To my students who are learning AbstractSingletonProxyFactoryBean

Few days ago, I stumbled upon this particular AbstractSingletonProxyFactoryBean class. For somebody, who has studied a bit of design pattern would definitely reread the name of this class — what on earth this class trying to do?

My students who finished MCA from the University where I teach, most of them are for sure heading for Hyderabad — the Mecca of IT training. They go there because perhaps I failed to teach them Java properly or they are feed with the idea that to get a job, you need to learn so called "advanced Java". And this is what perhaps they learn in the name of Advanced Java —AbstractSingletonProxyFactoryBean!

This OMG AbstractSingletonProxyFactoryBean class from Spring, a popular so-called-advanced-Java framework. Even experienced Spring developer would find it difficult to reconcile such advanced stuff, leave alone these poor freshers who seems to find these things accommodating! Could be because somebody teaching this to them for a mere 4K.

Sir... J2EE or .NET what should I learn ? One common question I am asked by my students who complete their degree.

No matter how I dissuade them in such things and advise them to stick to the fundamentals, they often land up at Hyderabad ending up taking one such course and to my dismay, I haven't heard much of success stories.

Who is responsible?

We teachers. Period. We are responsible for producing engineers who can build things.  You blame it on the education system. Who is the system ? Well, we are the system. It's we who define the system, it's we who design course curriculums. We must accept that we have failed collectively to be in sync with what's happening in the industry. We never really bothered to involve people from industry for our curriculum design. We avoided them, because we feared, this will bring extra load of learning for us. One of us will shout — "You want me to learn Scala at this age"!!!

Most of my colleagues and teachers of other colleges and Universities may not agree with this. But this is a fact. This is a fact that we are out of sync. Our teaching and evaluation methods are plain outdated.

"Come on... we are products of that same University/College... and we are successful techies/teachers today..." — one may argue. True, but I feel  world has changed since then. And it's ever changing rapidly. While the ability to learn, hard work and a positive attitude is what we needed to fetch a job in those days, students of this generation need something else. They need to  be smart, social and up-to-date. Gone are the days that knowing "the difference between malloc and calloc" or "how to reverse a linked list" was enough to fetch a job. Today competitive programming rules the roost.

Thanks to us, our students are outdated. Let me give a simple example. It's an irony that students across India other than tier-I institutions, still compile their C code in Turbo C++ Compiler. I was under the impression that it's prevalent in Odisha only but after talking to few teachers outside Odisha I came to know that Turbo C is still in use.  My apprehension is supported by this quora post (https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Turbo-C++-still-being-used-in-Indian-Schools-and-Colleges). Few exceptions apart but majority end up in using Turbo C++ compiler because their teachers know that as the only method to teach C programming practicals. We teachers didn't learn new compilers so our students. And such mistakes result in the findings that "95% engineers in India unfit for software development jobs" (http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/95-engineers-in-india-unfit-for-software-development-jobs-study/article9652211.ece).

I am not saying that we should incorporate Spring or Angular in our curriculum because that's not what will fetch a job for the students. What we should do is, make them ready to be agile, adaptable and able to learn new things at speed with ease. Before expecting the same from the students, we teachers should first practice it.

One famous quote by Alvin Toffler goes like: "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

Learning and relearning is fine. To me, what's most challenging is "unlearning"!

Billards - A tribute to BDPS

Twenty years back on this day, I touched computers... which of course changed my life forever...

And the thanks goes to one of my odd friend, none other than Bishnu Bissoyi.

Back then (1995), I was doing my graduation at Vikram Dev College, Jeypore. I was staying at VD Hostel. One fine day, my friend Bishnu Bissoyi turned up in my room. Bishnu and me were all classmates throughout since childhood in Nabarangpur. Bishnu was regularly visiting Jeypore to watch movies! He was never a studious student but was more of a athlete and drama guy. He asked me to accompany him to enquire about few computer courses that were running in few institutes in Jeypore. Aptech had just started in Jeypore that time. We started out.

We first thought of visiting Aptech. But since Aptech was nearer (located at JagatJanani market complex underground) to VD Hostel, we thought to explore it at the end. So we started to look out for any other computer institute other than Aptech. Near Urvashi Hotel, Jeypore, we found one instiute named BDPS (Bureau of Data Processing System). Why it was a Bureau, only the founders (Manoj Hota) can tell! It was a black glass door. We entered inside and we were greeted by a smiling lady named Mita Khilar who told us that there is one entrance test is about to begin and the topper will get a 50% discount on a PGDCA course. So Bishnu enrolled for the test. But he also dragged me to just appear for the test to give him company. Anyway the registration was free so I just appeared for the entrance test alongwith him. It was some GK and aptitude sort of questions as far as I remember. After the test, we just enquired about fees and all and came out. Then we visited Aptech. The Aptech boss (Forgot the guy's name who also ran some Titan institute of Computer Science in Jeypore) was too bossy. He even promised of providing placement(!). Anyway, We two figured out that this computer career could be an alternate career path. Bishnu left for Nabarangpur.

After two days, I visited  BDPS institute again. In the notice board of the front desk, I found my name written in big bold letters. Guess what! I was the topper in that entrance test. Bishnu didn't make it.  So Mita Khilar now with doubled smile in her face congratulated me and explained about the courses. Obviously I didn't understand much of what she spoke. All I understood was that the course fee was Rs. 10k and I was getting that course for Rs. 5k. Back then, 5k was quite a big amount. She told me to inform Bishnu as well as he was getting a discount of Rs. 1000. I told her that I will get back after discussing with my family.

