Vijay Krishna's Notes http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com Most of my notes as a student of computer software and everything around it. posterous.com Mon, 28 Mar 2011 05:10:20 -0700 The IT Cottage Industry http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/the-it-cottage-industry http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/the-it-cottage-industry My mom is a brilliant chef! The best there is! She has had about 30 years of cooking experience and she has been at since she was twelve. Similarly, my colleague's father is a master automobile engineer and has been working with vehicles for a great deal of time now. Many of my uncles are profound at their religion and mantras. This is a generation that we look at with great pity, since they did not have the power of information and computing at their disposal. Well, atleast that is what i hear when people talk about them. And it is hilarious to say the least. This is a generation which might not have had Wikipedia or Google at their disposal, but were equally and perhaps more knowledgeable and experienced in certain things in their days than what we are today. They did not have information at their disposal, but rather they hunted it out, and held it close and together even after all these years. That is information you cannot ignore, that is knowledge that we must not let go of. So as i sat about doing nothing fantastic at office, i realised the amount of value, monetary, this information had. You are talking about expertise gained over 30 years, in very specific areas ranging from South Indian cuisine, Motor bikes and Sanskrit mantras. Most of these things from our culture as human beings. Mind you, such knowledge has not surfaced for the first time. In the past due to poor means of information storage, rich volumes of information was lost as it was passed down as word of mouth from father to son and mother to daughter. I can not even imagine the magnitude of loss that has taken place already and shudder when i realize that we are on the brink of making a different set of errors, but with the same results; loss of knowledge all over again. What is most alarming is the fact that, this is happening when technologies concerning information storage and retrieval are at their beastly forms and only seem to be getting better. What a pity it would be if we allowed our over arrogant selves to ignore the rich knowledge slip away just because we can never bring ourselves to respect our elders because they could not learn how to use a computer. So speaking a little more about the value of that information, (and do not get me wrong here, i used and will continue to respect my parents even before this thought came to my mind) let me put it this way: in the olden days when India was stepping into Industrialization, there was  a calling to the villagers and rural segments to help out the process by running small scale industries from their homes. These industries would be based on arts and crafts learnt in one's family, perhaps as a tradition even. This was popularly dubbed as the Cottage Industry, an industry which existed in most households of the nation, especially in the rural fixtures. A fundamental purpose of such a growth was also to keep those arts and crafts alive by giving them a sound industrial backup and economy. A similar situation has come about with the information that i was speaking about in the preceding paragraphs. It is time that the Industry of Information Technology, called upon the previous generations and encourage them to record their information for their own monetary gains. Blogs, personally developed websites and, even notes and pages on Facebook perhaps. And using these methods and means would just be scratching the possibilities for a full blown information revolution. Never do i claim that such activities are not taking place. All i say is that there is a dire requirement to make those actions and effort a lot more deliberate. Encourage our elders to blog to start with. That I think will be a great start!

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Fri, 25 Mar 2011 05:54:36 -0700 Startup http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/startup http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/startup There is this whole new revolution taking place with a sudden escalation in the use and making of software tools and products and the internet. There is so much one can seem to do and achieve nowadays. Almost every other person seems to be getting the next big idea and launching it to make decent wads of green. Well, many, like i did in the first statement of this post, are claiming this to be a direct effect of the explosion internet and software. But then again, there are other factors. For starters, the lack of good jobs. Let us face it. The IT Boom may have gotten in a lot of jobs around the world, but the fact remains that these are nothing jobs. They do not have nay perks, no security, zero retirement plans, and the ability to support only a single person. And let us face another fact. The number of intelligent people in this world are increasing, else this wave of entrepreneurship would not have been this sustainable. The number of smart people in this planet have outweighed the number of good and well paying jobs. Look at it this way, before Google and Facebook came to the big stage, all an IT professional could talk about was working for MS, IBM or Yahoo one day. And then came along Google, followed by FB, and they became the next big firms to work for. Every time there is a new firm which comes on to the big stage, the aspirations of the job seeking crowd becomes more and more tangible. And this is possible only if regular graduates and engineers look at starting something new of their own. Why i spoke of Google is because it is the 2nd reason for this startup craze. You see, before Google, all the other firms were formed ( i.e. were startups) back in the 80's. It was almost like  everyone forgot the meaning of the word entrepreneur. They could not look beyond working for existing establishment. The Google and Facebook stories have changed exactly that. They are the modern day startups, who have gone on to challenge and dominate global competition in their areas of expertise. Funny story is that before they came into being, they already had people working on similar products and software, which was being commercially used. Be it search or social networking. Yahoo search and Orkut came before Google search and Facebook. Yet, they triumphed over them. And mind you, both Yahoo Search and Orkut were good and popular products in their time. This very fact, that the new kids on the block could show the way out to the old ones, and that too so quickly has showed people that if your idea is worth it, then there is really very little stopping you. Self employment is a concept that is gaining popularity as days pass by. Now people have gone beyond the idea of making it to the big screen. They are contended with being simple one to two man teams making some kind of profit from some kind of business. The idea of being a independent consultant or a free lancer is also setting well with the new young guns today. The whole scenario looks so promising that even kids, from both schools and colleges are doing well with the whole process of making money. What ever be your qualification, if you have an idea you can sell, then this is a fantastic time to invest some time and startup. Its time to make hay while the sun shines folks, and this hay sells!

