Analysis leads to Paralysis

Swam across the river Periyar after six years (approx)

2012-02-01T16:35:00.000-08:00

The Malayalam movie "Naran" was released in the year 2005 and I was on vacation during it's release. Inspired by the movie clips,I went to the river Periyar and swam across it. I liked the movie because of the
portrayal of certain river scenes. (It was also a good movie of Mohan lal in his "Savari Giri Giri" times )

Yesterday,a friend of mine and I went to the river and we spent close to two hours there. I crossed the river
once (might be 50 meters on to one side ) and re-discovered my "amphibious" nature.

I became euphoric after this feet ( of crossing the river ) and reflected back to those golden years (1984/1991) where I used to spent an average of three hours( most of the days) in the river. I used to swim across , swim along , swim against and swim even during the rainy season (water level and tide will be quite high).

Here are two funny things which I remember

I was a ardent chess enthusiast and used to analyze most of the Karpov/Kasparov matches of their 1985 season (from a book ). Even though I was a Anatoly Karpov fan,I really got impressed by Kasparov's techniques. From a program called "World this week",I learned that Garry Kasparov used to swim a mile,
a day. I used to swim roughly a mile across the river ( with and against the tide ) for a month and finally
my father put an end to this "madness"

In those days,A tailor in my home town used to come to the banks and swim for hours. He was a peeping tom (in those days,ladies,in large numbers used to take bath in the river ) and to be frank,he was a great swimmer. After my "amphibious" years,I forgot the tailor and even my swimming. Last year,I was trying to
board a bus to Bangalore and chanced upon this fellow. Initially,he could not recognize me and later he
could. He used to come with a four year old boy and the boy used to wait at the river bank for hours.
Out of curiosity,I asked where the boy is and to my surprise,the boy is a management student at IIM
now. ( May be the boy learned patience from those waiting days! )

Finally I decided to go for Scala and F# ( digging deep )

2012-01-31T22:07:00.000-08:00

I stumbled upon functional programming through a book titled, "Essentials of Programming Languages". The year was 1998 and it was just after my first Interpreter project (for a Circuit simulation language ).
An Estonian Programmer by the name Vladimir Timoschiskin hinted to me that we are going to use a prolog engine for a auto router project. This prompted me to learn Prolog.Through Ehud Shapiro's "Art of Prolog" , I got introduced to Logic Programming (Prolog). That happened at roughly the same time.

A decade later,I noticed many of the ideas in functional languages and logic languages are percolating
to the mainstream through C#,Groovy,Scala,Ruby etc. I think,time has arrived to combine functional
and object oriented programming to write software systems.

It has been a habit for me to follow the world's most prominent enterprise stacks (JVM and CLR ) and
I was evaluating Groovy,Scala and F# .

In the JVM oriented stack Scala seems to win over Groovy (Programmer productivity is better in groovy !) by a mile

Reasons to go for Scala (vs Groovy )
----------------------------------------------
Static Typing
Sophisticated Type System
Advanced Functional Programming
Good support for Object Functional Programming
Haskell Idioms
DSL support for internal DSL
Combinator Libraries
Concurrency through Messaging

In the .NET world , F# is the obvious choice as C# has got only partial functional programming
support.

Haskell learning ( GHCI dump ) - Part #1

2012-01-22T20:43:00.001-08:00

Prelude> let double x = x * x
Prelude> double 10
100
Prelude> double double 10

:1:1:
    No instance for (Num (a0 -> a0))
      arising from a use of `double'
    Possible fix: add an instance declaration for (Num (a0 -> a0))
    In the expression: double double 10
    In an equation for `it': it = double double 10

Prelude> double( double 10)
10000
Prelude> let factorial x = if ( x == 0 ) then 1 else x*factorial(x-1)
Prelude> factorial 100
93326215443944152681699238856266700490715968264381621468592963895217599993229915608941463976156518286253697920827223758251185210916864000000000000000000000000
Prelude>

How much Functional Programming a "bread and butter" programmer should know ?

2012-01-20T22:27:00.000-08:00

Immutability - Pure functions - Referential Transparency -

Closure - Capture of Variables - First class functions -

Composition of Functions - Higher order functions - Functors -

Partial application and Currying - Importance of lazy evaluation -

Functions as values - Code as data - Data as Code -

Type inference - Lexical scoping vs Dynamic scoping -

Map/Filter/Fold - - Pattern matching - Monads -

Combinators - Types of Combinators - Anonymous recursion -

-Tail call elimination in recursion - Name free notation -

Controlled side effects - Software Transactional memory -

Concurrent programming - Purely Functional data structuers -

Mathematical induction vs Structural Induction - Continuation

Passing style - Functional Parsers - Parser Combinators -

Hygenic macros and modules - Meta Programming - Programming language semantics -

DSLs using Functional Programming - Mixing Functional Programming

and Object Oriented Programming - Emulating Functional Programming

idioms using C/C++,Java,JavaScript and C#

Simple Stupid Cuda Tutorial - Part 1

2012-01-17T01:53:00.000-08:00

CUDA toolkit is used to write parallel programs using NVIDIA's GPU. Modern GPUs are not only for graphics,they are used for compute purpose as well. OpenCL is a standard for CPU/GPU co-processing and Microsoft has got their own DirectCompute for the same purpose

Following program assumes that you have installed NVIDIA's CUDA toolkit and it just uses a GPU to do a trivial task,one that of adding numbers. This program can be used as a starting point into writing Cuda programs.

//////////////////////////////


// CudaAdd.cu

//

// A Cuda Program to Add two numbers.... 

// The aim of this program is just to show

// how to use NVIDIA Cuda toolkit

//

//

// Written By

//

// Praseed Pai K.T.

//

// http://praseedp.blogspot.com

//

//

// if you have installed CUDA toolkit,executes

// at the Visual Studio Command Prompt...

//

// nvcc -o test.exe CudaAdd.cu

// test.exe

//





#include <stdio.h>



/////////////////////////////////////

//

// The following simple routine executes

// on a GPU 

//

//

//



__global__ void AddKernel(int a , int b, int *result )

{

*result = a + b;

}



/////////////////////////////////////

//

// main - CPU entry point ....

//

//



int main( int argc, char **argv )

{

int result; // to store CPU int...



int *dev_result; // to store the GPU int...



// --------- Allocate memory for the device result...

// --------- Let us assume that function won't fail...



cudaMalloc( (void**)&dev_result,sizeof(int));



//----------- invoke the Kernel Function...

//----------- __global__ gives a hint to nvcc that 

//----------- the stuff has to be compiled by GPU compiler



AddKernel<<<1,1>>>( 2, 7, dev_result ); 



//----------- Copy the dev_result from GPU memory to 

//----------- CPU memory 



cudaMemcpy( &result,

dev_result,

sizeof(int),

cudaMemcpyDeviceToHost ); 







printf( "%d + %d = %d\n",2,7,result );





cudaFree( dev_result );



return 0;





}

Here is the dump of my visual studio command prompt.....




I:\GRAPHICS_RES\CUDA_LEARN\FirstCuda>nvcc -o test.exe CudaAdd.cu

CudaAdd.cu

tmpxft_000009a0_00000000-3_CudaAdd.cudafe1.gpu

tmpxft_000009a0_00000000-8_CudaAdd.cudafe2.gpu

CudaAdd.cu

tmpxft_000009a0_00000000-3_CudaAdd.cudafe1.cpp

tmpxft_000009a0_00000000-14_CudaAdd.ii



I:\GRAPHICS_RES\CUDA_LEARN\FirstCuda>test

2 + 7 = 9



I:\GRAPHICS_RES\CUDA_LEARN\FirstCuda>

It seems Bangalore do not have a single happy soul (or I could not reach them)

2012-01-09T21:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday,I landed in Bangalore to finish some personal chorus and the moment I landed at the Silk board,as usual,auto-wallahs began to cluster around me and others. I began to walk towards the bus stop to board a bus to Banasankari.

While waiting at the bus stop , I began to observe things around me. I saw pale faces,stubborn faces,disinterested faces , faces immersed in thought removed from surroundings and this intrigued me. I began to search for a happy face all the day and I could not find one till five in the evening.

It seems Bangalore has got three class of people

A) People who wants to make it big
B) People who want to retain what they have made ( current biggies )
C) An army of clueless people wandering around

I might be wrong here as sample space is small. But,I suspect there is some element of truth

Various projects as test automation architect at Intel Bangalore

2012-01-07T22:04:00.001-08:00

At Intel,I worked as a test automation architect (staff augmentation resource from UST global) when some projects required high degree of involvement. I worked with PCCG group , VPG , Mobile application group and Intel Malaysia.

Some of the activities undertaken include

1) Enhancement of Bios Testing Framework
2) Auto IT scripting,C/C++ scripts for Test automation
3) Setting up of VPG (Graphics driver testing ) automation group
4) Pilot testing of Anvil,a declarative test authoring tool
5) Product definition for POS machine using Windriver
6) Hiring of the first level of Near field communication test automation staff for Meego & Android
7) Trailing developers in P/Invoke,COM-Interop

Tools and Technologies :- Anvil , Visual C++ , Auto IT,Perl , Python , Visual C#

Enterprise application for a retail chain(Groovy/Grails/AdobeFlex)

2012-01-07T22:03:00.001-08:00

A software for retail chain dealing with medical instruments and pharmaceutical products is being developed at Ikya technologies,Trichur Kerala. The software has modules like Financial accounting, Inventory/Stores,Point of Sales,Purchase.

Being a concern distributed in different locations, they want data synchronization with in an hour,with their central server.

