Retrieving all the Methods in a Service

Well, today i was in a real fix. I was asked to work out a manner by which i show all the methods of a service in a combo-box. Now, people told me to ideally have a look at the proxy and type out the method names as they were and then create a static list of strings which i could then bind to the combo-box. WOW!! So simple ain't it?!? "And what if the list of methods were to change", i asked. The reply came, well, you can guess what the reply was.

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Results: their means and value

Well, i know that this is an age old topic to write on and definitely not something i should be writing about now, especially after passing out of college with every thing intact. But, why i still write on this has two simple reasons, a) the bigger exams of life (and not the metaphorical ones) will begin after college gets over and b) age old results have a habit of coming back into our lives time and again and biting us in the ass. The university results of my junior batch came out today. And to say the least it was carnage. Failure has a bad of showing us things, true things nonetheless and today was no different. The tension before the results, the shock while reviewing it and the dismay after the story sinks in. Most people deal with it when they think of the ways to fix it. But keep this in mind, once its broken you cannot fix it. All you can do is to get another chance at it, but the failure will last.  It never goes.

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Ready Made v Ground Up

Now this is a debate ragging in my head for quite some time now. I just completed a project for my college's website. The website was built using Drupal. We are now looking for a fully functional website for the college alumni. And there again, we are looking at Ning as a platform. Drupal wass used by a group of students to build a website. They did not have the time to build the whole thing from scratch. Why? Because they were busy with their projects and assignments. When it came to working professionals building a similar website, time became even more of a luxury than before and we moved towards a more ready made platform. And in all this i am not even talking about the time spent in developing the product. But like all software pros, i am talking about the time spent in testing it, making it bullet proof and then maintaining it. Now, this entails a lot of time. When you come to think of it, if and when someone starts paying you for something like this, it becomes a full time job. But then again, that is a big "if".

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My favorite Class in College

I am a Computer Engineer. And i love my subjects. Having said that, i never really enjoyed any class in college when it was to do with computers to be very honest. I like doing practical work. Thats my nature. You can not change it. So that probably restricted me from doing a lot of work in class as such. And practicals would be taken care of in the hostel rooms rather than the practical laboratories. Again, fact of life, i hate working on someone else's time frame, a time frame mind you. Give me a deadline, and the work will be delivered. Do not give me schedules. And for the better part of my engineering it work rather well. But, i am not going to talk about the classes i did not attend or the ones which i did not enjoy. I am here to talk about the one set of classes i did enjoy.

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Simplicity

Off i have been reading this book called "Simplicity" by Edward De Bono. Its a fascinating book and is lives true to its title. It is simple to read it. You can start from anywhere. You do not have to go into fine print, as the whole book is printed only on the right hand side pages. The left hand side contains excerpts from the right hand side, in big bold letters. So in reality to get the essence of the book, you really have read up the short excerpts on the left hand side pages of the book and be done with it. Most of the themes have been explained using examples and not complex theory. And the examples are from various professions and walks of life: Teaching, Computers, Machines, Systems, etc. Making it easy for people to relate to the core themes. And to top it all, the whole book is hardly 176 pages long, i.e. only 88 pages to read. :) 

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The Marriage Code

While attending a typical south Indian wedding today, i got engrossed in the ceremony and its proceedings. Every hour there was a puja to be done and it was kind of maddening to be very honest. So, while this madness was going along it normal course, i started taking some interest in the prayers being offered to the Gods and started to ask people as to what they meant, (they were being chanted in Sanskrit), i noticed that every now and then the priest would ask for the bride's or the groom's name. Very so often he was also asking for the names of the parents. At places the priest was asking the couple to do a thing or two by giving them explicit instructions for the same.That is when a brain wave came to me, which might probably leave most of the priests unemployed when it comes to performing such ceremonies and prayers.

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Hello Ruby

This is probably my 1st line  of Ruby Code that i am blogging here. Learning Rubys these days. So here it is - [sourcecode language="ruby"] 10.times{ print "Hello Ruby."} [/sourcecode]   I must thank Partiosh Chhibber, my friend for his help with this post.

Character in Technology

No sorry, this is not the Data Type "char" that i am going to talk about. Rather, this is related to the ethical and moral strength we must hold out in the world of technology. Talking about something like this can take a lot of time, due to the sheer range of contexts it touches. However, I am going to talk about one particular context that i came across time and again in this technological industry. I found, that for all the professionalism and maturity that people talk about, or rather boast about, there is no sense of responsibility or accountability for the work done and product delivered. And then i wonder, as to what has changed since the good old days of learning and ideating  in school. And that precise fact, is a bit of a let down after all the talk of being professionals.

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More Options to the User - Elements of Interface Design