A few months ago, in the same week, I read two headlines that had no business existing at the same time. One was about a company bragging that its engineers had basically stopped writing code — AI was doing it for them. The other was about a different company quietly rehiring the senior engineers it had laid off a year earlier, because the AI-built version of their product kept shipping bugs a human would have caught in code review. I run mock interviews for engineers trying to land their next role, and I teach backend development on this channel, so I hear both sides of this panic constantly — from people worried AI is about to make their job irrelevant, and from hiring managers quietly telling me the opposite. I wanted to stop going off vibes and actually dig into what was happening with real numbers. What I found didn't fit neatly into either the "AI is taking our jobs" camp or the "AI is overhyped nonsense" camp. It's stranger than both, and honestly...
Before my actual M.Tech Data Science & Engineering curriculum kicked off at BITS Pilani WILP, the program ran us through two preparatory courses over a couple of weeks — an Introduction to Python course and a Zero Level Mathematical Foundation course. Eight live sessions in total, zero credits, zero pressure on paper. I went in expecting both to be easy refreshers. One of them genuinely was. The other made me reconsider how much rust I'd built up. In this post I'll walk you through what was covered in each course, what I actually learned, and my honest take on whether the bootcamp was worth the time. If you're considering BITS Pilani WILP M.Tech, planning how to prep, or just want to know what the program actually looks like before semester one starts — this should give you a real picture. Watch the Full Video I've recorded a complete walkthrough of both courses on my YouTube channel. The video covers everything below in more detail, including the slides,...
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