That weekend I visited home, told my Mom. Mom thought computers would be great (Which she repents now!). Back then I was still too fearful of my dad. Like any other guy of that generation, I lacked courage to speak to Dad. So Mom was ready to finance it and I was joyful. I told Bishnu, if he's willing to, but Bishnu showed no interest that time and he told me to try it out and give him feedback.

I joined that PGDCA course at BDPS. Met the MD Manoj Hota. I visited their lab and the classroom. aluminum push doors, Wheelchairs, extra lit Lab all were looking fascinating to me. Forget lab, Whiteboard and marker pens were something which I had never seen in my life. In the lab, I was made sit before a 286 machine with a CGA monitor. DOSTutor (A tutorial for DOS) was something Mita Khilar played(!) from a 1.2" floppy. I was just reading it word by word... scrolling and pressing enter key as instructed. After some one hour, I got bored. Other guys were playing PacMan and Billiards in the nearby computer. I asked Mita Khilar, If I can play Billiard. "Oh sure...why not" - Mita Khilar exulted and came with a 1.2" floppy inserted it, put the latch, typed A: and then typed 'Billards' (Took me months to understand why it was Billards ( 8.3 letter filename standard of DOS) and not billiards). Playing Billards was fun and I enjoyed it like anything.

That BDPS's PGDCA course was for 1 year. But I dragged it for 4 years... Thanks to some of the wonderful people on earth I met with.

In that BDPS period (1995-1999), I saw evolution of computers. One fine day I discovered a VGA monitor. Another day a 1.44" floppy, another day a handscanner (a mouse like scanner), another day a joystick. The first hard disk I used was a 40MB one. So was about the softwares. DOS 6.22 (BDPS was boasting that time to have 6.22 because Aptech was still using DOS 5.0 !), Basic, wordstar, Print magic, lotus123, turbo pascal, turbo c, flow, word perfect, dBase, foxBase. I still remember various job works were done that time at BDPS like job application forms were being designed in Flow, greeting cards in Print Magic. Wordstar was for typing and formatting a document. At BDPS, We knew two master minds in programming that time; Sashank sir for Prolog and Amit sir for Clipper. There were very few takers for Turbo Pascal and Turbo C. One fine day, I saw Manoj Hota sir carrying some 30 odd 1.44" floppy disks, next day I came to know he was installing Windows 3.1. I used mouse for the first time in Windows 3.1. People used to coin interesting questions like "Why it was called Windows". The answer was like "Because the door is DOS". It was based on the fact that one has to type 'win' in order to launch Windows. Later all systems were of Windows 3.11. Then of course it was automatic transition to Microsoft Office Word 6.0, Excel 6.0 from Word star and Lotus 123. It was a grand transition from CLI to GUI. Similarly, from dBase to foxBase to FoxPro 2.5 to FoxFro 2.6 to Oracle and Paradox in between, I have seen the transition. Meanwhile, had a chance to see a color monitor. Next best thing, I saw was a CD ROM. Towards end of 1996, all of BDPS computers were put into network. Novell Netware ( some 30 odd 1.44" floppy disks again) was the Network software. Towards beginning of 1997, I saw Amit sir installing Windows 95. And seeing the flashy Windows 95 logo rendered on screen was one  WoW moment. And listening to songs with windows media player was again one ecstatic moment. Then of course, music with Winamp and video with Zing player became our standard.

1997 was also the year when Internet came to Jeypore. With a dial up modem internet connection, yahoo.com was the only site I had heard of somehow and was the first site I surfed.  Lycos, askjeeves were the search engines. Hotmail was not yet hot in Jeypore that time. I created my first email id in yahoo (swarupananda@yahoo.com) which I still use till date.

Towards end of 1997 got a chance to see SCO Unix running! In my BDPS stay, I had a chance to learn little of almost everything. I learned wordstar, lotus123, dos batch files, flow, unix, dBase, Foxpro, Oracle, Pascal, C. I am forever indebted to Susanta Kumar Moharana who taught me Pascal. I was very fond of graphics and I thought of created a video game Brain Vitae. Susanta sir helped me a lot in that task. Later he rewrote it entirely and took it to professional video game developer level. I still possess that pascal code. Thanks to that now-invisible man for setting up my entire programming foundation.

Another man who gave a direction to my life was Late Amitav Satapathy. He was the man who introduced western music to me - George Michael, Michael Bolton, Chris Rea, Brian Adam, Kenny G, Modern Talking, Enigma and many others. He died an unbelievable death at a very young age. He was my friend, philosopher and guide. He was one guru in my life, who taught me so many other things of life other than mundane subject like Oracle.

That BPDS stint was one awesome part of my life. Thanks to people who made my life live. Thanks to Mita Khilar, Manoj Hota. Late Amitav Satapathy, Rajat Kar, Susanta Moharana, Sasanka Sekhar Gantayat, Aniruddh Tripathy, Kabita Sahu, M. Srinivas, Bibhuprasad Sahu, Babita Sahu, K. S. N. Srilata (Talluri Srilata), Jayanti, Jitendra Prasad Moharana, P. K. Mishra, Brojo Kishore Mishra, Deba prasad Khadanga, Devi Prasad Hota, Sasmita Mallick, Sangeeta Bhoi, R. Tanuja Choudhury, Diwakar Choudhury, Bharat Mohanty, Subrat Dakua, Siddharth Gantayat, Swetashree Senapati, Foxpro Anil, Office boy Shekhar and so many other people I came across.

~Swarup

Ab ki baar...

I still don't feel confident about 'Modi Sarkar'. Saturday night I watched App ki Adalat with Narendra Modi. Of course Rajat Sharma was no Arnab Goswami and perhaps RaGa needs another birth to match the shrewdness of Modi. The chanting of Modi Modi in the programme and the never ending 'Ab ki baar Modi Sarkar' messages in my phone is not enough to make me believe that Modi is becoming CEO of India Inc.