Role:- As a consultant , I am involved in the technologyselection,architecture and code quality. Defined the Data Synchronization strategy,Selected Oracle for the Central server and MySQL for the local server,Adobe Flex for rich client

application and Groovy and Grails for the server development. Wrote a tool to generate Action Script class files from Grails domain model and also wrote a service facade layer for one point of contact on the server.

Team size : 15

Technologies :- Groovy and Grails , Hibernate , Adobe Flex , BlazeDS , MYSQL , Oracle

RTTDeltaGen Low Poly modelling module

2012-01-07T22:02:00.000-08:00

RTT ( Real Time Technologies,Munich ) is the world's leading physically based photo realistic rendering company. With a suite of products under the umberla of their flagship product,RTT DeltaGen , the company has got massive footprint in the high end visualization industry. (more details can be gleaned from http://rtt.ag )

Their client Addidas required an automatic low-polygon converter from Rhino 3D generated T-splines model. The models are imported into DeltaGen using an enhanced RTT's directrhino plugin. Once the data is inside the software, an OpenNurbs based software module will process it and RTT's tesselator will be used to tesselate the polygonated Nurbs modeller into meshes of different granularity. The textures are baked into the low-poly models using Normal maps. Once the low poly models and normal maps are generated , the resulting resources are saved into Autodesk FBX file format to be viewed from Autodesk Maya (for correctness ) and Unity 3D ( for Point of Sale ).

Role :- Studied Autodesk FBX SDK 2012 , re-wrote parts of RTT's FBX writer to incorporate texture channels (for normal map , ambient occlusion map , transparency map etc). Wrote the bulk of technical spec for the Low Poly module. Wrote some DirectX 11 based minimal viewer for the records which we were spitting into the FBX module .

Tools :- Visual C/C++ , DirectX SDK , Autodesk FBX SDK , RTT DeltaGen SDK, MFC

Team Size :- 4

A nice story told by a friend - I suspect , some morals and fun are embedded in it

2012-01-06T19:17:00.000-08:00

An erstwhile colleague and friend narrated a story while we were having a telephonic conversation yesterday.

Here is the summary of story....

A "sanyasi" was travelling through a village street. While waiting under a tree , he noticed a lone struggling ant trying to get into it's dwelling. The sanyasi feared that ant will loose his life , if he has not managed to get into it's dwelling. To save the ant, he took the ant on his elongated beard and tried to ease his passage into the ant hive. The ant slowly went into the pack and sanyasi had a bunch of ants in his beard in return.

In the end , the sanyasi has to kill all of them to get out of the mess !!!.

Purchased NVIDIA GTX 550

2012-01-03T22:41:00.000-08:00

I was using NVIDIA GeForce 9400 in my home PC. Being an earlier generation card ( shader model 4 / DirectX 10/ OpenGL 3.x ) , the driver only supports OpenGL 3.2 and DirectX 10 ( DirectX 11 support was there through Software Rasterizer from Microsoft ). I did some DirectX 11 programming while I was in Munich and It had re-kindled my interest in Shader model 5.

Today,I purchased a card which supports DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.x in hardware. I have already got the book OpenGL shading language cookbook . I will program this card for some new Graphics "Gyan".

A Strategy to gain Knowledge

2011-12-28T00:45:00.000-08:00

While contemplating about learning strategies , I came across a good technique

Try to find out areas of our ignorance.

Do you need to be #1 to be the best ?

2011-12-28T00:36:00.000-08:00

A person was accusing me that arrogance regarding programming skills are bit more in me than necessary. Then , he began to take different skills of my skill-set and began to compare with some people we know and I found that there are guys better than me in each of the stuff he has mentioned.

After ten minutes of his verbal "abuse" , I told him the following

"I am not first in anything. but,I am good in all" !!!

Cognitive "Blindness" - a disease among programmers

2011-12-12T16:03:00.000-08:00

The Art,Craft and Science of Software engineering is getting sophisticated because of new programming languatges arriving on the scene. Recently, a renaissance has happened because of the arrival of languages like Scala,Ruby,Groovy,Erlang (into the mainstream) and rapid evolution of C#. Even C++ has fallen into the "trap" of fat libraries and esoteric language features.

To make sense out of this cacophony,I stepped back a bit and thought about it and modern languages can be approximated with a quasi-quantitative equation as given below

       Modern Languages = Object Oriented Programming +
                                        Functional Programming +
                                        Meta Programming +
                                        Declarative Programming +
                                        (Static Type Inference Or Dynamic typing ) +
                                        Language Level Concurrency

Honestly speaking,I was skeptical about the "power" of these languages and this feeling is rampant among most programmers which I am in touch with. I have shipped software using C/C++,C#,Java ( mainstream static languages ) and has worked with Python,Perl,Bash ( as scripting languages ). My introduction to programming was with Clipper ( which had most of the features of these languages !!! ) . I have written a LISP interpreter,learned Scheme (through EOPL and SICP ) and an avid student of programing paradigms (Imperative,Functional and Logic languages).

I have come across most of the elements of these modern languages. But,never got "converted" into them. One particular incident changed all. I purchased a book by the title "DSLs in Action" and it's examples were in Ruby,Scala and Groovy. While reading this book,I also purchased "Seven Languages in Seven weeks" by Bruce tate.

I have got a feeling that learning these new programming languages can enhance your ability as a programmer. Of late,I have started feeling that this convergence has the potential to make our programs much more reliable.

Once I got convinced about these innovations,I started speaking to people about the new revolution happening in the arena of Software Engineering. This made me aware of a new phenomena in software engineering practitioners community.

Almost all of them have blind spots as far as their cognitive awareness about computer programming is concerned.

Here are some mainstream programming languages and the probable "blindness"

C/C++ - I still live in 1970s
----------------------------------
Stereotypes:-I consider these guys as malloc/calloc/realloc/free people. From an abstraction point of view,this is too much machine centric. A vast majority of them use only the K&R C subset of C++. Another set of people use only pre-1998 features of the C++ language. Because these guys are having an affair with base features of the language, they are blind to most of the development happening in the outside world. It is very hard to converse with this group regarding new abstractions.

Exceptions :- People who really knows Standard Template Library (STL),Template meta-programming , boost libraries and C++ 2011 are the only set of people who are aware about the changes happening outside the immediate world. If you take a look at it,there are only "three" people in this group viz Bjarne Stroustrup,Herb Sutter and Andrei Alexandrescu. Of course, their followers who contribute or implement these libraries as well.

Suggestions:- Learn Modern C++ Programming Techniques (Andrei Alexandrescu's book is a must) , Template meta-programming is good,but it is not the solution for every thing. There are reflective languages out there. Learn either Java or C# to purify yourself. Also try to pick Groovy,Scala or Ruby.

Java - I do not know my future
--------------------------------------
Stereotypes :- Most of them are stuck in year 2000 mindset. After Generics,nothing has happened and the center of the world is POJO,ORM,XML and Code fluff. They do not know much about Operating Systems and life starts and ends with Java.

Exceptions:- Some step into Scala,Jython,JRuby or Groovy by choice or chance. The guys who are concerned with rapid evolution of C#,see these languages as a substituite. Still,legacy of codebase haunts them.

Suggestions:- Learn C++ and underlying OS,Flirt with JNI,learn Groovy or Scala and see what is brewing in C#

C# - I do not know what to do with what I have got
----------------------------------------------------------------
Stereotypes:- I want to acess DB and happy to use If/else/while/loop/select/update constructs of the language. All languages features are for Redmond people to implement their tools ( The Visual Studio !)
and some people who want to make a living through confusion.

Exceptions:- The guys who were forced to migrate from C++ and some people who are fascinated with
Functional features of the language.

Suggestions:- Learn C++ and Win32,Try to flirt with Mono on Linux,read about Scala,Groovy or write programs with some of them. You have got the best language in the world ( because of "shameless" borrowing of the features from all the programming languages ) and try to understand that.

Python/Perl/PHP etc - I want to finish my task,do not bother me
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sterotypes:- I am focused on finishing my application or automating my tasks. I am mostly bothered about making a livelihood out of this.

Exceptions:- People who choose these development platforms as a faster way to develop software and also aware about the C interface,library eco systems etc.

Suggestions:- Learn a semi-compiled language ( Java or C# ) , learn to interface your scripting system with C/C++. Also try to learn Ruby.

I think,It will take years before programmers think alike. Probably,they never will. Should they?

On a Vaccation and It's aftermath

2011-12-11T02:45:00.000-08:00

Currently , I am on a vaccation and in a position to decide what to do on a day to day basis. I am learning Physically based Rendering Techniques to improve my Computer Graphics Knowledge.

To learn these topics , One needs to be good in Differential Geometry, Radiometry, Photometry,Numerical techniques,Probability and Intersection calculations. As a start,from last week,I started learning Vector Calculus by consulting Various books. While searching my shelf,I stumbled upon my copy of Feynman's lectures on Physics and to my suprise,he has dealt the topic in a intuitive manner
in his Book #2. Thanks to that book and Advanced Engeneering Mathematics (Erwin Kreyszig

) , I now know what is meant by Gradient,Divergence, Curl , Green's Theorom,Stokes Theorom, Gauss Theorom,Solid Angle,Laplacian Operator inutitively and mathematically. The Knowledge gained from the book was really helpful in reading "Realistic Image Synthesis using Photon mapping" and now I know the rationale behind the Jim Kajiya's Rendering Equation.

I am struggling with following books

               1) Vector Calculus ( Marsden , Tromba )
               2) Advanced Engineering Mathematics (Erwin Kreyszig)

               3) Realistic Image Synthesis using Photon Mapping (Henrik Wann Jensen )
               4) Physically Based Rendering ( Matt Phar , Greg Humphreys )
               5) Radiosity - a Programmer's perspective ( Ian Ashdown )
               6) Feynman's lectures on Physics
               7) Geometric Tools for Computer Graphics ( David Eberley,Philip Schneider )
               8)  Mathematical tools in Computer Graphics with C# implementations

I had these books with me for at least three years and now, I am getting time and motivation to go through it. When I purchased those books,I never thought I will be able to use those algorithms. In the month of October 2011,I visited the Munich Office of Real Time Technologies (http://rtt.ag/ ) and the time spend there motivated me to study these techniques in a systematic manner.

