I interview a lot of professionals and developers, from 20-year veterans to people just starting out on their Python journey.
But my conversation with Asif Pinjari was different.
Asif is still a student (and a Teaching Assistant) at Northern Arizona University. Usually, when I talk to people at this stage of their life and career, they’re completely focused on passing tests or mastering syntax.
Asif on the other hand, is doing something else: He’s doing things the Pybites way! He’s building with a focus on providing value.
We spent a lot of time discussing a problem I’m seeing quite often now: developers who limit themselves with AI. That is, they learn how to make an API call to OpenAI and call it a day.
But as Asif pointed out during the show, that’s not engineering. That’s just wrapping a product.
Using AI Locally
One of the most impressive parts of our chat was Asif’s take on privacy. He thought ahead and isn’t just blindly sending data to ChatGPT. He’s already caught on to the very real business constraint: Companies are terrified of their data leaking.
Instead of letting that be a barrier, he went down the rabbit hole of Local LLMs (using tools like Ollama) to build systems that run privately.
This to me is the difference between a student mindset and an engineer mindset.
- Student: “How do I get the code to run?”
- Engineer: “How do I solve the user’s problem as safely and securely as possible?”
It Started With a Calculator
We also traced this back to his childhood. Asif told a great story about being a kid and just staring at a calculator, trying to figure out how it knew the answer.
It reminded me that it’s that kind of curiosity (the desire to look under the hood and understand the nuts and bolts) is exactly what’s missing these days. Living and breathing tech from a young age is exactly why so many of us got into tech in the first place!
Enjoy this episode. It’s inspired me to keep building, that’s for sure!
– Julian
Follow Asif
Portfolio – https://asifflix.vercel.app/
github- https://github.com/Asif-0209
Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/asif-p-056530232/