelligence itself. This book is perhaps the book that inspired me to pursue computer science and, in particular, the field of machine learning.</p>
<p><a href="https://amzn.to/3g1Eirc">Link to this book on Amazon!</a></p>
<h3>5. Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull</h3>
<figure><img alt="The cover of “Creativity Inc” by Ed Catmull" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*3CHnl2QLW9U9xyUWTa80Fw@2x.jpeg"></figure><p>This book showcases how Ed Catmull, a computer scientist, revolutionized the animation industry with Pixar. His inspiring story was the initial push that drove me into the field of computer science.</p>
<p>In this book, he explores how he managed to streamline his office into a creativity-hub. Ed also gives the reader an insider view of meetings and the production process that has made Pixar arguably the best animations company in the world.</p>
<p><a href="https://amzn.to/304z3kR">Link to this book on Amazon!</a></p>
<h3>6. The Code Book by Simon Singh</h3>
<figure><img alt="The cover of “The Code Book” by Simon Singh" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*qtR8znUTORLuQ0Qt5OmDzg@2x.jpeg"></figure><p>The Code Book narrates the story of one of humanity’s most treasured concepts. In this book, Simon Singh traces the origins and development of the art of cryptography and code. Along with providing plenty of ciphers to decode along the way. Singh points out big names in history throughout the book, who managed to write or crack complex codes.</p>
<p><a href="https://amzn.to/3jNqwuw">Link to this book on Amazon!</a></p>
<p>These books have allowed me to see the world in a whole new light!</p>
<p>I would love to know what books you feel like shaped you the most.</p>
<p><strong><em>Sources:</em></strong></p>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3869.A_Brief_History_of_Time?ac=1&amp;from_search=true&amp;qid=1xxcnEMTNg&amp;rank=2">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3869.A_Brief_History_of_Time?ac=1&amp;from_search=true&amp;qid=1xxcnEMTNg&amp;rank=</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34684622-leonardo-da-vinci?ac=1&amp;from_search=true&amp;qid=qraOfdOG8c&amp;rank=1">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34684622-leonardo-da-vinci?ac=1&amp;from_search=true&amp;qid=qraOfdOG8c&amp;rank=1</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20527133-superintelligence?ac=1&amp;from_search=true&amp;qid=AVJQqkFgHr&amp;rank=1">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20527133-superintelligence?ac=1&amp;from_search=true&amp;qid=AVJQqkFgHr&amp;rank=1</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Leonardo-da-Vinci">https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Leonardo-da-Vinci</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18077903-creativity-inc">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18077903-creativity-inc</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17994.The_Code_Book">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17994.The_Code_Book</a></p>
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Qasim

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