The DAMned People , Xian Priests and Islamic money

2011-12-07T15:41:00.000-08:00

The controversy over the Mullaperiyar Dam is spiraling into a issue where emotions will dominate reason and average people are caught up in the issue. The issue has triggered sleeplessness in lot of people including the kids and It will be a problem for people who cross into Tamilnadu, to travel to Bangalore etc.

Yesterday,I happen to chance upon a person who sees a wider plot in the "DAM" game. The river Periyar flows through the areas which are traditionally dominated by the Kerala Congress party. It is a well known fact that the Kerala Congress party is backed by various Churches in the Central Kerala. They are worried that a group of men with connections in the middle east are foraying into their bastion and buying properties in the areas dominated by the party.

By raking up the Dam issue to a high pitch ( he agrees that safety concerns are real ) , a group of people are interested in protecting their haven and people on both sides of the border are caught up in the issue.

Personally,I am really worried about the Safety of the dam ( Since I happen to live on the banks of Periyar ) and have resigned to the fate.

A Clever Bangalore Algorithm to Snatch Your Mobile Phones ( and Other Belongings )

2011-11-29T19:06:00.000-08:00

I have seen it happening at least three times in last six months. I always guard myself and despite the caution , I fell victim to their operation.

In Volvo buses of Bangalore , a group of people will get into the bus by taking the daily pass. These strange "commuters" are unlike others who uses this facility. They make sure that they only board
buses which are having some standing passengers.

They will cluster around their target and create a stampede like situation, when the bus has reached a stop. By the time , "hungama" is over , they would have got out of the bus with your mobile phones.

Another group , they target is people who get into the bus. They will cross path with you and create obstructions and in the ensuing confusion , lift the phone and escape out of the bus.

Yesterday , around 8.30 pm at Jayadeva Circle , I was boarding a Volvo bus. When , I boarded the bus as the last passenger in the queue , I saw a group of men clustering around me. I realized the danger and were trying to protect my wallet. Then, suddenly a men from behind came in front of me and triggered a scuffle and I was holding on to my wallet. After they went out , I was relieved that they were not able to snatch my wallet. But, only after couple of minutes , I realized that they have achieved their objective of snatching my mobile, during the scuffle.

Be Careful , regarding this.

Cognitive Zoo - a new meme

2011-11-28T03:39:00.000-08:00

I have noticed a curious pattern over the years when you interact with people. Every one is forced to be in some kind of Silo ( In Some cases , radius seems to be big . That is all ) because of the path they are constrained into.

Every man is the product of his environment and the daily routine he is subjected into, by the fate. Moreover, If one is supposed to excel there , he should be focused and has to gloss over a lot of
stuff to stay focused. This is the reason for the relative cognitive gap of the people.

You talk to a intelligent man , average street smart fellow or a outright moron , as the discussion drifts , you can infer a pattern where every one is speaking the same "tongue".

After Introspection , I found that I am also suffering from the same problem and found out that no one is immune to this.

Thus , I name group of people having interest in intellectual matters as members of a "Cognitive Zoo". A Zoo is a place we visit to see different genres of animals and likewise , Cognitive Zoo is where you can see different set of humans with varying intellect,whims and fancies.

Some remarkable Books in BarCamp Kerala @ IIM-K

2011-11-22T00:13:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday , at the fag end of the day , I took a session called Some remarkable books. I had not prepare for it and I just told books which I happen to think at that point of time.

Here are some of them

1. Godel , Escher , Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
2. Fooled By Randomness - Taleb
3. Black Swan - Taleb
4.Impossibility , the Science of Limits & Limits of the Science - John D Barrow
5. Empror's new Mind - Roger Penrose
6. Shadows of the Mind - Roger Penrose
7. Algorithmics , the spirit of computing - David Harel
8. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - MIT press

Between SriDevi and Madhuri , there was Meenakshi

2011-11-16T18:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, while commuting to the office, for a change, I happen to hear Hindi Songs. Usually , they play Kannada Songs (in Red Bus ) and I have become a fan of Kannada filmi Songs.

Any Song which you do not understand the Lyrics will always be beautiful - I have spoken this
countless times.

Yesterday , happened to be Meenakshi Sheshadri's birth day and there was option to request songs from her movies. They played a song from Ghayal ( Sunny Deol , Meenakshi, Raj Babbar , Mousumi Chatterjee and Of course, Amrish Puri ) and Dhamini ( Rishi Kapoor , Meenakshi and Sushma Seth ).
Unfortunately , I reached my destination.

My thoughts went back to my teen days !

Now reading a book which can be considered as Biography of George Price

2011-11-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

I happen to hear about George Price because of a idiom in game theory called Evolutionarily Stable Strategy ( ESS ). The famous Hawk vs Dove embodies the concepts of ESS.

I am reading a book by the following title.

The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness

Lost my Handset and Had a peaceful two days

2011-11-13T06:19:00.000-08:00

Friday , I misplaced my handset in a Restaurant in Bangalore. The person who got the handset removed both the sims and might have started using the handset.

This enhanced my privacy and I am now left with my company provided Blackberry. Let me see , If some one is interested in contacting me. If , I am of interest , they can contact me @ praseedp@yahoo.com or praseedp@gmail.com

IITs & IIMs - Are they (still) Socially Relevant ? ( @ Barcamp Kerala 11 )

2011-11-07T00:50:00.000-08:00

Given below is the synopsis of my talk at the BarCamp Kerala which is going to be organized at the IIM-Kozhikode Campus ,on the 21st of November , 2011.

IITs and IIMs are regarded as crowning jewels of Indian Educational System. To clear the entrance exam and the follow-up GD ( in the case of IIMs ) requires some stuff between the ears. In the world of Distributed Education and CrowdSourcing , other than the purpose of fundamental scientific research , do we need centrs of excellence like IIMs and IITs ? Has IIMs and IITs benifitted the tax payer ? Since Most of the graduates never work in India , why should we spend for them ? Those instituitions creates a new kind of Intellectual caste system. Those kind of educational elitism , creates snobbery and mutual animosities among the peopele.

The details of the events can be retrieved from http://barcampkerala.org/

List of sessions are available at http://www.barcampkerala.org/blog/sessions/

How can we Learn something from people who are smarter than us ?

2011-10-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

Quite often , we happen to barge on to people who knows more than what we know about a particular subject. If the subject happens to be something which we consider ourselves as something , then , It is
more disconcerting.

A natural defense mechanism triggers in such situation and we will try to pose as something by hiding the inherent dis-belief.

The common reactions are

                            1) Be on the guard , speak less ( Posing ourselves as an expert )
                            2) Projection of our strong points and guarding the soul
                            3) Ignore the person in question by moving out ASAP.

I think , the best strategy is to acknowledge to ourselves that the person in front of us know more than us about the subject. By swallowing our pride , we should engage the person in conversations,to understand his strong points and how he has achieved better expertize. By asking good questions , you can make him speak and some of the idea will percolate to you and you can close the gap.

To do this , one needs Intellectual humility and should be able to acknowledge the sheer complexity of life.

Why dynamic languages are popular with startups ?

2011-10-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

I have seen people using Ruby on Rails , Groovy on Grails or PHP frameworks for writing sites , especially , if they are a startup. While discussing this matter with a friend of mine , his observation seems to be correct , for me.

He was of the opinion that the people who invest the money know that , all startups are not going to take off. By using these languages for the development , they can bootstrap very fast. If fails , failure is known pretty early. This is another instance of "Fail Fast" model.

After Adam & Eve and Countless others , It was my turn to sin with Apple

2011-10-22T13:36:00.000-07:00

At the Andechs , I saw apples hanging from the trees and nobody seems to care about the fruit. Till this day , I have not seen apples on a tree. I was hungry as well. We could not find a restaurant at the place Initially.

Then,I saw the above. Apples were placed in front of a house in a basket and a sheet of paper was also there. I think it is some kind of free takeaway for the pilgrims visiting Andechs. If you can read German , pls. help me to understand what has been written.

I told my intention to pluck an apple from the above tree to my colleague. He distanced from the stuff. I reached to a branch and plucked one !.

It was very tasty as It was taken from the tree. At least , I felt it so.

Eating a illegally plucked apple was risky , but , It was tasty as well.

Unforgettable Journey to Andechs ( a Catholic monastery cum Brewery !)

2011-10-22T13:19:00.000-07:00

I heard about Andechs only after coming to the Germany. A person here told that It is a good place to visit and also advised us to take S8 train and get down at Herrsching railway station. As per him , either one can walk or take a bus to the monastery.

Around 10.00 am , we started from Ostbahnof railway station to Hersching. We at first took U6 lane to reach Klinikum Grobhadern.We thought the place is walkable distance from there. But, It turned out that place is far away. So, we came to MarienPlatz and took S8 line to Herrsching. At a particular railway station just before we reached Herrsching, we saw nobody in the train. So, we got down there. Then , we were transported to Herrsching by a bus by MVG. The MVG ran a trip just for us two !

Around 12.30 , we reached Herrsching. We asked a lady about the way to Andechs from Herrsching. She told us that It is roughly eight or nine kilometers. But, I had heard that It was only five kilometers or so. We decided to walk .

The above picture is a lake at the Herrsching . The call it Ammersee. We took close to one hour to travel to Andechs through the woods. The bio-diversity of the landscape is great.