Last one week, I have been watching Ravish Kumar in NDTV prime time. Ravish Kumar is travelling across remote villages in north India to feel the ground reality ‑ talking to villagers, understanding the local issues, attending rallies.  He's understanding the pulse of the nation and finding out why this country still votes for caste, why people worship their leaders like Gods and why there's actually no such things like Modi wave in reality. 

Ravish Kumar is confused and so am I.

I and you, people who are connected to internet live in a different world. We are hooked to internet, busy reading this post or some other because we want to avoid the real world conflicts that's occurring right outside our doorstep. We don't live in villages, we don't attend rallies, we avoid everything including politics that we feel not our cup of tea. But we do enjoy the great Indian Tamasha, keep forwarding 'Ab ki baar Modi Sarkar' and help growing Modi wave in media. We the people who can read and write english, who got a Smartphone, may be having a internet connection roughly counts to some 20 crores. The so called urban middle class that's 15% of the Indian population. 50% of them may be voting this election, that's just 10 Crores of people. Given 80 crore electorates of India, what about the rest 70 Crores? Do they really feel the so called Modi wave?

Indian voters are not fools to be deceived by these new methodical approaches of campaigning. It may work for AAP, may work in an urban land favouring BJP but not in every nook & corner of India. People still vote for Individuals that matter to them. They vote for a guy (or his gang) from whom they can get their work done; can stand for them in trouble; can help bailing out of some odd problem out of one too many they face in their everyday life.

Ravish Kumar was interacting with Yadav people in one village of Mainpuri constituency in Uttar Pradesh. The entire village is willing to vote none other than their own 'Yadav'caste. At one moment, It felt like entire UP is voting for caste. In no way, there was Modi wave to be seen. They complained that no other party people ever approached their village. May be other parties have done their homework that in a UP Yadav village, there's no point investing their time and energy. And unfortunately the one answer on why they are voting to their own caste was unanimous. To get rid of police atrocities! Period.

This applies to every corner of India.

It all boils down to delivery of justice. I feel, that's the root cause of all the problems in India. If we compare India with other western countries, post globalization the only difference that I could figure out is that the speed in which our courts deliver justice. 'Sueing' is one commonly word in western countries. The fear of getting sued/punished makes people to become scrupulous. Law takes its own course always without showing any bias. Everything else falls into place.

We keep saying justice delayed is justice denied. But nothing seems to be happening. Recently a British court slammed Indian judiciary system for its tardy pace of delivering justice. No Modi, No Kejriwal can solve the problems of India unless justice is delivered in a timely manner.

May be for one term, we should stop elections; instead elect/appoint some 10000 judges, spend the money in setting up courts and for next 5 years, keep closing all the pending cases for once and all!!!

Unless a Yadav of Mainpuri can sue a policeman and get justice, he's still going to vote for another Yadav!

Kab ki baar... ?

Happy New Year 2014

The year is about to pass, giving way to another.

This process of counting years and changing calendars has been running and will run ad infinitum.

Will there always be somebody to change the calendar, to count it, to celebrate it?

Was somebody counting 3000 years ago? Will somebody count 3000 years from now?

Why the hell I am so obsessed with apocalypse? Is it because I watched too many Hollywood flicks this year?

Friends will advise just to forget what we did last year. Chareibati, Chareibati… Move on Move on... Upanishad echoes from the past.

Whoever wished you a happy new year, do they bother to check whether their wish worked? Did they really wished, prayed from the core of their heart for your happiness or they just followed trend and played rhetoric.

Forgive and Forget.

If their wishes didn’t work, it’s you who didn’t take it seriously and vice versa.

What I wish for myself and for others?

I wish for myself a tension free year. Let the realities offer more than my expectations.

For others, let them be happy with whatever way world turns.

‘How can one prevent a drop of water from ever drying up?’

In the final minutes of the soul searching movie Samsara an emotionally broken Buddhist monk comes across this question engraved into one side of a stone that’s sitting on top of an old stone wall, he slowly turns the stone around and sees engraved on the other side of the stone:

 ‘By throwing it into the sea …’

I belong to this Samsara — sea of life, love and truth. 

Samsara — Full of homo sapiens like me. Like every other, for I cannot be an exception, I follow the same trend: to wish and to say it aloud to you “Happy New Year”!!!

“Happy New Year” — the most used three-word-phrase for this week, only next to “I love you”!!!

~Swarup

The ultimate fear

A month ago, Salt prices touched Rs. 150/- a KG in Odisha, Bihar. Rs. 150/- a KG !!! Most people around the world won't believe this, but yes that's the ridiculous price people paid for a kilo of NaCl. Forget Onion, this is common salt that mankind has been using ever since they learned cooking. Back in childhood days I remember that could be year 1985 or so, I had paid 50 paise for 1 kg powdered salt. Today I will change my food habit but for sure, won’t pay Rs. 150/- to somebody for it. Call it hoarding, unscrupulous business practices, panic buying whatever, but such situations does arise often in our country.

The thing I want to address here is that a few hundred or say a few thousand people control lives of a billion people. Not to be surprised about this article which says 10 corporation controls almost everything we buy!!!

The society/civilization we live in today, which evolved over a thousand years has its own story to tell on “why things are, the way they are today”. However we have adapted to it because we find comfort in it, are used to it, become a slave to it. Economics is too complex a thing man created to complicate simple things in life. We poor souls get affected every day for the war called Rupee vs Dollar wherein we absolutely have little idea on how it works. One fine day, a Nixon can deny us the actual value of a dollar. Three petroleum agencies (read BPCL, HPCL, IOCL) can bring our country to a standstill; put the country in starvation and god knows what all will follow.

