Be Different…

I am in Bangalore since last week on a vacation. I am baffled by the changes all for good,some for bad. It now takes two hours to criss 12 miles on a working day. THis used to take me 20 minutes just a decade ago.

I have seen my share of rich India, the expensive restaurants, every possible company from the world has a set up here. from Intel, to HP , IBM you name it. Its there. With that comes high pay packets and skyrocketing real estate. If you think India is a cost saving measure forget about being here. Its a great place for R&D, Brain power , design etc.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit a school in a village called Muddinahalli . This is a school started by some very dedicated people who had a vision to educate rural India back in the 1980’s. They at that time had left the city live to start this rural school that educates kids from villages around and now from all over India.

This school now produces top rankers in country ( Called CBSE board). The school today has many facilities that were not heard in rural india many years ago.Its now run by Satya sai education trust known for world class education centers in India. This is just one of the many hundreds of organizations trying to improve the roots of India.

This school has no government grants, no expensive fees ( education is free , just some basic ameneties have to be paid). I was curious to see thier computer lab. they had decent pentium class computers around 30 much less compared to other private schools here. The kids are just hard working. These kids many come from a very poor background shine today just because they can. All they need is an opportunity.

The school still has severe water shortage, needs help in so many forms. My dad is trying to investigate how to solve the water shortage crisis. As things go its not very easy.

They have medical camps for villages and many leading doctors and industrialists and many others try to do what they can. Although there is lots more to be done.

Then i got to go with them to a nearby village called PuttatimmanaHalli in Kolar district of Karnataka after Chikka ballapur.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today i got to test run The Venice Project a peer to peer video /TV experience from the makers of Skype as a Beta tester. I have been following them for a long time. After nearly 6- 8 monts for development, they have some mind blowing user interface for TV, Video

The goal of this project is to provide tonnes to entertainment. They have quite a few things now in the test mode. There is a chat ( MSN and yahoo users are out of luck), a clock for some reason and channels like ur regular TV. For P2P technology with no upfront download, the quality of music was fantastic.

Looks like one of my long terms dreams for TV is coming true.

I dont watch TV that much, When i do its specific channles, Discovery , CNBC , 24 wherever is comes, and some kids channels ( not me for my two little ones). We watch movies but never is the movie we want to watch available on demand. So we end up running to the now infamous Blockbuster. Add on to this the tension of returning the DVD. To add the the pain the I need to record programs i want to watch and that involves a whole new level of planning and orchestration.

Should’nt watching TV be more easy? Log on , select immediately what you are in a mood to see be it a movie, a talk show or some soap in Hindi . I would love to pay extra to give me that freedom to allow what I want to watch when i want to watch.

Thats exactly where Venice project is going. No downloads , no returns , no waiting to see something and then trying to record it as i got stuck driving home.

Now that i can connect my TV in a breeze to the internet, what better way to deliver content. Gone are the days for Cable or satellite or even rented movies.

These technologies in 10 years from now will be like what the good old pay phone is now in the cell phone age. The TV delivery technology has had a turning point and this project may just be the impetus for that turning point.

Long live Skype and its creators for innovations that are truly changing the way we are thinking about approaching the problem

So long

Sometime ago i was in the job market to find my next job. Believe me, finding a new job is no easy experience. It is quite a stress.Esp if you are looking out of town. I was wanting to move from Milwaukee to Seattle.

It was tough trying to figure out what i was looking for. I was quite surprised by the amount of offers. If you dont know what you are looking for, there are enough folks outthere to confuse. Remember there are only a few good jobs. You get your shot in some firms only once.

So even though i was interviewing for more lead development positions. Folks on the other side of the phone esp some recruiters only want to hear what they want to hear. They sometimes push your resume around faster than you want. Do your homework well before looking

Here are many of the questions in no specific order .

1) Write a program which converts a string containing a roman numeral into an integer. One example of this would be if you took as input “IX” the program would output 9. You do not need to deal with roman numerals five thousand or above.

2) How does a doubly linked list work. Write code to show it?

3) Writer the String Index of method without using any strings? ie Foo.IndexOf(3)

4) What is the best way to ( performance ) to do a anagram

5) Write a Java program that takes a command line argument and prints all of its possible anagrams, without regard to lexical duplicates. For example, if the input is “aab”, six strings will be produced. Your primary goal is to do this using as little memory as possible, but see if you can find an algorithm that is both memory and computationally efficient. Along with your solution, briefly describe how much memory and time it uses for an input of size N. Try and limit your time on this problem to an hour or two, though if you end up spending more, just let me know.

6) What is SOA in your perspective? Why is it any different?

7) What are the pros and cons of binary serialization vs XML serialization in java

Describe the quickest way to reverse an 3 * 4 matrix of integers?