The above place is the entrance to the woods.

At the above place , we had almost walked five kilometers.

The above picture was taken at the entrance of the monastery.

The above picture is front view of the dome of the church.

The above picture was taken from the front of the monastery and one can see Alps in the background.

We ate at a restaurant very near to the monastery. Then, we visited the church itself. It was beer all around here. Even the statues seems to sip beer here. I was wondering whether it is a pilgrim center or It is a holiday maker's destination.

Around 4.45 pm , we decided to return from there. we began to walk back to Herrsching . On the way , my colleague and I had a difference of opinion regarding the way to take. We decided to part ways. He walked through the woods and I chose the journey via the road. In the end , I reached 12 minutes before him. So, he might have walked one kilometer more than me. Walking alone five or six kilometers in those kind of areas are little bit tricky. Finally , we managed to reach Herrschig railway station.

Including the walks inside the Andechs , we might have walked close to fourteen kilometers !

We met an Indian (who is settled in the US ) who had come to Munich for a business discussion. We got along nicely with him and discussed a lot of stuff about India , US and Germany. In the end , I am back in my hotel safely.

Tomorrow , we are planning to visit Neuschwanstein Castle.

Why I consider Mono is important for FOSS people ?

2011-10-21T20:56:00.000-07:00

In the past one year , I am hearing a silent appreciation for a Seattle based company for it's attempt to bring various programming models to the main stream from people who dislike the company, for some reason.. What has surprised me is most of them were either from the Java camp or the C++ camp.

Yesterday , while I was discussing different models with some programmers here in Germany , they also resonated the same. I did some thinking after this incident.

The Seattle based company's attempt to add new features at the platform level is a sure winner compared to other attempts to add features by "Syntatic Sugar". The implementation of Generics is one good example. The .NET has got support for Generics at the platform level. The Java , for compatibility reasons , chose "Erasure" ( they erase the generic code and substitute the Object based code there ) to implement the feature. It is not that Java Community Process do not have people to do it. The team which implemented Java Generics had members like Philip Wadler ( A leading authority on Functional Programming )

If you trace a look at the evolution of C# language , one thing is visible

C# 1.x - a Robust Java equivalent (and more ).
C# 2.0 - Generics Support
C# 3.0 - LINQ & Lambda ( Lambda can be considered as backend for LinQ )
C# 4.0 - Dynamic Typing support
C# 5.0 - REPL , Compiler as a service etc

I view C# as a multi paradigm programming language

It has support for
           Procedural Programming - make all methods static and classes just become namespaces
           Object Oriented Programming - classes
       Functional Programming - Lambda , First class functions
           Logic Programming - LINQ ( DataLog is subset of prolog ,equivalent to SQL )
           Native Programming - unsafe block , P/Invoke
           Dynamic typing - C# dynamic keyword.
           Generic Programming - Generics
           Aspect Oriented Programming - Attributes & Reflection
           Language Oriented Programming - Reflection , Compiler as a Service

In one language , you have got support for most of the programming models invented in the last sixty years !. There are other benifits like Occaml derived F# , C++ integration to name some more.

If you are a FOSS enthusiast , you can get everything through Mono Project. Mono is an Open Source Project , but it is not GPL licensed. But, in the name of licensing , would you rob the opportunity to become a better programmer ?

To learn all these stuff , through other channels (than Mono ) will force you to learn LISP, Scheme, Occaml , Prolog , Python , C++ and Java. This can take a lot of time.

Try to learn C# through Mono and Profit from It !

Single Assignment C - A functional programming language

2011-10-17T22:58:00.001-07:00

I happen to come across a functional language by the name SAC , aka Single Assignment C. It is good for array processing and has got a functional/dataflow sementics.

When I get time , I will just explore . If you have time , go to http://www.sac-home.org/

Trams - The best way to see the City of Munich

2011-10-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday , I happen to board a tram which is supposed to go to a place which I did not have a clue. Since I have got a MVG pass which can travel four rings (of the possible 16 rings ) , I was confident that the vehichle will pass through some S-Bahn or U-Bahn station.

In the end , It was a nice ride where we saw new open squares (yet to be visited - i mean ) and parks.
Since Trams travel through the main road , you can see places.

Deutsches Museum (German Museum ) - I am dumbfounded

2011-10-16T11:18:00.000-07:00

Last week , When Yogeshwar (my colleague ) and I had gone to the German Museum , It was about to be closed for the day. Today , we went there around 10.00 am and entered the museum around 10.15 am. The Entry fee is 8.5 euro.

For the next five hours , we were inside the museum. Initially , I started clicking at the specimens which shows German maritime tradition. After that , It was air powress. By this time , I stopped clicking and understood that It is futile to document all the stuff out there (It is too much stuff to be documented ). Then , I moved to Aerodynamics , Optics , Physics , Chemistry , Germany in the 50s , Printing , Space , X-ray , Glass , Ceramics and each of the section is worth watching for a day.

I felt like going back to the school to relearn all the basic physics , chemistry which was part of the syllabus. This museum can transform even a fool into a scholar !. After a while , I stopped watching and took some rest.

The curators of the museum has done some excellent work here. Not even a single dust particle on the specimen. I saw portraits of Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz , Carl Frederich Gauss , Herman Von Helmotz and other noted scientists.

The most important part of the museum is /that It shows 80% of the 19th century science happened in the German speaking world !. I felt like learning German to understand what has been written out there.

The Web site of the museum is http://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/information/

It is time to re-define Knowledge and Skill

2011-10-15T22:16:00.000-07:00

For the past one week , I have been fiddling with various software codebase from different sources. Some of them are David Eberly's WildMagic Engine , LLVM compiler infrastructure source , VTK source code base , Ogre source code base and OpenSceneGraph, to name a few.

I can understand the lingo of each of the source code base by the virtue of having worked with CAD/CAM systems , Real Time visualization , Compiler/Interpreter for DSLs , 3D rendering engines etc. I have implemented 2D rasterizers, 3D software renderers, computational geometry routines , Compilers which have gone into production code (These were solo projects )

When I started programming , It was possible for a programmer to know the crux of most of the stuff really well. I do not think that it is possible now a days.

Take the case of Wildmagic Engine source code. I do not think that a single Individual can master all of the concepts which has been translated into high quality C/C++ code. It might require 1000 man years of work to come up with such a code collection. All we have got is 50 years of productive life.
It is hard to combine 1000 man years of collaborative work and 50 man years of an Individual. The cognitive capacity of a single human is much limited. How can he learn Good C++ Software Engineering , Multiple Compiler Scpecfics , Build systems , Advanced Calculus , Computational Geometry , Real time Rendering , Physics , Collision detection and Polygon specifics in a thorough manner to produce such a code base ? I doubt, it is possible even for a smart person like David Eberly.
He has got intellectual capacity to understand the stuff , but to master it in the old world sense is
a sheer impossibility.

As another example , take the case of LLVM compiler infrastructure project. At least 100
bright people might have worked on it to produce such a code base. How am I supposed to understand everything that is happening over there?

Same goes with the VTK source code base as well.

A strategy to navigate such a terrain is

A) Learn the fundamentals like Graphics pipeline , Lexing and Parsing methods , CPU assembly language , Virtual Machines , Computational Geometry , Data Structures ( General and Domain Specific Data Structures ) , General Purpose Algorithmics including Computational Complexity,
Domain Specific Algorithms , Software Engineering and C++ based library design etc

B) Write Toy implementations of Compilers , Graphics Rendering pipelines , SceneGraphs ,
Polygon packages and Algoritms, to name a few,to gain the necessary vocabulary and confidence
to work with Industrial strength code base.

C) Try to improve mathematical sophistication by learning and relearning concepts from Discrete (Combinatorics , Logic etc ) and Continuous mathematics ( Calculus , Differential Geometry ),whenever we get time. Always try to understand the mathematical underpinnings of the stuff you
are dealing and have enough meta-knowledge to engage in a discussion.

D) Hack production quality code bases to understand the design , current issues , possible improvements in those projects and try to contribute stuff in a small way. At least write some
toy application programs or trivial/non-trivial extensions, to learn the stuff.

E) Try to network with the Individuals having similar interests.

The moral of the story is fool around with stuffs and have a base from where we can dig deep issue depending on the context.

There is no possibility of Cognitive Closure. Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz who lived 300 years ago might be the last person who was alleged to have posessed that.

Compiled LLVM for Windows using Visual Studio

2011-10-15T13:43:00.000-07:00

Three years ago when I had tried to compile LLVM ( http://llvm.org ) code base with Visual studio 2005 , It had failed. I have compiled LLVM on Fedora 10 and Debian Lenny to play with it , two years ago.

Today , after some sight seeing in Munich , I just out of curiosity , tried to install LLVM on my laptop. After three hours of searching and fiddling with the code base, I managed to compile and run simple tests to see whether installation was proper.

I also tested pre-compiled binaries of LLVM for Mingw32. When I installed Qt creator , I did get Mingw32 along with it.

I am planning to hack the LLVM source base and might port my compiler SLANGFORDOTNET ( http://slangfordotnet.codeplex.com ) to work with LLVM. In the process , I will have a C++ port of SLANGFORDOTNET along with a JIT compiler which generates X86 and X86-64 code on the fly.

Germany and Japan - a Parallel

2011-10-14T22:39:00.000-07:00

I happen to notice a curious thing when German Programmers speak about Computer Programming between themselves. They never switch to English . I have noticed similar pattern in Japan as well.

One plausible reason could be the fact that most of English books gets translated into the Native language of these respective countries. So, words might have been coined to reflect the meaning .

If you see the computer programming lingo or for that matter management lingo , most of the words are borrowed from Physics. I suspect Germany and Japan has got evolved vocabulary in these areas.