The problem is that, we don’t have a plan B. What will happen if all truck drivers go for a strike or all our power plants get defunct at once? We can always be optimistic and rule out such weird situation to happen. But just think of an apocalyptic world created say after a nuclear war. How mankind will survive such situations?

In Bangalore, may be around 50% of the apartments depend on water from tankers. My office itself uses 45-50 water tankers every day. I fail to imagine my day in office, if one fine day, none of the tankers turn up!!!

Self-sustained society!! Is that the answer? A plan B with alternatives? Good governance - so as not to let it happen?

Let's talk about self-sustained society! I have seen it tribal areas of my native district, Nabarangpur to be particular, Koraput as a whole. I have seen them relying completely on nature. Their livelihood depends on agriculture, cattle rearing and hunting. Do they really bother about inflation, GDP, MNRGEA, Direct Cash subsidy, free laptops and hundred other things that man in AC chamber designs without having a slightest hint of the ground realities? They live with whatever they get. With a simple life, they are in fact live a happier life than most of us. If one fine day our country breaks down, those are the people who can survive because they have nurtured nature, understood it, and never acted against it. And we are hell bent intruding to their lives with our good for nothing so called modern civic values!!!

Just imagine our lives:
Without matchbox;
Without cooking gas;
Without petrol/diesel/kerosene;
Without electricity.

Do we have simple life skills? We all have taken this modern life for granted without a risk mitigation plan. Do we know how to create fire? How to fish? How to desalinate salt water? How to kill a chicken? How to plough a paddy field?

I loved common people..
People who knew how bread was made,
And how plants grew and how much sweat it takes
- Elvi Sineno

In a post apocalyptic world which one of the books we are going to print first? "Kings James Bible" or "Principles of Crop production: Theory, Techniques and Technology" ? 

ଓଡିଆ ବ୍ଲଗ୍‌

ବହୁତ ଦିନୁ ଇଚ୍ଛା ଥିଲା କେମିତି ଓଡିଆରେ ବ୍ଲଗ୍‌ ଲେଖନ୍ତି ୤ ଆଜି ସେ ସ୍ୱପ୍ନ ପୂରଣ ହୋଇପାରିଛି ୤ ସେଥିପାଇଁ ଅପ୍ରାନ୍ତର ପ୍ରୋଗ୍ରାମର୍‌ ମାନଙ୍କୁ ଅଶେଷ ଧନ୍ୟବାଦ ୤

The Last Freedom Struggle

There are various routes from your house to your office. You are free to choose one of the routes. But you mostly come in one particular route. You choose that because you are habituated with it or due to some reason. You do have a free choice from several options – and you make your free choice.

You are free to choose your route. Nobody forced you. Nobody forced you but how many free choices you have?

You are indeed free within the limited options that are provided by your perceptions, the information you have and even your expectations.

Rakhi Sawant recently did a swayambar. Out of 92K candidates she was free to choose any one but she had only 92K options. What if she didn’t like even the last candidate? She had no choice, but to accept. She was indeed free, but only within a range of options available to her.

Freedom simply means that you are not forced to act in certain way or to make a certain choice. You are free to act as you wish. But hold on – you are not really free to choose, if you have not really seen the choice. The bottom line is: you are not really “free” unless you can see a wide range of options from which to choose.

Coming to your workplace, as a developer how much freedom you really enjoy? Let say, you are given a module to design and build. You have always many choices in each stage. Choices come from various directions. A similar module in some other project, an open source, a competitor’s way of handling behaviors, your clients’ specification, a standard to look-out, your managers ego, your BUs working methodologies blah blah. Which path you choose?

And how often you have exercised your freedom and done it “your way”?

How often you look for alternatives? How often you are not satisfied with that “working formula”? You love your “last working build” – you hardly take the risk of screwing it up. Isn’t it?

There are better data structures to choose for but you end up choosing “linked list” perhaps because you are comfortable with it. You never tried other alternatives, because you have really never studied them or you don’t want to study either because lack of time or because your ego gets hurt (!). “Ten years in this industry man, you want me to read text books??!!”. Sounds familiar – isn’t it?

A customer seating behind you or a customer is waiting for a fix. You are running late. Do you have the time/freedom to think? All you do is, you give a hot-fix. Don’t you?

You know that there are serious flaws in some design. You wish to rectify it but your lead is hell bent on the way he/she proposed. All your arguments are futile. Do you have any choice but not to accept and implement it?

Your design is as good as the knowledge you possess. You choose only those algorithms which you know. If you are stuck, you refer to your boss. Your boss proposes the best in his/her knowledge domain and seldom beyond it. Your choices are often limited by those knowledge boundaries.

Sometimes you are forced. You are not free – I agree, but not every time. You always have better options or the chance to look out for better options. How often you have exercised it?

Many a times, it’s your perception that holds you back from exercising your freedom. Few of your perceptions come from personal experience. A majority come from education. They come from previous implementations, your organizations’ standard practices, implementation guide/hand books, reference frameworks etc. Perception originated by legacy is more dangerous. Perception is real even when it is not reality. If your perception is fault, then your answer will be rubbish even if your logic is perfect.

Once your perceptions are formed, you see the world through those perceptions. We only see those things that support your perceptions and ignore what does not. Problem is often you do not notice or see them at all.

Your range of perception is severely restricted by your limited perceptions. If you can see things in one way, then you are not free to choose between options.

What we need is, to develop perceptual skill and the skill of possibilities.

Having a lot of information is one way. It gives you confidence. Next is “change of perception”. How about design? You can analyze the past but you have to design for the future. How do you achieve it?

