Niraj Chauhan | A Software Craftsman, a father & a husband. Loves reading OnePiece manga & playing games on his Xbox & Nintendo switchhttps://www.niraj.life/https://www.niraj.life/blog/a-good-day-starts-the-night-before/https://www.niraj.life/blog/a-good-day-starts-the-night-before/How preparing overnight oats the night before became my simple breakfast system for better mornings, fewer cravings, and healthier choices through the day.Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/agents-create-leverage-harnesses-create-trust/https://www.niraj.life/blog/agents-create-leverage-harnesses-create-trust/Everyone is asking whether AI agents can do the task. Engineering leaders should ask a harder question: does the harness around them make autonomy safe, reviewable, and trusted?Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/array-equal-is-false-in-javascript/https://www.niraj.life/blog/array-equal-is-false-in-javascript/I love javascript and its mystery, if you had to compare a set of two identical arrays the first thing in your mind would come is to compare using == operator. But in javascript the result will be different.Thu, 24 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/avoid-using-enums-in-typescript/https://www.niraj.life/blog/avoid-using-enums-in-typescript/If you are coming to the typescript world from Java or from any other typesafe languages, then often your choice might be Enums for structuring something like loglevels, status, etc.Mon, 19 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/consistency-will-take-you-there-motivation-wont/https://www.niraj.life/blog/consistency-will-take-you-there-motivation-wont/What 5 weeks of boring, repeatable training taught me about getting faster — and why simplicity is the secret to staying consistent.Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/css-whats-the-difference-between-px-em-rem/https://www.niraj.life/blog/css-whats-the-difference-between-px-em-rem/Most of us grew up using px CSS unit. This code should be familiar to you width: 100px;. But in the past few years, I saw other units getting added to the CSS specs. So let’s understand each of them.Fri, 17 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/deploying-deepseek-distilled-model-to-aws-bedrock/https://www.niraj.life/blog/deploying-deepseek-distilled-model-to-aws-bedrock/Learn how to set up an EC2 instance, clone and manage a 260GB AI model, upload it to S3, and import it into AWS Bedrock for inference.Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/difference-between-map-flatmap-rxjava/https://www.niraj.life/blog/difference-between-map-flatmap-rxjava/RXJava can be very intimidating at first go. Reactive Extensions - RX is all about data streams & handling them and three important pillars for it are Observables, Operators & Schedulers.Sat, 14 Dec 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/domain-driven-design/https://www.niraj.life/blog/domain-driven-design/Domain Driven Design, is an approach to designing a software system by getting direct inputs from the domain experts and modeling the software accordingly. These domain experts can be the product owners or someone who is close to the product and understands the need of the market/end-usersTue, 03 May 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/ekadashi-fasting-benefits-spiritual-scientific-insights/https://www.niraj.life/blog/ekadashi-fasting-benefits-spiritual-scientific-insights/A personal journey into Ekadashi fasting, exploring its spiritual roots, Hindu traditions, and surprising scientific health benefits.Fri, 09 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/embracing-ai-how-engineers-will-work/https://www.niraj.life/blog/embracing-ai-how-engineers-will-work/I upgraded my entire blog - Astro 3 to 5, overhauled the CSS system, and shipped to production without writing code myself. AI has evolved. Engineers who embrace it will too.Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/exploring-new-frontiers-with-ai-chatbot-development/https://www.niraj.life/blog/exploring-new-frontiers-with-ai-chatbot-development/The landscape of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen significant shifts and advancements with the release of transformative tools like ChatGPT. From Twitter to Reddit, discussions about AI, its applications, and varying perspectives on its implications are growing quickly.Tue, 18 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/exploring-server-sent-events-sse-nestjs/https://www.niraj.life/blog/exploring-server-sent-events-sse-nestjs/Discover how to implement Server-Sent Events (SSE) with NestJS for efficient real-time web applications. Learn the benefits of SSE, its one-way communication model, and how to correctly manage headers and data streams in NestJS.Fri, 03 May 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/figma-to-code-using-cursor-ai/https://www.niraj.life/blog/figma-to-code-using-cursor-ai/Discover how to effectively use Cursor AI with Figma for real-world UI development, including a structured prompt strategy, design system integration, and lessons from a brownfield project.Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/from-senior-engineer-to-tech-leader/https://www.niraj.life/blog/from-senior-engineer-to-tech-leader/What really changes when you move from Senior Engineer to Tech Leader? A practical, experience-driven reflection on decision making, mentorship, ambiguity, and leadership mindset from years in engineering and tech leadership roles.Fri, 16 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/get-your-website-visitors-device-battery-status/https://www.niraj.life/blog/get-your-website-visitors-device-battery-status/Recently I added a functionality in one my clients website to notify user about battery status if they are running low on it.Mon, 13 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/going-serverless-aws-appsync-dynamodb-typescript-cdk/https://www.niraj.life/blog/going-serverless-aws-appsync-dynamodb-typescript-cdk/Learn how to build a fully serverless architecture with AWS AppSync and DynamoDB using GraphQL and AWS CDK. Achieve seamless scalability and cost efficiency for your e-commerce order management system.Mon, 19 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/how-ai-coached-me-to-a-faster-10k/https://www.niraj.life/blog/how-ai-coached-me-to-a-faster-10k/How a personal AI coach helped me drop 6 kilos, lower my heart rate, and run my fastest 10K — 22 minutes faster than the same race a year ago.Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/how-to-write-clean-code/https://www.niraj.life/blog/how-to-write-clean-code/A project is much easier to develop and maintain if the codebase is clean, which every developer should strive for. Writing clean code is not rocket science, in fact, it’s quite simple.Tue, 29 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/if-you-train-by-heart-rate-the-data-matters/https://www.niraj.life/blog/if-you-train-by-heart-rate-the-data-matters/I trained by heart rate for over a year using my Apple Watch. Then I tried a Polar H10 chest strap and the numbers did not match. If your training decisions depend on heart rate, the quality of that number matters.Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/java-vertx-mongodb-client-with-guice/https://www.niraj.life/blog/java-vertx-mongodb-client-with-guice/Vert.x is an event-driven non-blocking library. It’s not a framework, so you get power to write code in your way. Vert.x is similar to NodeJS. It helps you to achieve concurrency with minimal hardware.Sat, 14 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/javascript-mixin/https://www.niraj.life/blog/javascript-mixin/In simple words reusing object between different classes. You can also take it as an Interface with implemented methods.Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/javascript-naming-conventions/https://www.niraj.life/blog/javascript-naming-conventions/Many times we face situations in projects for naming our files, variables or classes. Here is the convention I am sharing which I follow in my projects of Javascript.Thu, 08 Sep 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/jquery-treeview-list/https://www.niraj.life/blog/jquery-treeview-list/JQuery Treeview List - Creates a nice expanding and collapsing tree view control using jQuery.Mon, 23 Feb 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/mongodb-to-postgres-migration-ai-mcp/https://www.niraj.life/blog/mongodb-to-postgres-migration-ai-mcp/Discover how I used AI and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to plan a seamless MongoDB to PostgreSQL migration through collaborative reasoning, smart prompts, and real-time data exploration.Thu, 29 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/my-wfh-desk-setup/https://www.niraj.life/blog/my-wfh-desk-setup/Since the pandemic began, most of us started working from home. Some people like it and some people miss their offices. But for me, the most amazing part of WFH is the desk setup. Have always seen YouTubers having this but I never got this opportunity until now.Tue, 12 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/mysql-get-size-of-database/https://www.niraj.life/blog/mysql-get-size-of-database/Tue, 03 Feb 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/nestjs-fetch-secrets-from-aws-secrets-manager/https://www.niraj.life/blog/nestjs-fetch-secrets-from-aws-secrets-manager/Often, applications use environmental variables to store secrets or values that vary depending on the system where the application runs. These values are typically not checked into the git repositories, and you may need to set them at runtime.Fri, 21 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/nestjs-typeorm-postgres-inmemory-db-e2e-testing/https://www.niraj.life/blog/nestjs-typeorm-postgres-inmemory-db-e2e-testing/Testing is one of the most important and a major part of any application development, NestJS by default uses Jest & Supertest for making unit tests & end-to-end testing jobs easier.Tue, 05 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/never-buy-anything-from-snapdeal/https://www.niraj.life/blog/never-buy-anything-from-snapdeal/Today I am going to share my journey on buying a product from Snapdeal.Fri, 07 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/nextjs-vs-astro/https://www.niraj.life/blog/nextjs-vs-astro/In the dynamic world of web development, the tools and technologies we choose significantly impact our productivity and the