I think , we need to think about Czech , Greek , Italian and French along these lines. Since I have not visited those countries , I am not in a position to comment on that.

Dennis Ritchie - How he has impacted my life ?

2011-10-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

The demise of Dennis Ritchie , the creator of C Programming Language did not seem to get the attention which should have been due.

His book ( C Programming Language along with Brian Kernighan aka K&R ) and the language he created has helped me to earn a good living . (It has helped countless others too ! )

In the year 1993 , a guy by the name Mohammed told me that You cannot learn C yourself. In those days , If you know C , you are considered as some one at the top. People did scare me about the language by telling me that it is machine specific , not portable and unix centric etc.

The compiler which I had access was a pretty old Microsoft C ( which they co-developed with
Lattice and Lifeboat associates ) compiler. I happen to get the first edition of K&R ( incidently , Microsoft/Lattice compiler supported only old style function declaration ) book. The programs were very small and I found it difficult to comprehend. When I keyed those blindly , It seems to produce the correct output as per the textual description.

I still remember the Word count program in it. I took close to one week to understand it. I never had full time acess to a PC in those days. I purchased 2nd edition of K&R and was reading it every day. I did work with pencil and paper a lot.

Then , I got access to Turbo C 2.0 compiler where documentation was better and had a superb editior as well.

To this day , I wonder what would have happened to me as a programmer had I did not come across K&R book and the C language.

Studying C language from the K&R book was one of the best decisions I have made in my life. The Word count program , Shell sort , Quicksort , implementation of FILE using io.h , memory management , Reverse Polish notation , qsort routine , C declaration parsing are some of the memorable programs which I have come across.

Skills in C fetched me a career in Computer Programming . I consider myself to be a malloc/calloc/realloc/free guy.

I consider C's pointer notation as one of the remarkable notational breakthrough human species had and putting one's name against it as an inventor of that is a remarkable achievement.

This is an example where some one's work can have huge impact on others.

C++ - I'm happy when I am in Control !

2011-10-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

In the 1990s, I have programmed mostly in C/C++ with occasional forays into Assembly Language , Clipper , Delphi and Visual Basic. The advent of Virtual machine platforms like Java and C# , coupled with arrival of scripting languages like PHP,Python and Perl diminished the importance of C++ in my life.

Every now and then , I get to work with C++ projects. I even switched to Linux , so that I can work with some C++ projects. The arrival of MAC OS X through iPhone development gave me some opportunity to work with C++ and It's cousin Objective C.

Even when working with Virtual machine platforms , I had occasion where my knowledge of C/C++ helped. To use JNI and .NET Platform Interop , requires good skill set in both.

After a long time , I am working with C++ as the solo language in my project. Personally , I prefer to work with C++ than any other programming language. You feel like , You are in Control. I'm happy when I am in Control of the things around.

Dennis Ritchie passed away

2011-10-13T00:52:00.000-07:00

Just now , I happen to open my mail box and in the friend list , I happen to see "exit(0)" under Aashik's name. The link pointed to http://aashiks.in/blog/?p=270

C's pointer notation is one of the best discovery ( or invention ?) a human can have his name against. what more to say about him ?

A good/funny quote about the C++ language from StackOverflow

2011-10-10T22:39:00.001-07:00

C++ is like teenage sex:

* It's on everyone's mind all the time.
* Everyone talks about it all the time.
* Everyone thinks everyone else is doing it.
* Almost no one is really doing it.
* The few who are doing it are
      o doing it poorly;
      o sure it will be better next time;
      o not practicing it safely.

Some Must read books about the C++ language

2011-10-10T22:25:00.000-07:00

Now a days , I am seeing a trend where within the C++ programmer fraternity, there is difference in lingo while discussing the language. When I look back , I am seeing lot of possible reasons for this.

People like me (still ) prefer to see C++ as C/C++ and will use C subset of C++ , If possible. This is the same case with thousands of Linux/Unix developers. They mostly use C subset of C++ and call themselves C++ programmers.

Personally, I have forayed into Java , C# , Python for writing production code. I have seen a curious phenomena there as well. I program C in C++ , C++ in Java , Java in C# etc... That means , I use a venerable subset of the new language where my old idioms can be carried over.

In this post, I am implying "Idiomatic C++".

That is using C++ as a
                    1) Template based Object Oriented Programming Language
                    2) Template based Generic Programming Language
                    3) Template based Meta Programming Language

Actually , C++ can be considered as two languages in one. It has got a turing complete static language which is based on C++ templates , template specialization and partial specialization. It has got a dynamic language which does computation during run time ( usual C++ , you know ).

So , C++ can do
                     a) Compile Time Computation (Static meta programming )
                     b) Run Time Computations ( C++ proper )

How do you bell a cat which has got awesome power ?

Fortunately , C++ community had it's own share of good authors .

Here , I am going to list some important books which every C++ programmer should read.

1) Effective C++ by Scott Myers
2) More Effective C++ by Scott Myers
3) Effective STL by Scott Myers
4) Exceptional C++ by Herb Sutter
5) More Exceptional C++ by Herb Sutter

6) Modern C++ Design by Andrei Alexandrescu

7) C++ coding Standards by Herb Sutter/Andrei Alexandrescu

8) of course , C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup.

The above set of books will give you good grounding regarding the language. There are some more books you should read

1) Design and Evolution of C++ ( dated , still good ) by Bjarne Stroustrup
2) Inside the C++ Object Model (How stuff gets implemented ) by Stanley Lipman
3) C++ Templates in depth by David VanderMode/Nicolas josuits
4) C++ Template MetaProgramming by David Abrahams/Alexey Gutrovy
5) Applied C++ by Philip Romanik /Amy Muntz

Another book which I would like to suggest is

Generative Programming by Krzysztof Czarnecki/Ulrich Eisenecker. (2000 AD)

It covers then nascent topics like Aspect Oriented Programming , Meta Programming in C++,
Intentional Programming , Generators , Domain engineering. All the code snippets are in C++.

Perhaps the last book on C++ design. Then , C#/Java madness engulfed the world.

There are (books on ) topics which I have not covered like
             a ) Mixed Language Programming
             b) Windows Programming using C++
             c)   GNU Linux Programming using C++
             d)   Cross Platform Programming using C++

RMS , Steve Jobs and i

2011-10-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

Today morning , I happen to see a post in the ILUG ( or iLUG! )Cochin mailing list regarding the statement made by Richard Stallman about Steve Job's early exit from the planet.

This is what RMS wrote.

Steve Jobs06 October 2011 17:30

Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.
As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.
Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.

As per the person who posted the message , when the whole world was mourning and praising Steve Jobs, Stallman is happy that Jobs is gone.

This was what I replied to the post

It is an "awkward" reaction from RMS, as it can drive away people from FSF. Earlier , his "fanatic" followers

were doing the stuff and I am seeing this as another instance where leader has to echo the sentiments of his followers.

As far as I am concerned , Steve Jobs brought back MAC OS X into the mainstream and It has helped lot of people

in Kerala to make a good living through it. Now , there are close to five thousand iOS developers in Kerala alone.

Ideally , we programmers should love people like Bill (for making computing ubiquitous ) , Stall ( for paving way

for Linux to become a Industrial strength OS through GNU tools) and Jobs (for making computing a pleasant activity ) for making

this world better for us.

Let us look , how RMS and Steve Jobs have affected my life.

I do not own a MAC OS X machine or a iPhone/iPad/iPod. I am not a person who is fond of gadgets or aesthetics of some machines. I am not a FSF member and I do not have anything against proprietary software companies.

a) Primary influence was through Steve Jobs and Wozniack build Apple GUI system. In a way , It is a precursor to Windows OS which I did bulk of my programming.

b) RMS and his Free Software Movement is responsible for making Linux a viable operating system. I have used GNU tool chain and GNU utilities to consult on Linux based projects. A Port
of GCC to windows (MingW ) has been used in at least three projects.

c) I learned Objective C language through GCC tool chain under Linux and this gave me opportunity to work with iPhone/iPad development.

d) I did program iPhone/iPad and MAC OS X for close to an Year to make a living. I am thankful to Steve Jobs for making such a fantastic platform.

At a personal level , I am indifferent to Steve job's death ( all good and smart people die early , I have seen it happening time and again ) or Richard Stallman's remark on Steve Jobs. I have profited from their efforts to make a difference to the world we live.

Some snaps of Munich Marathon 2011

2011-10-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

I happen to be at Marian Platz (City center of Munich ) when Munich Marathon run was going on. Here are some snaps taken by me with my blackberry.

A Scary Escalator in the Munich Suburban Station !

2011-10-09T20:01:00.000-07:00

Munich has got undeground train station ( U-Bahn ) and suburban railway station (S-Bahn ). Some times , we need to commute through both to reach a destination.

One particular escalator was having an angle of 60 degree and I was bit scared to take that.

Allianz Arena , Munich Marathon , Olympic center @ Munich

2011-10-09T19:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (09-10-2011) , being a Sunday , I along with Yogeshwar visited Allianz Arena. I have seen this stadium in television during the 2006 soccer semi-finals between France and Portugal.

We took the U6 (U-Bahn ) lane and landed at the Frottmanig station.

After visiting the stadium , we came to the city center ( Marian Platz ) and Munich marathon was passing through the City center. During the morning , traffic was regulated and the reason became known when we saw the event.

Later , we took U3 lane to visit BMW headquaters , BMW museum and Olympic stadium .

First Weekend in Munich

2011-10-08T09:35:00.000-07:00

This is the first time , I am visiting Germany . Today , My colleague and I visited couple of places in Munich . First , we visited English Garden , one of the world's biggest urban public parks.

In the afternoon , we visited German museum as well.