The answer is “Thinking”. De Bono defines four aspects of thinking — perceptual, constructive, creative and design thinking. Thinking out-of-box as he calls it helps in widening your range of choices or decisions. Remember, ignorance or limited thinking is worse than “force” because you are not aware of it. You may be fully aware of force, but you may be ignorant of your ignorance.

So folks, Think!

Think beyond. You will always end up getting more options.

Think beyond “linked-lists”. Give your boss a plethora of options to choose from. If you are customer is demanding — may be you can tell him the possible issues/dangers with the hot-fixes you are giving. About using legacy code, if you truly observe; nobody really forced you to reuse the legacy code. Perhaps you used it to maintain the legacy! You didn’t think creative enough that time.

It’s time to think.

How about hanging a pen in rest-rooms?

~Swarup
- Inspired by the book “The Free Mind, A lateral thinking approach” by Edward De Bono.

- Few sentences hacked. And of course this article is based on all my own perceptions.

The Death Report

136,833 People

Eventuality

The sorrow of being let down

by your own self

bound with undying passion

but with negative pessimism

the ultimate password for eventuality.

The love of being surreptitiously loved

with the past-

to make both the purloined hearts

closer for sometime.. - too hard

though closer to an eventuality.

The taste of being defeated

too sour..

to depart from one's oneself from himself

too sweet..

to get quicker

to the never predicted eventuality.

~Swarup

What's in a name?

Office is a space where you are supposed to be known by your real name, and never by your nick name. Nobody calls you Chintu, Mintu or Bablu at office but as soon as you step out of office you want to be called your swanky nick name leaving behind your outmoded name which perhaps your parents chose for you on consultation of many astrologers, pandits and a few overpriced books something titled like “An Encyclopedia of Indian names for your child”.

What’s in a name? A question that’s been asked ever since one bald man (They call him seks’sphere or something) put forth it to the world. Let’s justify it ! What if a guy named Padmalochan suddenly becomes blind — are you going to call him Andhalochan ? You can’t ! You at least need an affidavit, a newspaper ad, and of course a good amount of money to do all these. And you need to carry that proof throughout your life notwithstanding its having any great purpose . My wife is supposed to carry my surname, but I intentionally have avoided making it, coz she has to carry this proof which is again I am sure would be a piece of paper that she has to carry along with her certificates, passports, any piece of document which will bear her former name. And of course, while filling a visa form she can’t escape from a section titled “Have you ever been known by any other name?” !

In my work place, a product based company with too many number of products and different clients, you have got another surname, an addendum to the original one. And that second surname is nothing but the name of the product/client you are working with. Often at my work place, people are known less by their name and more by the team they are working with.

“Where can I find Mr. Sushant?”

“Hmm…Well there are two Sushants here, Do you know which team he works with?”

“I guess… SyncML”

“Oh.. SyncML Sushant.. must be that corner cubicle. Please check it out.”

So SyncML Susant! Sounds nice! ain’t it ? Often product or company names are decided just like we decide baby names — after a good amount of research, polls, feedbacks etc. So they ought to be nice names. When those nice names becomes suffix or prefix in your name you become a altogether different entity. When you have two people bearing same name, then it really helps in distinguishing them. Most of our names are very common — Srinivas, Manjunath, Mani, Kumar, Senthil, Suguna, Archana, to name a few. And Rakesh, Suresh, Mahesh, Ram, Hari are most common Indian names. You will surely find one of them in any organization.

A new GM in my company instructed management to put employee name in the respective cubicles so that the latency period becomes less! I am not sure how successful he was, but candidly speaking; product or team names really comforts the other person to identify—at least to me. Take for example, If I say Mahesh, two persons come to your mind. Gateway Mahesh or Testing Mahesh. You can discover so many people around you. Developer Suguna or Suguna from QC. Browser Kumar or Accounting Kumar, VijayLakshmi from Marketing or VijayLakshmi from TSG. HR Veena or Development Veena. And just think, how do you differentiate two Manis from same dept?. Well, you still have good options. Customization Mani or Core Mani ? Of course, it eases your trouble when you have more than two persons in the same name. Take that — Marketing Naveen, TTPCom Naveen , SmartPhone Naveen. Whom do you want to meet ?

The naming rule is very simple. If two persons are from different dept, then they are known by their departments. If both from the same dept, then they are known by their teams. What if both are from one team, then by their actual surnames. Now what you are going to do, if even their surnames match. Well, you decide? You are the best to judge at that point of time.

Unless you have got a unique name/surname say for example, Shaddhaksharaya, Zunder, Lumitaswa — the product/team name is the second surname for you. But don’t let down yourself for not having a very unique name. In a perfect team work, you are known by your product, and never the product is known by your name. Just think, you are part of a great product or a great team. There’s a little bit of ‘you’ in that. That’s your best identity in a working place. That’s a supplement pride you carry along with that of your native and family.

~Swarup

Depth

There is so much depth
in our love
that, in the darkness -
even if we do not hold our hands
it will do.

There is so much depth
in our love
that, even if we do not love
it will do.


- This poem was told to me by my friend Zeetoo during my college days. Heard once, remembered forever ..

~Swarup

Mungaaru Male (First Rain)

It takes 110 days in theatre for a kannada movie to be watched by a non-kannadiga guy like me. Its not that all my kannada friends vouched for the movie ( for the first time in four years of my staying in Bangalore), its the soul-stirring songs that took me to watch Mungaaru Male. Well, watching such a nice movie in a saturday evening with a Rs. 30/- balcony ticket in a non-AC-but-DTS theatre was altogether a different kind of experience. Of course a magical one.