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Tue, 08 Mar 2011 22:16:45 -0800 Character in Technology http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/character-in-technology http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/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. Like every other walk of life character is something that should be upheld no matter what. However, what i found in the industry was something different. A lot of work is decided as per the client's wishes and whims (to say the least). There is no real brain storming taking place at building genuinely better products which change lives. It is all about getting done with the deliverables and ensuring that the check enters the correct account. Post delivery services are next to nil, let me not even go to standards. And the immediate concern is to get the next guy in the loop, to whom we can sell our so-called earth shattering plan. I do not care how evolved or sophisticated the technology has become. The the sad fact of the matter is that the way in which technology is being built does not exactly  inspire you. And if this were true for a very long time now, then it is definitely disappointing. I wrote once before that technology and business are too intertwined with each other. To speak of one, you have to touch upon the other, and in some cases dwell deep into it. I guess, due to this dependency, we have lost track of the true purpose of technology. Most of the industry has become more of a money making machine rather than a powerhouse of innovation and advancements. I, at times wonder if we have become too myopic. But then my mind supports such a tact. Simply because when it comes to making a living, it is important to be myopic to start with. I only hope that this is more of a transit, where we are learning and are prepared to move forward and be more mature. For the contemporary has ensured a stagnation in the era of invention. How big a price are we about to pay in this loss of the most fundamental ethic in the world of technology, the ethic of new thinking? As a coder and developer, i sometimes believe in letting out my work, making the source truly open. For then there is no fear of profit or loss. But there is a constant attempt at possessing the best idea for the day, which leads to assured growth and assured profits. That is the absolute. For, i am an individual, and take from me what you can, but i daresay, you cannot take away my thought process. And that is the one true source of my sustenance and ethics.

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Thu, 03 Mar 2011 18:19:42 -0800 What has to go wrong, will go wrong http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/what-has-to-go-wrong-will-go-wrong http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/what-has-to-go-wrong-will-go-wrong In a software development process, there are always roadblocks, detours, U-Turns, poor pathways and long hopeless drives which seemingly lead no where. It happens in all kind of firms, big and small. It happens in the development in all kinds of systems, simple and complex. What has to wrong, will go wrong, and there is very little you can do to avoid it. But you can manage it well, if you are prepared. But here is the funny bit, most of your preparatory skills come with experience. So do not get upset if you do not find the IT industry the way you thought it would be. Its not a perfect world, and this walk of life is no exception. While coders in larger and more well established institutions do not realise this, simply because they are shrouded by the proceedings of the requirement analysis and design phases too well. There needs to be a major upset in the project for the coder to actually feel it. Its only the managers who realise it first and always, as and when the shit hits the fan. I guess that is why they are managers. And that is where they are important. While coding is fundamentally about good logic building abilities, software development is about good logical foresight. You really need to see what will go wrong even before it does. The idea is never to think of the known possibilities. It is to figure out the less obvious and make good preparations for the unexpected. Mind you i am not talking about major or minor bug fixes. I am talking about founding in the architectures and the fundamental designs of the system. I am talking about not getting the requirements correctly, or not converting them to the correct data and logic flows. There is always an element of error, which cannot be avoided, but it has to be minimized. Some of the best ways to do them is maintain modularity and flexibility in everything, right from the design to the code that you develop. Working in a startup has helped me realize this very early in my career. People do not badger about those two things with no rhyme or reason. There is good reason to it. And better you are at doing something like that, better you will do in this business of software. Having blabbed about the IT industry and its flaws so much, let me let you in on another piece of information. The client is a greedy lazy pig! I cannot put in simpler terms. He wants more, always, than what he already has. And, he will never work hard at understanding his own demands and requirements, leave alone telling them to the person in front of him. He will sit there like the Google search engine, waiting for you to ask the right questions for him to come out with the right answers, if he is willing. Google, an artificially intelligent piece of code, is kinder in that respect. Let me let you on the last secret of this trade. Even if you were to get a fantastic client who were to understand and convey his demands well, and you were able to get the right architectures and designs in place, and all this was followed by some fantastic coding which rarely ever produced any minor bugs (if at all), you are still liable for changes, due to the changing dynamics of the businesses for which most softwares are being developed these days, at least the money minting ones. AT first I would curse these hurdles and crib about the imperfections with which we go about engineering software solutions. Then, right when i got stuck in my most horrible pot hole along the road to a good development process, i realized that this is where the real fun is. Its is never about how hard you hit, its about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. So take my advice, if you are stuck in one such pothole, and get up, because that is how some of the best software is written. This is the element of adventure in this career, enjoy it.

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