Godel , Escher and Bach @ German Museum

2011-10-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

"Godel , Escher and Bach " is one of the best book on symbolic manipulation (and reasoning ) which I have come across , so far. I am having Douglas Hofstadter's "I am a strange loop " as well as "MetaMagical themas" with me. In the German museum book stall , I found lot of books on Escher paintings , Escher fifteen puzzles and even a german edition of the book , "Godel Escher and Bach ".

Dummies (Wiley ) does discriminate !

2011-10-08T09:13:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of dummies series of books and I am having quite a few of them in my shelf. I have not seen Indian editions of Calculus for dummies , Advanced Calculus for dummies etc.

In Germany , most of them are translated and It costs around 20 Euro per copy. I wonder when such titles will be available for me @ Kochi or @ Bangalore.

Who is Leibniz ? or What is Leibniz ?

2011-10-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz is great mathematician and philosopher in the 17th and 18th century. He invented Calculus ( independently of Issac newton ) and he is father of mathematical logic as well.

In Germany , there is a biscut brand which bears his name . ( It is like Bajaj or Mahindra , Lebniz might be a clan name of sort )

Found the german edition of "What is life ?"

2011-10-08T09:03:00.000-07:00

Erwin Schrodinger is a great physicist of the last century. He is well known for his wave equation. But , another little known fact about him is his book , "What is life ?". Some say it is responsible for most of the breakthroughs in genetics. I am having a copy of the book in my shelf. At the German Museum in Munich , I found the German edition of the book along with Schrodinger's cat. (Katze is the german for cat )

Some Gyan from my colleague

2011-10-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

A colleague of mine and I were discussing about technology , science and why some people are better than us in these things. I was opposed to emulating those people through brute force approach by concentrating on some limited area.

I equated brute force approach with Rape. We should seduce a subject than Rape it. I quipped.

He explained the stuff in a metaphoric way quoting from vedas.

There are three gan (pack ) in this world viz.

               a ) Asur Gan ( Daemons )
               b ) Dev Gan ( Devas )
               c ) Manav Gan (Humans)

Manav Gan falls between Dev Gan and Asur Gan.

Asur Gan gains the stuff through brute force ( or hard work ). Dev Gan gets the stuff through seduction ( or flirting with the stuff ) .

In the case of Manavs (humans ) , they can resort to rape or seduction. It depends upon the context.

I was dumbfounded by his plausible explanation.

What is a consensus ?

2011-10-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

We always stress for consensus while resolving any dispute.

"Consensus is a state where both parties agrees to tolerate each other's bullshit without qualm" - Praseed Pai , circa 2011 (@ Munich , Ostbanhoff bus stand )

Eating rice - a nostalgic encounter !

2011-10-07T19:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday,Yogeshwar Singh (my colleague )and I went to a Chinese restaurant in Munich to have lunch with some of our German colleagues. The ethnic Chinese man was taking orders in German and we ordered through our colleagues. It so happened that the dish I ordered was rice based and there was one additional bowl with white rice.

For a person from Southern India , Rice is everything. Yogeshwar , being form north did not have the same craving. I enjoyed the meals and ended up eating bulk of the white rice. I did tell them the importance of rice for us ( to avoid embarrassment of my affinity towards it ).

This reminds me of an event happened in 2005. One Johnson Fernandez and I were walking through the streets of Ithaca,Newyork. We spotted an Indian restaurant there. I vividly remember Johnson's smile after taking the rice (after four weeks ). I used to take a dig at him for this. Now, I became "Johnson" here.

How to gain Knowledge and Skill ?

2011-10-07T19:24:00.000-07:00

Now a days, Specialization is the name of the game. By collaboration , people have started producing amazing things.

When you are in the midst of people who have produced great things , you might feel yourself to be lagging behind. It is quite natural that you would want to emulate some of their achievements. Then , the person in question will recklessly work hard to gain skill in the area which he has come across and some kind of gain will be there for sure.

For the sake of argument , let us think that this person has succeeded in achieving his or her goal of emulating feats of people in the new environment. Other than , a self-satisficing nirvana, how can he have some take away for his future endeavor ? At a personal level, I have found out that attacking new things with brute force is counter-productive and have other side effects.

IMHO,Attacking intellectual and skill "gap" issues should be done with a broad intellectual framework. It should be done in a gradual manner.

Most often , organizations which has produced remarkable things does consist of people with deep knowledge of the particular subject and majority of them can speak from first principles. For this , one needs to study theory behind what they practice. This takes time and for each additional hour spend on this will be really rewarding .

Some traits of these guys are
           a ) They have analytical/conceptual frame of mind
           b) Most of them are having a broad spectrum of interest
           c) They go deep and sideways to understand things
           d) They have got their fundamentals right
           e) Good meta-mathematical skills
           f) They are focused
           g) They learn from peers as much as they learn themselves.
           h) They are philosophically inclined ( Philosophy of science ! )

To close the gap , one needs to attack things in a slow and steady manner. Some of the stuff above takes years of study to be "literate".

Who is a geek ?

2011-10-06T11:16:00.000-07:00

"A geek is a nerd who understands what he speaks !" - I happen to come across this today at a Lunch time chat .

Stepped into a Bi-cycle lane and It was almost fatal.

2011-10-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

The day I landed in Munich , I was taking a stroll through the adjacent area of my apartment. I was walking along the pedestrian way and got side stepped into the bicycle lane. I had a "altercation" ( a mild form of collison ) with a bicycle.

The stuff would have been nearly fatal. Now, I am very careful with the stuff.

"Punjabi" Fun @ Munich

2011-10-05T19:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday , I went to a suburb called Ostbahnof in the Munich city , along with a colleague of mine. We went there to purchase travel pass (within the city of Munich ) for the month of October.

While we were at a restaurant , there was some kind of heated argument between two Individuals in the German language. One of them , seemed to be like a person of Caucasian descent and other one seemed to be a "Desi" guy.

Suddenly , one of them passed an obscene remark about a group of girls hanging out (and about us as well ) there in Hindi. Impulsively , I asked , "Did you speak Hindi ?"

The reply with a laughter was , "No,It is in Punjabi". It turned out be that both of them were from Lahore,Pakistan.

Reading the "Generative Programming" Book !

2011-10-05T13:36:00.000-07:00

I got hold of a copy of the book , "Generative Programming" written by Krzystof Czarnecki and Ulrich W. Eisenecker .

It is a fantastic book , considering the fact that it was published in the year , 2000. There is good coverage of C++ template meta-programming , Aspect Oriented Programming and Domain Engineering.

Everything is fun , If you do not do it to make a living

2011-10-03T12:08:00.000-07:00

My colleague (Yogeshwar Singh Bisht ) and I reached this conclusion just now watching a group of air cabin crew moving towards the flight at Bangalore Airport. He initially observed that their profession is cool one. Go around the world and make a living. It is "Mauj Masthi" all the day.

Then , in the ensuing discussion we reached a "compromise" resulting in the observation , "Everything is fun , if you do not do it to make a living ".

Prithviraj "English" contorversy - My thoughts in Malayalam

2011-10-01T23:47:00.000-07:00

പ്രിത്വിരാജും, അദേഹത്തിന്റെ ഭാര്യയും , ജോണ്‍ ബ്രിട്ടാസുമായുള്ള അഭിമുഖം കാണുവാന്‍ ഇടയായി . അയാളുടെ വേറെയും അഭുമുഘങ്ങള്‍ ഞാന്‍ ഇതിനു മുമ്പ് കണ്ടിട്ടുണ്ട് .

അയാള്‍ പരന്ന വായനയും, ചിന്താ ശക്തിയും ഉള്ള ആളാണ്‌ എന്ന് എനിക്ക് മനസിലാക്കാന്‍ സാധിച്ചിട്ടുള്ളത് . അയാള്‍ പറയുന്നതിന് അതിന്റേതായ യുക്തി ഉണ്ട് താനും . ( അയാളോട് ചോദ്യകര്താവിനു "ചോദ്യ സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യം" ഉള്ളത് കൊണ്ടാണ് പല വിവാദങ്ങളും ഉടല്‍ എടുക്കുന്നത് )

അയാളെ സംബന്ധിചിടിതോളം ഇന്നത്തെ സൂപ്പര്‍ സ്ടാരുകള്‍ ഒരു ശല്യം തന്നെ ആന്നു. അവര്‍ പ്രായത്തെ മാനിക്കാതെ കോളേജ് കുമാരന്‍ മാര്‍ ആകുന്നതു നമുക്ക് പലപ്പോഴും ആരോച്ചകമയിട്ടു തോന്നിയിട്ടില്ലേ ?. എനിക്ക് തീര്‍ച്ചയായും തോന്നിയിട്ടുണ്ട് .

നമ്മുടെ അതിര് കവിഞ്ഞ മാതൃഭാഷ സ്നേഹം നമ്മുടെ ആംഗലേയ ഭാഷ കൈകാര്യം ചെയ്യാനുളള കഴിവിനെ സാരമായിട്ടു ഭാതിച്ചിട്ടു ഉണ്ട് എന്ന് തന്നെ ആണ് എനിക്ക് അഭിപ്രായം പറയാനുള്ളത് . അങ്ങനെ ഒരു വിഷയം പ്രസ്തുത അഭിമുഘതില്‍ വന്നിട്ടുണ്ട് എങ്കില്‍ നമ്മള്‍ അതിനെ ഗൌരവത്തോടെ കാണേണ്ട വിഷയം ആണ്.

