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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This is about a debate i had with my manager off late. We were discussing about converting the bool values of True/False that we get from the service to appropriate values such as Success/Failure or Yes/No or Active/Inactive, depending upon the context. That is when i commented that True/False are generic (and thus, they should be replaced with more specific values like the ones we were discussing). That was not the debate itself. But he somehow claimed that True/False are the same as Yes/No. I was a little appalled at hearing this. Although i could not pin point it to him then and there, and he won the debate, i knew that there was something wrong about that whole notion. And i could not help but think about it. And the more i thought, the more did it became evident to me, that True/False is associated with Fact, while Yes/No is associated with Agreement.
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India has a rural economy; thus its rural fixtures are the country’s backbone in every aspect. Hence for sustainable development, the conditions of rural India in terms of the state of law, technology, infrastructure and health have to be improved. This will strengthen the base of the country’s economy, which in turn will further help businesses grow and thrive in urban areas. Hence, development in the villages can have a direct and positive impact on the cities and towns.
However, most activities of development start in the urban worlds as compared to the rural regions. Moreover, the effects of such development rarely trickle down to the villages from the cities. This is due to the large disparity between the urban and rural worlds in India. Thus, this gap must be bridged for the development in the cities to have a positive impact on the villages, resulting in a holistic development of the nation.
Hence, higher education in India can lead to good sustainable development of the nation if, the aforementioned requirements are met.
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"Originality does not mean thinking something that was never thought before; it means putting old ideas together in new ways."
The word Originality has a wealth of meaning behind it. It refers to something which is original i.e. new, different or unusual. Something that has never been seen or heard off before. At the same time it also refers to something that is a result of independent thinking. Thus originality of thought or work is two fold. It can be a completely new idea, theory, machine, system, etc. It can also be a new inference or interpretation of the existing idea or theory. It can be the combination of 2 or more systems/machines to give a new system which helps us solve problems related to the previous systems or those which are completely different. Thus, originality is both: the thinking of new ideas as well as putting together existing ideas to get something different.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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I was taught this lesson in my 1st year of engineering when i was working on my college magazine, Srijna. It was a simple idea and thought. Beyond anything else, it was a warning. The fact that you cannot please everyone is well ingrained in my head. I understand it better than most people. "Why?", you ask. Simply because, i fail at it over and over and over again. I find the whole notion challenging. Over the years i have witnessed it in many projects and activities in which i have been involved in. The world of professional software development is no different. I am not talking about my work at office. I am talking about Project Doughnut, the founding website team of my undergrad college. Today, after its soft launch nearly 2 and half weeks ago, the website was thrown into the deep waters of an online public forum. This was the kind of publicity we (the team and i) were and were not looking for. But then again, there was the feedback, which we took with intent ears and minds. Paid good attention to most of what people had to say. And that is where i realised that i had yet again set out on a road to keep every one happy, this is otherwise called User Acceptance Testing in the world of software development.
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