Not everytime you watch a good movie! This movie, I would say a great movie. A gently crafted piece of work, with sheer brilliant execution by actors, director, cinematographer and above all the music director. Sonu Nigam should think himself lucky enough to sing such an ecstatic song. Mungaru Male was all about defying boundaries. Boundaries that exist within ourselves, boundaries that created kannadigas and non-kannadigas, boundaries that defines how to distinguish between good and bad films. It crossed all boundaries but it didn’t dare to touch the boundaries created by the family that separates the protagonists of the movies Preetam and Nandini. A very usual love story — boy sees girl, love at first sight, a hooligan pursuing the heroine and our karate master hero doing everything for the sake of love blah blah blah..

Expressionism at its best, the movie tries to depict the true character of our Indian looking, tough but yet soft at heart young man. You don’t need a deadening shahrukh to cry in a sheep-ish voice to limn pain ! Our local hard drinking guy delivers far better. You need not understand kannada to understand this kannada movie. A little rabbit Devdasa who symbolizes the immortal concept of love in the movie tells you the story. Not many times you find symbolism finding its way to filmdom.

For the two and half hours, the movie was extra ordinary and rhapsodic. But last two and half minutes of the movie will stir your soul, will make you somber. Suddenly you’ll cry for you'll find yourself hard trying substituting in place of Preetam, when he was burying Devdasa wrapped with jasmine petals at one high point on earth where it all started.

Love.

Land of sorrows,
Ocean of tears,
Valley of truth,
End of life.

Did our Preetam knew it before falling (he falls into a gutter at the first sight) ? Why on earth Nandinis do not understand Preetams ? (Or do female understand male beyond male understanding female ?) Everybody loves a love story, but why nobody loves lovers ? Why they couldn’t meet at the end ? Is sacrifice — the highest form of love ? If yes, what love tries to achieve? If no, then what love will achieve ? Elton John puts it; and its no sacrifice/Just a simple word/Its two hearts living/In two separate worlds/But its no sacrifice/No sacrifice/Its no sacrifice at all/Mutual misunderstanding/After the fact/Sensitivity builds a prison/In the final act.

But why love never reach its end ? Why great lovers on earth have never met ? Famous oriya poet Ramakant Rath answers this phenomenon in his book Sreeradha — “once you achieve success, that becomes the end of your desire, after that nothing remains like love, you will feel empty within, coz the cause that drives you to this point no more exists and you will fail to imagine your success minus that cause”. Hence, true love is all about the passion unadulterated by the desire of success. The moment you realize that, you opt for sacrifice. Mungaru Male tells at the end — Preeti Madhura, Tyaga Amara. Love is sweet, but sacrifice — immortal. But not everybody love to sacrifice for love.

Heart strings playing on the wind
In the first rain of Madikeri
Heart beats — dreams
Heart breaks — wounds
Love just have to be.


Haage summane.

~Swarup

N-Series mobile, Nabarangpur and Me

What determines the economic strength of a nation ? Well an economist will tell you the right answer. Often it's determined by the GDP. To the contrary, for a weird techie like me, its not the GDP but the the number of N-series mobile that the countrymen use!

There's nothing to be astonished about. Come to my native hometown, Nabarangpur, a district head quarter with roughly 50K odd population with the poorest of the world living there and I will show you auto-rickshaw drivers using N-series mobiles. How they click pictures, and take the memory card to the photo developer studio to take a print out. All in five minutes.

When I purchased a Samsung C100 mobile in Bangalore way back in early 2004, there was no mobile network setup in my hometown. When I carried mobile there, it was a piece of attraction it moved from hand to hand to make them understand how a mobile looks like. With no network out there, it just helped them felt that mobile is not a phone, but a video game, a kind of music player and just a calculator ! Today I do not carry my mobile in my hometown, not to mention - to avoid embarrassments from almost everybody - my friends, the shopkeepers, even my sisters and in-laws.

Globalization has done at least one good thing in India, it has given junks ( sorry joonks ) like me money, and others the business. The so called feel good factor is all about packed wallets and nothing else. And when you get more than you can spend, obviously and often you find yourself using a N-Series mobile.

My sister is in trouble, for she is quite apprehended about that ubiquitous demand ( a N Series mobile ) from her daughter Jolly. Peer pressure what you call it. Jolly's friends have already started using it, and poor Jolly still talks with a Nokia 2600. When they purchased that mobile, they asked me because they know that I work in mobile domain. I advised them to go for a Nokia 1100 or 3315. Not to my surprise, my suggestion was turned down with a “cheeeeee...”. Black and white mobile. ?? who use that in Nabarangpur anyway ? Since then I have never been able to convince them that even my company directors use those phones and we have only four to five N-Series mobiles in our office!

My native town suffers with one more problem. The problem is that everybody knows everybody. If you wish to, I am sure, you'll be able to know the dish that got cooked at my home day before yesterday. Do I complain.. ? No. Whenever I call my friends, following are the few questions I always ask:

Who's having affair with whom ?
Who eloped with whom ?
Who died recently ?

Genes. I can't help !

Am I unhappy with the changing scenario ? Again No ! Whenever I see somebody using those gadgets, it gives a sense of pride, it gives me a immense confidence in my countrymen who prosper in spite of poor statistics of health, education, child-mortality rates, dowry deaths. I salute them, for they know how to live the life every moment. They dont have the money, but they know how to spend. I have the money but I dont know how to spend !

~Swarup

To Sir, with love

The recent death of a professor in Ujjain shook the nation and brought a shame to the nation where teachers are worshipped along with Gods. Today we celebrate teacher's day, I think such an event is celebrated only in India. I believe, there exist no nation where teachers get worshipped and also get killed.