performance of our applications. My recent experience of transitioning my blog from NextJS to Astro offers a telling example of this.Thu, 07 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/one-piece-23rd-anniversary/https://www.niraj.life/blog/one-piece-23rd-anniversary/One piece is officially 23 years old now and I thought of creating a small CSS card of Luffy.Mon, 20 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/optimizing-for-the-cloud-a-tale-of-scalability-and-cost-reduction/https://www.niraj.life/blog/optimizing-for-the-cloud-a-tale-of-scalability-and-cost-reduction/This blog narrates a Lead Architect's successful quest to enhance a client's cloud infrastructure, significantly reducing AWS costs and improving scalability through innovative AWS solutions. It marks a pivotal debut in his new role, showcasing strategic problem-solving and technological prowess.Sun, 10 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/pair-programming-with-ai/https://www.niraj.life/blog/pair-programming-with-ai/Exploring AI-Assisted Coding: A hands-on session demonstrating how developers can collaborate with AI tools to write better code through effective prompting and continuous refinement.Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/reactive-programming-with-rxjava/https://www.niraj.life/blog/reactive-programming-with-rxjava/There is a huge buzz in the market for “Reactive Programming”, but the very first question comes in our mid is what is reactive programming? Why we need reactive programming? What is RX?Fri, 27 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/running-half-marathon-dont-enjoy-running/https://www.niraj.life/blog/running-half-marathon-dont-enjoy-running/You don't have to love something to be good at it. My honest journey of finishing a half marathon as someone who doesn't enjoy running.Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/stop-wordpress-asking-ftp-details/https://www.niraj.life/blog/stop-wordpress-asking-ftp-details/If you are on linux system and fed up with Wordpress asking FTP details on every install/update of plugin/theme??Wed, 12 Aug 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/streamlining-infrastructure-management-aws-cdk-ecs-fargate/https://www.niraj.life/blog/streamlining-infrastructure-management-aws-cdk-ecs-fargate/Last year, I joined Travelopia to lead the WebApp development teams. My early days were focused on meeting the product tech team and learning about the technology solutions they were using in their projects.Tue, 11 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/the-future-of-data-fetching-in-react/https://www.niraj.life/blog/the-future-of-data-fetching-in-react/React has recently announced the development of a new hook that will provide first-class support for Promises.Wed, 15 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/ubuntu-convert-images-to-pdf/https://www.niraj.life/blog/ubuntu-convert-images-to-pdf/Add your multiple images into a single pdf by following command #pdf #ubuntuThu, 26 Feb 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/understanding-npm-audit-fixing-vulnerabilities-nodejs/https://www.niraj.life/blog/understanding-npm-audit-fixing-vulnerabilities-nodejs/Learn how to use npm audit to identify and fix security vulnerabilities in your Node.js project dependencies. This guide covers how npm audit works, fixing vulnerabilities with npm audit fix, handling transitive dependencies, and best practices for maintaining a secure Node.js application.Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/vibe-coding/https://www.niraj.life/blog/vibe-coding/Vibe coding is a new term that has been gaining popularity in the software development community. It is a way of coding that is focused on the desired outcome of a software project, rather than the code itself. It is a way of coding that is focused on the desired outcome of a software project, rather than the code itself.Thu, 24 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/who-is-a-tech-lead/https://www.niraj.life/blog/who-is-a-tech-lead/Generally, every company will have roles for understanding seniority in the team, these roles can start from Junior Developer to all the way till Principal/Senior Developer. The term might vary from company to company but the idea is the same. The team will be composed of a set of developers with different expertise & experience. And it’s very important to have a SPOC(Single point of contact) for the engineering team to function. These anchor roles are generally called Tech Leads.Wed, 27 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.niraj.life/blog/why-coding-with-llms-can-be-harder-than-you-think/https://www.niraj.life/blog/why-coding-with-llms-can-be-harder-than-you-think/Coding with LLMs sounds deceptively simple, but the reality is more complex than YouTube demos suggest. This post explores the challenges of vibe coding, providing practical strategies for effectively collaborating with AI coding assistants. Learn how to manage context, separate product and developer mindsets, and adapt your approach for different project types to harness the power of LLMs while avoiding common pitfalls that can slow down development.Sun, 16 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT