Nitish Devadiga

Software engineer. Curious about what code can make us feel.

The 3D world is best on a desktop. On a phone it works, but it will be heavier and smaller.

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Elsewhere

A game showed me that a world could be made. I wanted to understand how.

The spark
As a child I played Vice City for hours, and somewhere along the way it stopped feeling like a game and started feeling like a place. Someone had decided where the streets bent, how the light fell and which song came on the radio. Engineering, art, music and storytelling met inside one world, and I wanted to understand how they had been made to fit.
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An escape
Constructed worlds gave me somewhere to go: a place with its own rules, where a corner could hide a surprise and curiosity was always rewarded. I never really lost that feeling. Much of what I build now is an attempt to hand it to someone else, even for a few minutes. This website is one of those attempts.
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I started with questions. Programming gave me a way to follow them.

Teaching myself
In ninth grade I started teaching myself to program. Nobody set the syllabus; I followed whatever question was in front of me, usually some version of how a page on the web actually worked. Web development came first because the results were immediate: change a line, refresh, and something on the screen was different. That loop of question, attempt and answer is still how I learn.
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Learning ahead
By the time I started my BCA at Amity University Mumbai, I had already been programming for years, so much of the coursework was familiar ground. That turned out to be a gift. Instead of racing to keep up, I had room to build things of my own, take on my first professional work in the final year, and enjoy college with close friends.
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Following a thought
My attention likes to wander. A small question can turn into an evening of reading, and a bug can lead somewhere far more interesting than its fix. I used to treat that as a detour. Now I think of it as part of the method: some of my best ideas began as a thought I decided to follow a little further than planned.
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Eventually, the experiments became things people could use.

There is more to life than the screen. Sometimes, that is where the next idea starts.

Home and roots
My roots are in Karkala, a town in Karnataka's Udupi district, and home today is Thane, just outside Mumbai. One is green, quiet and unhurried; the other never quite stops moving. I think I carry a little of both, a patience from one and a restlessness from the other, and I try to put both into the things I make.
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Outside my comfort zone
Travel is where I practise being uncomfortable. I like staying in hostels, where a shared table turns strangers into company for an evening and plans change because someone mentioned a place worth seeing. I hesitate at the edge of new things more than it probably shows. Stepping past that hesitation, again and again, has taught me more than most tutorials.
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A different rhythm
Away from the keyboard, life keeps a different rhythm: a long ride with the road unrolling ahead, music playing while I think, an evening with close friends that runs later than planned. None of it is about work, which is exactly why it matters. More often than I expect, the next idea turns up somewhere out there.
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If something here stayed with you, say hello.