The Indian media described the shameful event as "Death of a professor". I would say, it should have been "Death of the Student". The student has died, not the professor! Death of the student would mean, death of the learning attitude, therefore the respect for the teacher. There's no end to the ocean of knowledge. Given a piece of knowledge-there must be a teacher; there must be student. Once a teacher-always a teacher. Once a student-always a student.

Though I am a poor student, still I love to be a student always. I still remember some of the nicest lectures of my teachers, I still accompany certain virtues bestowed or inspired by some of my teachers, I still feel jealous about the popularity that some of my teachers enjoy. All the teachers, who have taught me-I have learnt at least a bit from them; some bad, some good but still I am forever grateful to them irrespective of what they were, what they are.

When we say we respect teachers, we respect them because of their knowledge and their attitude towards us. We love them; we hate them but always hold a mark of respect for them.
Sir, I still reminisce the smile you had when I gifted you something on teacher's day. I remember you said "this is not what I want, be studious, excel in your life, my blessings are always with you ". Today I still want to hear this from you though your blessings have really worked, and perhaps I have excelled a bit in my life.

To all my teachers, whom I love the most, my love and respect will never die for you. I know, a guru is just another struggling human being, and I know you are still struggling. And today on this day, far from you struggling with the basics that you taught me, all I can do for you is wish the best and pray to the almighty for your well being.

Thank you Sir, for just being my Sir.

~Swarup

2nd Innings

Returning to blogging after many days. Don't know why, but I am not able to visit this site from my system in office, initially I thought it's the Indian government order of banning blogspot.com for anti-national blogging by few individuals( It was of course banned for few days ), then suddenly when I tried the same in my friend's system it worked! I tried IE, opera all failed. I approached the system admin of my office but to my disappointment he could also find no clue. Assuming that my esteemed office has blocked me from blogging, or thinking that they can block my system's IP but not me, perhaps I am playing my second innings.

Many things happened during this transition. Worth mentioning would be Preeti Ranjan's death by a fatal suicide on 9th July. Preeti was never close enough to me as a friend, I just happen to know him as a colleague of Jataayu, and he was hailing from Orissa, was staying in the same apartment colony. I think, I know him as good as any other oriya jataayuan would know him. For me he was just a black box!. And he turned really black that day.

Well, it was my first encounter to see what death of a person really means. During my staying in my hometown my parents never allowed me to attend any funeral or any death related functions. This was for the first time I touched a dead body, felt its coldness; a first time experience of what Geeta says: a body is just a body, body is mortal, soul is immortal.

Preeti was not a friend of mine, but I felt as if somebody very close to my heart took heavenly rest that day.

As I understand him, he was a very introvert guy, closed in his own world, even his classmates, previous roommates know little about him. As for as my social understanding goes, people who lead a very closed life, often end up this way. Soon after I returned from his funeral, I wrote the following mail to all my university classmates:

hi all,

just returning after the funeral of one of my oriya colleague friend who committed suicide last sunday night. He was cremated in Hebbal Electric crematoriom.

Reason: some love affair. The guy was very reserved, introvert without a healthy friend circle and was staying alone..

just want to speak few words to you people..

"Speak up...." !!

We should thank God that we are in a very healthy friend circle, we communicate to each other so well, we may have differences but we express what we think.. We are too fortunate..But just to remind that there may be few people among us, whom we know them physically, but in reality we never know them internally. We dont know what they think.. what they do.. where they take their lunch.. whom they speak to. Its my appeal to them to speak up whatever they feel. Talk.. Talk.. Talk. Talk to your parents, talk to your relatives, talk to the guy next to your cubicle, talk to your servant, talk to your neighbour, talk to a customare care girl, try all toll-free numbers, talk to a salesman, talk to a shopkeeper. But talk.

Dont feel lonely, for that dont stay lonely.. Someone somewhere is made for you.. Someone somewhere wants to talk to you... find him/her. Read a book, watch a CD, join a gym, join a laughter club, go to a disco, visit a pub, date somebody.. there are hundred ways to live a life..

Life is precious...live it... live it fully..

~Swarup

R&D vs G&P

Well, my favorite quote on research had been the one by Wernher von Braun- “Research is what I am doing when I do not know what I am doing”. On this, we can bring a corollary on the definition of Development which could be something like “Development is what I am doing when I perfectly know what I am doing”. R&D as we all know or assume, is the backbone of any successful knowledge cultivation organization.

Being a techie, I enjoy my designation as a software engineer, R&D division. Whew.., “So you do Research!” - asked one of my professor uncle! “Yes”, promptly the no non-sense engineer inside me replied, making me silent. So how many papers you have published, where and all?, IEEE, ACM ? This time the no non-sense engineer inside me and myself, both were silent!

Research what I am talking about is what research being done in Indian companies. The original research is actually never done in Indian companies. Research requires certain amount of basic knowledge at a very fundamental level, which the Indian techies forget the moment, they step out of their universities. And after years of confrontation with different customers, different projects, when you become a project leader or a project manager, you will find some scope for research, that too, when ordered by the top brass of the organization. Therefore the scope of research is often limited to that elite category which constitutes roughly 5% of organization, and rest of the people never do R&D even though they belong to R&D department. In fact they do is G&P, Google and Paste.

Google, as they say a noun which became a verb. Behind this huge success of this software industry, there is a little bit of google inside it. Google along with the Free Software Foundation brought a revolution in the software industry thus causing the so called ‘Death of the creative programmer”.

Today when my boss says, “Do some R&D on that”, all he/she means me to is do some google, see if any existing implementation is there, then try to develop a simple prototype, try to find an open source if available, and remember, don’t waste too much of time!