9) Why should we hire you?

10) Describe the quicksort algorithm?

11) What are generics?

12) Do you TDD? If so what are some benefits you see

13) What are challenges in interop between java and .NET technologies?

I will add more when i remember. What is odd is many of these have nothing do with work. How many times have i needed to write a doubly linked list?

Companies need to judge more than just abstract knowlege. A developer / Architect is not simply one that can crank out alogorithms. Not sure why interviewers are not more realistic. You are hiring a person to contrubute to your organization not some code monkey.

Go beyond algorithms, and text book questions?

Be realistic and ask questions that make real sense. in todays world of google, its not the how to solve a problem, its about providing customer value, being a professional that can solve bigger customer problems.

In the end of the day, you should add value to the firm, to the customer and be a excellent team member that can listen well. code with pleasure and make things happen. It does not matter if you are the pizza under the door guy anymore.

Wake up interviewers. Get real.

After a strenuous last couple of months which involved moving from one city to another, change of jobs, new school for kids and so on, At last I am back on somewhat of a normal schedule. ( i.e I can work back late nights

So we moved to Seattle after years in Milwaukee. So far so good. Except when it snows in Seattle it sucks as people have no clue how to deal with even a few inches of snow.

I also got my officially slogged three year MBA degree in strategic management in the mail last week. Need to put all those skills to use someday, for now I continue to do what i love to do anyways. That is develop software.

After working in the Agile software industry for years, I decided to take a shot at Solutions IQ, where everything that is done is Agile.

I do agile , XP, TDD and Scrum to my hearts content . What an awesome way to get paid to do something that you love to do anyways.

Now i am new to this place and as always its a tough thing to start from. It takes a while to find anything in a new place including new friends and so on. But I look forward to this pleasant change.

Joined the Northwest entrepreneur network, check it out. Trey do have some very neat gatherings.

After three years of hectic MBA lfe, it is quite a change to have a life. Not sure how three years went by, except i know my car made the 100 K mark in three years.

Have been reading a lot lately, lots of agile stuff, software security based books and so on.

So if you are in the area and are interested in TDD, Agile practices, ruby, enterpise architectures, Software process issues, New business software ideas, I would love to hear from you over a famous seattle coffee.

I got up today after a very busy weekend, hoping for a weekend where all I do is “Nothing”. After working at home, I decided to take a trip to the office to find
My colleague Oli, wanting to move some equipment at his place. So I ended up going to his place to move a washer. The cost of my labor was a free lunch. So we went to this
German store where we picked up some sandwiches.

Earlier in the day, the elevator in the building had stopped working. As we came to our office taking the steps, there was a lady standing by the elevator who happens
to work at the dentist office. She looked worried and was convinced she thought some one was stuck in the elevator. As we opened the office door, I smelt this strong
burning smell (Like smoke). Our office wall is right behind the elevator. After walking around for a while wondering what the smell was and hearing the lady outside say that someone may be in the elevator we ended up calling the fire department.

Our office is 4 minutes away from the fire department and yet it took them more than 15 minutes to get here. The first thing they found out was that no one was in the elevator.
Now even they were wondering where the burning smell was coming from. They opened a cool heat sensor and that can see though solid surfaces.

Guess what they found after five minutes

It was the paper shredder that had got burnt due to the power outage

It so happened that some elderly at the dentist’s office were taken down by the fire department folks

I Stumled upon this cool phone ( Not available anywhere yet ), O2 Xda Exec

A mini laptop and phone with two cameras and so on.

The unfortunate thing is this may not be available in the US for a while. THanks to the cell phone operators.

Check more reviews at Gizmodo and a more detailed review at ZDNet

After a year of driving like crazy from home to client to school both I and my car are taking it easy . It felt really odd getting off an exit 10 minutes after leaving home yesterday after an interesting assignment finished last week

It always felt like a rush to reach the next destination for the last year. I was a car crazy road freak driving 200 miles a day. I knew something was wrong when the sign “Drivers Wanted” sign on Semi trucks  started to look good. If i ever need a change of career I know what I should be doing

I wanted to thank all who tried to make my life easy by adjusting to schedules both at work and home for being patient with my timings.

Thanks to all those audio books,IPOD, NPR, Cell phones I made it through quite OK.

At last I can chat with the real world on IM and Skype and listen to shoutcast.

Send me an email in the day, and I might actually respond to you in the day instead of late in the day!

I love object oriented development. In my C++ days, I sure used to do a lot of OO development. One of my best project was in 1997 when i was working on a Unix based real time system where performance was critical. I got to work with some serious technical folks. One of the guys in my team would write thousands of lines of C++ code ( the OO Way) and it would compile at the first go.No compilation errors. Remember those were the days when there were no tools like IDEA and Visual Studio. It was all on the friendly VI editor( Esc key)
The problem with these new tools is they hide so much of details away from the developer. They help you so much that you stop thinking
There was not one day that year that went by without me learning something new.