ഒരു സാമൂഹിക പ്രസക്തി ഉള്ള വ്യക്തി ഒരു ജനതയെ തന്നെ അപമാനിക്കുന്ന തരത്തില്‍ പറയാന്‍ പാടില്ല എന്ന് ഞാനും വിശ്വസിക്കുന്നു . എനിക്ക് മനസ്സില്‍ ആക്കാന്‍ സാധിചിടിതോളം അയാളുടെ ഭാര്യ ആണ് അത് പറഞ്ഞത് എന്ന് ആണ്. അത് തന്നെ കൂടി കാഴ്ച്ചയുടെ കാരണം എന്തായിരുന്നു എന്ന ഒരു ചോദ്യത്തിന് അവര്‍ ഉത്തരം പറയുമ്പോള്‍ ആണ് അവര്‍ അത് പറഞ്ഞത് .

അവര്‍ ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് ഭാഷ കൈകാര്യം ചെയ്യാന്‍ അറിയാവുന്ന തെന്നിന്ത്യന്‍ താരത്തെ കുറിച്ച് സെര്‍ച്ച്‌ ചെയ്തപ്പോള്‍ പ്രിത്വിരജിന്റെ നാമം വന്നു എന്ന് ആണ് പറഞ്ഞത് എന്ന് ആണ് മനസിലാകാന്‍ സാധിച്ചത്. ( ഇത് ഞാന്‍ യൌടുബില്‍ നിന്നുള്ള ഹസ്ര ചിത്രത്തിന്റെ അദാരത്തില്‍ ആണ് പറയുന്നത്. ചിലപ്പോള്‍ ഞാന്‍ പറയുന്നത് മുഴുവന്‍ ശേരിയവന്നമെന്നില്ല.

തെറ്റുണ്ടെങ്കില്‍ ദയവായി തിരിതുവാന്‍ അപേക്ഷിക്കുന്നു . )

ഞാന്‍ മമ്മൂട്ടി , മോഹന്‍ലാല്‍ എന്നിവരുടെ ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് അഭിമുഖം കണ്ടപ്പോള്‍ അതില്‍ ഒരു ചെറിയ ശേരിയില്ലേ എന്ന ഉല്‍പ്രേക്ഷ തീര്‍ച്ചയായും ഉണ്ടായി .

പ്രിത്വിരാജിനു ലോകവിവരം ഇല്ല എന്ന് പറഞ്ഞവര്‍ക് കുറച്ചു ചികിത്സ വേണമോ എന്നാ സംശയം തോന്നാതിരുന്നില്ല.

ഇപ്പോള്‍ തന്നെ അല്ല്ളൂ അര്‍ജുനുന്റെയും , മഹേഷ്‌ ബാബുവിന്റെയും സിനിമ കാണാന്‍ നിര്ഭാന്തിടരവുണ്ണ്‍ നമ്മള്‍ക് പ്രിത്വിരാജ് എന്ന നടന്‍ ഒരു അനുഗ്രഹം തന്നെ ആണ് എന്നാണ് എന്റെ വ്യക്തിപരം ആയ വിശ്വാസം .

ഞാന്‍ എന്റെ കുടുംബത്തെ പ്രിത്വിരാജ് , ആളു അര്‍ജുന്‍ , മഹേഷ്‌ ബാബു എന്നിവരുടെ മൂവിക്കു കൊണ്ട് പോകാറുണ്ട് .

മലയാള മനസ്സിന് ഒരു സ്വല്പം മാറ്റത്തിന്റെ ആവശ്യം ഉണ്ട് എന്ന് ആണ് ഈ വിവാദം വിരല്‍ ചൂണ്ടുന്നത് .

Ich bin nach Deutschland

2011-10-01T22:38:00.000-07:00

From Tuesday , I will be visiting Germany for the first time for a business purpose. I will be traveling to Munich form Bangalore, via Paris.

In a way , there is a personal emotional connect with this visit.

Television appeared (reached some penetration ) in our part of the world in the year 1986. Incidentally , that year happen to be the year of the 1986 Soccer world cup. I still remember the quarter final match between Brazil and France ( In which France won). I also remember an excellent movie which was screened just before the match by DoorDarshan viz "Pirates of the twentieth century". This was the first match which I saw the complete game.

I could not see semi-finals, because of the timing (The world cup was in Mexico ). I did hear that France was trounced by Germany and Argentina beat Belgium for Argentine/German encounter in the final. I had not seen any German match before that ( I have read in news paper that Germany was a previous edition finalist and I had seen ten minutes of Scottland vs Germany match in which Scotts scored the first one and Germany equalized ).

We were matching the game at a friend's home. There were close to fifteen people watching the game together. My friend's father and I were the only two supported Germany. All were in "Maradona fever". The first goal was scored by some Jos Louis Brown ( who got 1500 cup of wine for this feat or so ) and Argentina scored one more. I liked the way Schumacher (Goal keeper, I used to call him Shoemaker ) , Rummenigae ( for his blonde hair ) and Voeller, for their skills. In the second half , Germany equalized very quickly and Unfortunately , Argentina scored third goal ( Still, I consider it to be a off-side goal ) to clinch the Cup. The Next day , for being a German supporter
I had to suffer great humiliation in the school.

I forgot about Germany for a while and It was Dutch fever during the 1988 euro ( I had more consciousness about the things around, at that time ). I was in dilemma whom should I support. I liked both and finally the match was won by Dutch. This event , made me read about Germany through books and periodicals. I began to watch UGC programs in DoorDarshan which used to air programs from German TV channels ( programs of science/literature/management nature ). I came to know about people like Otto von Bismarck , Gottfriend Wilhem von Leibniz , Adolf Hitler , David Hilbert (mathematician ) , Herman von Helmotz , Munchausen (a myth ? ) etc.

Another thing was emergence of Boris Becker as a formidable tennis champ. I began to take note of German hockey team because of their skills. My "shock" was the emergence of East Germany as the second place holder ahead of US in the 1988 seoul olympics. In those days , for every Indian , Soviet Union is the most powerful force and then , America. I am hearing Germans in between them.

I became a German fan and began to support Germany in most games ( partially because, supporting Germans was easy as they used to excell in most games and other is because of admiration of their Soccer , Hockey , Tennis and Athletic skills ). The 1990 world cup was a turning point as most people in my vicinity were also convinced about German football ,because of their Victory in the world cup.

Shortly , after the world cup , German unification happened. I still remember the live pictures from DoorDarshan which used to show changes in Romania , Poland , East Germany etc. Helmut Kohl was the chancellor during that time. I was also an avid reader of Time and Newsweek magazine.The German unification prompted me to study about previous unification attempts by Bizmarck (1871) , Adolf Hitler (1933 ) etc. I learned that German Language is spoken in Austria , Switzerland , Czech repulic etc. as well.

The "obsession" for Germany subsided as I matured . Still , I always want Germany to win in most of the Games which I watch. I have read about Munich , Hamburg , Berlin etc. in print and have seen Visuals. I might see some of these cities by being there ( I am sure about Munich !).

I might write about my visit , If I get time !.

Levels of Description about a Project

2011-10-01T20:56:00.000-07:00

I and an erstwhile colleague of mine were discussing about knowledge transfer regarding a project where primary architectural and implementation decisions were made by me. I was there in the project for the first six months of it's development.

The colleague in question has got a varied background with exposure to such technologies like Java/Spring/Struts/Groovy, .NET/C#/WCF and iPhone/Android development. He is the person to whom I transitioned the project know-how.

Since , he is also moving out (now the application is in production ) , he has to do the KT to a new guy with five years experience in .NET. The application in question contains a iPad client and .NET server infrastructure . The system uses various patterns from Gof , POSA , DDD (Eric Evans ) and POEAA (Martin Fowler ) to structure it's business logic. Moreover, It is an Ocassionally Connected Application ( OCA ) with deep synchronization issues.

From our discussion , Knowledge transfer has to happen from different perspectives viz.
(not in the same order )

              a ) Operational perspective ( Bug fixing , tweaking app code ,module description )
              b ) Technology perspective (Technology ingredients )
              c ) Platform perspective ( Choice of development platform , libraries , language )
              d ) Architectural/Integration perspective
              e ) Domain/Functional perspective
              f ) Data model perspective
              g ) Delivery model perspective ( Product , Application service provider )
              h ) Configuration perspective

English Language Snobbery in India - Why some people consider themselves as "superior" ?

2011-09-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

I have come across a kind of snobbery circling around one's English language skills in India. Some times , people tend to fallaciously believe that mastery (relative ) of the English language indicates a superior level of intellect. Of course , due to sociocultural reasons , English is one of the best thing to have happened to this world.

It all starts in their childhood. Some people tend to have their language genes "straight" and show superior verbal and writing skills, compared to the average. Since the stuff has given them some competitive advantage , they tend to consciously put extra effort to improve their fund of words and skills in sentential composition, to gain some kind of self-gratification. Most of their peer circle will christen them as "Shakespeare".

I like such people because, they enhance our linguistic skills. Too much love for anything is counter productive. In their quest to improve their language skills, they hit the utility wall (Law of diminishing marginal utility applies here ). The poor "Shakespere" does not seem to realize it.

These people would have gained a lot were there was a law which invites capital punishment for your gramatical mistakes and poor sentential composition.

What they tend to forget is that language has got other purpose as well. Every language is a communication tool as well as a representational tool. The laws of Grammar are there to bring
down ambiguities while communicating your ideas. The human mind can easily disambiguate some stuff based on the context and past experience , even if there are some flaws in the grammar. Since Languages do evolve over a period of time , even gramatic rules are not stationary. These "Shakespeare's" will cling on to the classical usage ( so-called King's English ) and attack anyone who has forgotten to put a comma here or full stop there. Those stuff are really important , But , these snobs put their "rage" in an insulting manner. For them , first impression is the best impression. For a mistake you might have committed long back , they will still accuse you about your lack of language skills.

Among the software professionals , I have come across a pattern where people with good technical skills slowly focus on the content and for them , grammatical correctness is a secondary concern. When you communicate your ideas , context and the content also gains equal importance. But, these shakespeares won't spare us there. ( I have been a victim of such accusations even today ).

