Engineering is mostly taste applied to uncertainty. The code, the interface, the research question, the product, even the choice of what to build at all, are the same problem made of different materials. This site is a record of me trying to get better at it.

Every project on this page comes with two lines. The first is what it was. The second is what it left behind. Excitement, dopamine, exhaustion, the humility of a side thing turning out better than the serious one. The first line is for the résumé. The second is the reason the page exists.

I'd been writing backends for other people's ideas for years; Yarnia was the first time I tried to ship a company instead of a feature, and the disciplines turned out to be different. Market research with real parents. Problem-validation calls that killed half of what I thought I knew. An MVP that wasn't a small product but the smallest question I could still get an answer to. TEF Ignition gave us a stage; the work, quietly, was getting comfortable not knowing — long enough to hear what parents actually wanted their children to read.

Two tracks, in parallel for a long time. The university one, because I believed that was where the serious questions lived, and the years proved me right. Teaching taught me how much of a good explanation is patience. Research taught me the shape of a hard problem. The industry one, for experience first and learning second, taught me what building looks like when the work is for a stranger. The two kept each other honest. Then I had an idea of my own. Then I moved countries, which resets you to zero. What survived was a direction for both. Build things I can watch people use. Research what those things do to them once they have them. Two desks, one question.

Two schools, one thread. Rasht gave me the fundamentals and the patience to sit with them. Milan is showing me where I actually want to point those fundamentals, which is somewhere closer to people. The best classes in both places taught me the vocabulary. The self-teaching in between taught me the rest.

I'm Ali, based in Milan, a CS master's at Politecnico di Milano working in AI. The path here has been long, and I'm proud of the whole of it. Pure engineering first, then academia, then product, each stage the one I wanted most at the time. For a while the dream was Google. For another while, becoming the next Hinton. Somewhere between those the question changed shape: the AI stopped being the interesting half of the picture, and the person using it started. What the tool does to how someone works, how it feels in their hands, whether it's even the right tool for the job. That's where I want to spend the next stretch: building startups and doing research close to human–computer interaction.

Research is the slowest kind of work I know how to do, which is maybe why I keep coming back to it. I like the part where you don't know yet. I like the part where the question you asked turns out to be the wrong one, and you have to write it down properly and start again. I like it most when the answer changes something about the person who was looking for it. That last part is what I want to spend the next years on.

Recognition has always been slightly embarrassing to me, which is why the list here stays small. What I kept was not a shelf. It is a short arc, in order: the moment I first had the vocabulary for this work, the moment I got new vocabulary for the newer shape of it, and the moment someone else looked at something I had built and decided it had gone far enough to matter.

Email is the quietest way in and the one I pay attention to. I read everything. I answer most things within a week. Letters over pitches, and the ones that sound like the person actually wrote them stay with me longest. Short notes are welcome. Long ones are better.