You always need someone to look upto, someone to learn from. This is not a blog or a website, Some real person whom you look up to to learn

Then came the evil world of internet and web based development.

Problem #1 - I am not a UI guy and every time I see the poor stateless browser filled with functionality that it make Rich client apps look ugly, I freak out. It is stateless, so dont make a screen so big that it needs a tonne of Java script. Does the end user really care about all this.

When I go to Amazon, I want to find something quick and get out of there. I want my websites simple.

Problem #2 - All web based systems have a UI layer(MVC), a database, a tonne of business rules ( 80 percent of complexity is in business rules ) many Rules are simply there to make the orogrammers life a hell, some database layer and one or more databases.

After having developer more than two dozen commercial systems over the years, I find it quite disturbing that in every project we discuss the same thing over and over again. Where is the business rule, how is data being passes from one layer to another, do we use stored proc or not.

Problem # 3 - And then there are the evil patterns. The book ( you know which one) has stopped us from thinking. There are no more design ideas. Need a solution refer to Gang of four. ( Over the counter design solution)

BE it Java or .NET the problem is the same. Web site development sucks.

For many years when I was working in Java, I never felt as dumb as I do since I moved to the world of .NET.

Not sure ,there must be something poisonous in the Microsoft Kool Aid

Rescue me Bring back the world of intelligent systems

The world does not stop with Data sets , remoting and Business Rule:(((

Since the day I sat in Dave Thomas’s Ruby presentation, I have been a big fan of his. Not to mention his books particularly Pragmatic Programmer. So Whenever I read his blog, I naturally expect something that
I never have to doubt about.
I have always  carried a “Yes he is right” attitude when I read his writing, be it a blog or a book. I have a lot of respect for his work.

I must say I was taken by Surprise to see a book coming from the Pragmatic Press called My Job Went to India.
Here is the introduction to that book

Title:    My Job Went to India
And All I Got Was This Lousy Book
Author:    Chad Fowler
Pages:    200
ISBN:    0-9766940-1-8
Date:    August 2005

HINT: It’s not “their” fault, it’s ours…

The American IT job market is slowly coming apart at the seams, and it’s all our fault. Most of us have been stumbling around letting our careers take us where they may, and now we’re surprised when our companies are shipping our jobs overseas for a fraction of the price. It’s time to take control of our careers, and in the process, learn to stay both relevant and employed. This book will show you how to take action to avoid becoming yet another casualty of offshoring.

* Treat your career as a business. Learn how to apply business principles and build your own brand as a software developer.
* Walks you through the process of making intentional choices about technology and domains to invest in.
* Helps you develop a structured plan for keeping your skills up to date and staying competitive.
* Shows you how to market yourself both inside your company and in the industry in general

Introduction Ends

OK here are my Issues with this book

First, It is the title. “My Job Went to India And All I Got Was This Lousy Book”

I am an Indian by birth( yes from the same India this book is talking about) and I dont feel racist or feel hurt.
On the contrary I am quite proud that Indian Software Industry is matured enough that they can compete at levels that make the folks
at pragmatic press write about it, I also work in the same place as a lot of folks who would read this book reside i.e. The United states
of America

I think that Titles speak for a thousand words. Software Engineers like me have migrated to the USA and have been working quite hard in the software industry here. I face the same issues any other American faces.  I pay the same taxes,( At one point I actually paid more that a citizen).Authors of these kinds of books tend to forget that millions of Software professionals of Indian Origin are still working here. Potentially lots of people I know could look at me Negatively as I am from  that same country that the title of the book is trying to portray simply to bump up Sales..

So when Dave is looking for Catchy phrases as he claims in his blog, he should surely given this a second thought.

Please change the title to something else to make it more meaningful.

Second, Here are some facts

So what this means to me is most of the jobs are right here in the US still . Instead of crying over nothing , let’s look at ways to improvise skills
( This by the way seems to be the intent of this book)

And lastly,

Almost all the high techs in US, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Sun, GE( Jack Welsch Tech centerare moving many  of their R&D efforts to Asian countries, India being one of them
And this is not simply due to cheap labor. Most of this on the contrary is due to the highly skilled geek market out in these countries.

The ratio of  number of employees with a Software Engineering background ( BS in engineering ) to Non engineers is very high in those parts of the world. In the USA I never see such high ratio of engineers in the software field. So may be there is a lesson to learn here and focus on the core technical skills than the business aspects this book is trying to portray

Oh well