Roughly a month ago i was hard at work, against time time and energies to integrate a whole new set of changes in the services with the UI. It was crazy to put it mildly and it was one huge chunk and it was evolving everyday. The whole transition to the new changes took a new 5 days to come to stable grounds. After i was done, i left for a week long break. I knew that the changes would continue, even from where i left off. When i came back however, change was made in virtually every way the application was conceived to begin with. The changes resulted in a drastic makeover and i was in no state to even comprehend the new dynamics of the business that were introduced in the software. I was truly lost.
Makeovers are a part of any developmental process. But the big question is if they should be. At least by definition, they should not. A makeover is something that has to come after the development phase is over, instead of being a part of it. In the world of software, where the work and the daily text is adorning the guises of programming languages, understanding the changes becomes even more difficult. One might argue that this is a common feature of any profession and is not specific or more so in the software world. But i tend to disagree here. Not because i am a part of this Industry of Logic, but because as a proponent of logic i can not help but notice that this industry is still young and is driven by a truly illogical set of rules and frameworks.
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aitoss.net/commons
This is what 12 months of pure persistence has resulted in. What started as a simple suggestion by Tosif Ahmed AIT computers 2008, (currently in Edinburgh University, UK) has come to that link above. He suggested this to me and asked me to set up the team. I called in Karan, Akshay, Nikant and Prince all seemingly capable people in web development, eager to learn and build something new.
After a month of work, i think that was the time period, Paritosh joined in. He was brilliant at generating the right content for the site world right from the word go. Prince and Nikant were just good at learning something new at a very rapid pace. Karan and Akshay employed their skills at Photoshop and Dreamweaver.
Late nights figuring out the structure of the site, living on caffeine, generating content, brainstorming on the organization of the site. It was fun. Here is a picture of us, which we took for the college magazine, Srijna 2010. I think this was around April.
[caption id="attachment_251" align="aligncenter" width="363" caption="The Website Team, April 2010 (LtoR): Vijay, Nikant, Paritosh, Prince, Karan, Akshay"]
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After I passed out new people joined the team, the Web team as we call it. Pallavi, Nitika, Avinash & Sandeep. It seems a lot has happened over the last 8 months or so. The team finally made a bold presentation to the HOD's meet in the college and they were well received.
We have come this far and hopefully the 24th of this month should be a day of success. May God be with us and may this site see the first ray of the rising Sun on the 24th!
The Blue Monster @ Microsoft
Scary? Don't be. This is what you will find on a few doors at the MS HQ. It can be interpreted in many ways. But, I chose to interpret it in a manner i will never be able to understand. Changing things is a very difficult thing to do. Changing the world is almost impossible. For most parts of our lives we end up trying to solve tough problems and manage to make the best sense of what life is, in our own context. To speak specifically about coders, they, we try to work out solutions for complex problems and feel elated about it. To be intelligent is good. But, what good is anything, if not met with true purpose.
For me, true purpose is something that which brings change for the good. Something that makes lives better. Something that inspires me to do more, that which i am already doing, not because i am good at or need to be better at it. Instead because, it brought a smile to someone's face. While i was being an intent listener, someone today told questioned the point of doing research if one has to watch its results from one's grave. And i asked my self what would have happened if every great discovery or invention was viewed with such contempt. I do not hope or expect to effect direct change in some life in the poorest corner of this planet. I hope that what i do today, hopefully be used to change things in this world. It is with that simple idea that i wake up every morning.
This was an abstract post meant to ask you one simple thing as a coder and a person of science and technology: What have you done to change the world around you? And how did you use technology to do it? Still thinking? Worried that whatever you have done was of no use but yo your own self and no body else's? Scared? Don't be. Because, it is ok to be like that. It is ok to be intelligent for your own next increment in pay. It is ok to be who you are. Change is difficult.
Unless of course, you want to change and that is a start.
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