Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Life from a technical point of view

Sometimes I wonder how I have managed to work in the hi-tech field for such a long time. Its not that I am not capable of understanding the nitty-gritties of these software technologies. But basically I was a person who was a bit averse of technologies. You may say its because of the socio-economic background that I had in the childhood or the academic atmosphere I had gone through during childhood. Although I was pretty good in science and mathematics (maths being my favorite subject), but when it comes to the applied science I was very ordinary at it.

Therefore, when I entered the engineering college I was a bit amazed, rather open-mouthed. It was not easy to understand the Electronics & TeleComm subjects from practical point of view. I picked up Engineering Maths (be it Laplace transformation, or Fourier transformation or FFT or convolution theorem or matrix algebra or vector algebra or complex algebra) very nicely but it was difficult for me to handle all those bread-boards and CROs in the lab.

These days when I understand WiFi security protocol or when I go through the RFCs of some advanced Telecomm technologies, I wonder how I managed the engineering degree even without knowing the difference between a GSM phone and a chordless phone. These days I wonder about what I thought when I first came to know about the term “computer virus” during a discussion with one of my fellow classmates. You won’t believe that in our college we had a computer lab having air conditioned atmosphere and soft carpets and I used to think that all these are there to protect the computers from viruses.

And I used to crack a joke on my telecommunication engineering degree

That I have become a telecommunication engineer without even making a single phone call.

You won't believe when telecommunication revolution didn't happen in Bharat, I used to become very nervous of thinking how to hold the dabba phone after picking up from the cradle - which side is for the speech and which one for the ears.

You guys can laugh me out, but I am sure many people of Bharat might have faced the same dillema.

Now I really wonder how I had managed without Google. Probably this is Life. It goes on like this…

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

The dilemma that we face in Software Industry

In continuation to my earlier blog about colonization of the educational system, let me tell you about another dilemma that we face in the software industry.
From the childhood, it is being taught to us about the philosophy of "Do it yourself". The more advanced we go in studies, the more severe becomes the problem. In lower classes the teacher may ask the students not even to make a phone call to complete the home task. This way we enter the professional fields. And then suddenly we are asked to co-operate and collaborate. I don't know about other industries, but in software development this is very essential, because software development is a complete collaborative game. But it is very difficult to get rid of which has been injected into us from the childhood, namely "Do it yourself". Hence "my code, your code", "my bug, your bug" kinds of syndromes are very prominent in the software industry.
Is it possible to eradicate this disease without changing our educational system?
Probably then only we can give somebody a pure enjoyable software career......

Monday, June 18, 2007

Time

Who is the most powerful one in this universe? Is it God, is it Nature, is it inner-self or is it something else? I think the most powerful one in this universe is "Time". With time, a prince may become a pauper and a pauper may become a prince. We cannot stop the flow of time. It reminds me one conversation from the film "Waqt". Let me give a background of the scene. It was about a self-made man who became proud of his achievements. Then an wise man reminded him that although there is a very short distance between a cup filled with tea and the lips, but it may take years to drink that tea. And that became true for that man when he lost all his fortunes. Thats why I say "In whichever color Time has painted me, I am in that color".....

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Colonization of our educational system

We all know about the colonization of our educational system during British Raj. We have produced more clerks and very few scientists. But it has created a more severe problem these days. Instead of getting a co-operative and collaborative educational system, we have got a competitive educational system. The tolerance level of the students and the society as a whole has gone abysmally low. I get shocked when I see the news that a student of class V has killed his fellow classmate in a brawl. We badly need value based education system to eradicate these kinds of problem. Then only we can say "Mera Bharat Mahan".......