Interestingly, it works. Today efficient engineers are those who know how to use Google better. Now take for example, if you are told to write a simple hash function, unless that has some stringent requirement its better to google and paste than to try inventing one. This saves time as well. Not only small companies, but the so-called CMM-Level 5 companies R&D staff also do the same. Perhaps that’s what shows how mature in terms of capabilities they are?

The fact is that most of the companies can’t afford pure research. They are mostly customer driven. They invest where they see profit. The original research is in fact limited to universities. As of Indian universities are concerned, except few there is a total lack of synergy between academia and the software industries. Most of Indian researchers whom I have met work more on theoretical research; ask them about implementation they will shy away. They lack the enthusiasm on learning new things. For these oldies Fortran, Pascal, Latex is enough. They hardly think beyond that. They give some figures, statistics in their papers, and nobody dares to ask them how they really simulated it! Often those figures they use for bench marking with a previous research done on the same area.

Most of my friends thank to the guy who invented this copy-and-paste. So do I. Apple first introduced that in Lisa in 1981. Twenty-five years after we still hail if not Lisa but the immortal concept of copy-and-paste it introduced.

Long-live Ctrl-C. Long-live Ctrl-V.

~Swarup

Open Space

Open Space

Happy Valentines Day

Yesterday night I thought of watching few highlights of the emphatic Indian victory over Pak, but to my utter dismay all the news channels covered one single story; about V-Day and protests surrounding it. Come February, it has always happened that everybody gears up for some or other reason; the florist to catch a market for red rose, the card maker to foray new varieties of v-day cards, the lovers obviously to find a milestone in their life, politicians to invoke a new controversy, and media houses to breed a new story. It all happens for a single day that’s today February 14^th, Valentines day.

Protesters have gone rampage across streets. Mobile marriage vans are on roads to pick budding couples and try instant marriage. Pamphlets putting curbs on young girls freedom for this particular day are being distributed. They say: Valentine day is a foreign concept; a conspiracy promoted by the west to ruin our culture, corrupt our youth. Needless to say, these people are fanatic.

Culture is never a stand-alone entity, its not a contented silent lake, it’s a free flowing river, where rivers of different cultures merge. The question here is if valentine day alone is ruining our culture, then so is every other foreign concept. And to start with first foreign concept is our adaptation of English. Now think of Indian life today without English, I am sure we will find ourselves as aliens to this world. Therefore the right note is to capture the best of the foreign culture, and I am sure, we Indians have done it right, and very carefully.

The so-called watchdogs of our society, should they determine, what we should eat, how we should celebrate? Should they determine, whom should I talk to, and whom should I not? Can they imagine their life today, without a mobile phone, without a printing press where they print their glossy posters and pamphlets. Why they don’t see them as foreign concepts as well? They can’t. Nirad C. Choudhury was right; We Indians are hypocrite enough to understand the realities.

But the problem is not only with them, but with this Gen-Y as well. Today valentine day is all about packed wallets. Parents encourage their children by giving enough pocket money (they feel, they missed the bus, let their children don’t miss it), market adds fuel to it, and media creates the hype. You have got 365 days, and why only today, why such a casual (!) way to celebrate love. Why a rose, at a cost of Rs. 15/- (Rs 5/- on other days), why an expensive gift, why a candle-lit dinner? Why to make a divine concept like love, a diabolical one? Why for the sake of the hype?

Let’s stop talking; about puppy love, and culture ruination. Let thousand cultures merge in our great Indian culture, but let the souls find love, peace, mutual affection.

Just celebrate life. Have fun, watch pogo!!

~Swarup

Valentines Day, 2006

Being Married

There's popular proverb in Hindi "Shaadi ek dilli ka laddu, jo khaya woh pastaya, jo nehi khaya woh pastaya..". After being married for almost six months, I am still confused about my own status in this regard.

Nothing comes easy in life. So is marriage. And if you'll look into the sides of a typical Indian marriage, things are too far complicated. It's just a labyrinth of kinship. When two people get married, they involve at least a thousand people on both the sides. It's just not an easy matter for them, neither for the couples nor for the parents, the relatives, the event managers et al. Making it a ceremonious affair is more about the status than joy. Once the marriage is over, those one thousand people, the guy who danced in the baaraat, the guy who served in the feast, the girl who prepared the garland simply forget the couple. Nobody really bothers whether they are leaving a happy life or not.

Ergo, post marriage life is all about the struggle of two people to build a unified contained world where they can easily breath. Irrespective of whoever they are, they learn to be happy with whatever they have, wherever they are. It's a lot about sacrifices, compromises for each other and moreover a mutual understanding between two very different personalities.

If I say, I am happy with my marriage I will be lying.

Let me not be a Hypocrite.

If I declare "Now I am lying", I am lying or telling the truth…. ???

Paradox….

byte, char *, String

Life for a techie does not move beyond that. Whatever great software you develop, you always play around those things or variants of them. Sending, receiving, wrapping, unwrapping, encoding, decoding, parsing, generating, displaying, entering.. huh... anything else ? Hope all typical actions of a software are covered. We junk ( I love to call it joonk ) s slash w space E R dots do no great things, but paid handsomely. Sometimes I wonder, how come my company pays me for this junk piece of code I am writing.

When I first touched Computer, I thought this and only this should be my career. This is such a great job. Programming a rotating flower in BASIC gave me the joy I never had since then. And the Rest is history ( of course for me, my friends and closed ones ).

All my interest died when things became too much monotonus, doing the same things again and again. what keep on changing are specs, requirements, platforms, toos, languages, bosses, companies, teams, colleagues but inside I will be still playing with strings and bytes making fool of myself.

It's a curse that I am carrying being a techie..

~Swarup