Indeed , English language gives you a better life ( at least in India ). But, it is true upto a point and slowly "meat" (content ) gains importance as the texture ( communication ).

I have not been able to tackle these "Shakespeares" in my midst because of my fear of loosing their companionship. Of course , they have helped me to improve my language skills. ( Had it not been for them , I would not have been able to blog ! ).

This is a case where "English snobs" are people whom you are forced to live with , despite your discomfort !

Discovered (for myself ) a new Singer - Raghu Dixit

2011-09-29T20:34:00.000-07:00

When I commute for work in Bangalore , one thing is for sure that you will be bombarded with Kannada filmi music. You are forced to "Invest" your ear to listen to this. Slowly, I started liking the Kannada film songs.

The first series of songs I liked were "Shiva Anta Hogittude" from Jackie (My ten year old son can dance that ) , Jackie title music , songs from Sanju Weds Geetha etc.

Couple of times , I have heard a good song whose lyrics goes like "Poojege Bande Mahadeshwara" . I felt it to be a devotional song converted into a rock song. I searched youtube and came to know that the song is from the movie "Psycho". I liked the video. The video features Raghu Dixit, a cool singer. I heard couple of his other songs as well.

You can enjoy the song @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSmggknxQxo

Computer Programming For Better Cognition

2011-09-29T18:47:00.000-07:00

Most people start Computer Programming due to academic compulsions or from compulsions to make a living . Because of a booming services economy , most of the people in this category were successful in having a better quality life through Computer Programming.

We have contempt for anything which you do routinely. Most software professionals hate Computer Programming for this very reason.

Here , I am going to suggest some reasons which will help you to have a much richer life through Computer Programming. In my parlance , "Richness" means a life with Awareness.

At first , Computer seems to solve any problem which we can devise algorithms for. Wrong !. There is something called Algorithmic Complexity ( Big-O stuff ) which should be linear , quadratic or cubic at the most for having a working computer program.

Try to find possible permutations of "Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog". It is easy devise a Permutation algorithm , But, this program will take ages to execute.

"Most of Combinatorial optimization problems are not tractable". This shows the complexity of the world and inability of humans to cope up with things around. In a way , this shows the limitations of our innate intelligence.

How to come out of it ? We go for something called Randomized Algorithm to have a close enough solution to our problems. Such solutions are not good , if we are aiming for a deterministic solution.
Large class of problems in finance , supply chain/logistics and rendering are solved with this approach.

Another paradigm which we can use is Genetic Algorithms and It's variational cousin Genetic Programming. They borrow ideas from Biology to model problems as String ( Strings generated out of finite alphabet. From a reductionist perspective , humans are strings composed of alphabets A,C,T,G ) and by applying Genetic operators Iteratively converge to a good solution. ( It does vindicate Darwin's Theory of Evolution by natural selection ). Lot of problems in Scheduling , VLSI design are solved using this algorithm.

There are large class of problems which are not computable as well. So, we humans are vulnerable to lot of risks because of lack of understanding about the universe. Exploring these Computer Programming models will help you to understand the complexity of this world in a better manner. You will become good at Mathematics , Biology , Problem Solving and Analysis of issues.

My personal experiments to learn these stuff have made me a better(?) human being . It has helped me to analyze my own stupidity , biases and other fallacies. These issues convinced me that as an Individual , my cognitive ability cannot process all the variables to take the next decision.

Snobbery nation !

2011-09-29T18:08:00.000-07:00

I have not seen any Indian who has not been a "victim" of snobbery, so far. If all of them are facing it , it automatically implies that we are also contributing to this mess. Inadvertantly , we are snobs as well.

Snobbery comes from ignorance !

Of course , all men are not equal. But, earth is a closed system and there is no escape from this. A smartie and a dumbo are equally vulnerable from physiological survival point of view.

Most snobs have some traits in common

          a) They are self centric ( or self obsessed )
          b) They lack respect for others ( I am Ok , You are not Ok )
          c) They lack broad perspective and human values.
          d) They most probably are in a silo
          e)   They are cocksure ( border line between confidence and cocksureness is narrow )
          f)    Their parents might be Snobs themselves

Snobbery is a moral consequence of India's Economic growth which spawned lot of neo-literates ( semi baked knowledge ) and neo-rich ( people who suddenly got disposable income )

I chanced upon a Company Website !

2011-09-28T18:18:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine happen to mention about a company in Infopark (Kochi) which is into the Mobility domain. He came to know about the company through his network. This was last week and once again name of this company popped up in a different context. (This time , I was discussing lack of SSL (TLS ) library support while developing iPad applications. Recompiling OpenSSL is an option. It is bulky !)

Today , I googled to find the company website and was able to locate the site @
http://www.rapidvaluesolutions.com/blog/ (Google took me to their blog site )

I read some high quality articles there. I liked the Windows 8 vs Apple iPad article and found Native apps vs HTML 5 development article to be thought provoking. ( My personal belief is that developing
hybrid apps is also a good option. Use Web browser controls (UIWebview in iOS ) in native app to write most of the UI in HTML 5. Ease of HTML/CSS and power of the platform APIs in one go. )

I suspected that articles might have been written by professional ( technical ) writers or management consultants. Out of curiosity , I just browsed the management team page. It is run by erstwhile management consultants and technical consultants ( Their focus is though on product development )

I am looking forward to a day where some people who got their employment there, starting similar ventures in future. This can put Kerala up in the IT value chain.

How do you come out of Technical difficulties while developing Software ?

2011-09-28T17:50:00.000-07:00

Recently , I happen to chance up-on a person who is stuck up with a programming problem. Since there were not much people in his friend circle (or family circle ) working as a software professional , It has been a precarious situation for him..Some who do work are in a different sub-domain. ( the problem of specialization haunts him ).

Being from a remote village , he does not have much social skills. If you take a look around , you can see hundreds of them !. ( I am speaking about , Indian context )

Here are some methods to rescue yourself.

a) Google it !
   Only problem here is Google spits matches to what you key in (Garbage In. Garbage Out ). You should learn to control the Google site !.

b) StackOverFlow
         Browse through the questions over there. Do post your questions ? Here also , you need to slowly master the craft of putting the questions in a right manner.

c) Discussion Forums
         Join some Discussion forums. Sites like CodeProject , CodeGuru are excellent discussion forums.

d) Google Groups on the subject

e) Join a Local mailing list or user group
            K-mug (http://k-mug.org ) for people from Kerala ! . Such local groups might be there everywhere.

f) Read articles from various sites

g) Buy some books !
            Very important.

h) Go to standard documents . For everything there is a standard.

i) Go for technical events like User group meeting , Barcamps etc.

j) Network with people in the similar domain (and situation ).

Programming Interview Question books

2011-09-27T19:24:00.000-07:00

In the market , there are a new breed of book(s) which helps people to attend programming interviews in a confident manner. These books does server a purpose for the people who already knows their subject. It enhances their knowledge for sure.

It is rumored that most of the interviewers in a famous Seattle based company uses a particular book as a reference guide for their Interviews.

How does this process helps a company which develops products based on algorithms and other deep fundamental topics in the computer science where mathematical sophistication is also necessary?.

The simple answer is deep stuffs are done by PhD's and Professors . These books help to train programmers to better understand these smarties.

One thing is for sure , you are compelled to read it . Otherwise,you will lag behind the people who have peeked it !.

Risk management vs Fairness

2011-09-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a situation where employee of a company was evicted prematurely after he has submitted his resignation.

It was , like "we have been waiting for your resignation so that we can terminate you !".

The company tried to persuade the person to stay back. Moment they realized he is not going to , they evicted him by paying severance money.

I investigated the cause and most probable reason could be the "clout" this person had with the client ,was perceived as a risk by the company management.

The Risk was spotted by a manager who is also leaving the company ! . He showed more concern for the Kingdom than the rulers, even when he is also deserting.

In the name of risk management , Fairness was swept aside !.

Idiomatic C++ (aka C++ ) vs Pragmatic C++ ( aka C/C++ )

2011-09-26T20:50:00.000-07:00

Having started programming in the C era , most of my generation approached C++ as a better C. That paid rich dividends where we could leverage existing code and incrementally learn Object Oriented Programming and Generic Programming in a phased manner. Generic Programming boiled down to
usage of Standard Template Library.

Recently , I came across a code base where they have used idiomatic C++ constructs. They have got strict guidelines for documentation , error handling etc. They have used most of the idioms from herb sutter, Andrei Alexandrescu , Scott meyers etc. The code uses C++ template mechanism and C++ template meta programming as well.

This is a case where people who are smarter than me , focused in one language ( C++ and at max bindings to other languages ) , has read all the standard literature and are true practitioners !.
Initially , I felt like being asked to write a novel (done by novelist ) to a Journalist. (Both juggle words , but former seems to be bit above !. No offence , intended )

Windows Runtime - COM is back ! , I am having smiles !

2011-09-24T22:37:00.000-07:00

I happen to hear from a friend of mine (Mathew, from Kochi ) that Microsoft is unleashing a technology called Windows runtime and it is also named as "Don Box's Revenge". He also mentioned that COM is making a comeback.

That means C++ is back as an application programming language ?!

I first encountered the term COM from David Kruglinski's Inside the Visual C++ 4 book. He had given description about COM in his appendix using a simulated COM interface involving space ships etc. I thought , why they are trying to do things in a complicated manner when easier ways are available. Kruglinski's book was a MFC book and it talks about Automation ( IDispatch ) and MFC's CCmdTarget class ( which encapsulates IUnknown ). This was in the year 1996.

For the next two years , I struggled with books like Inside Ole ( Kraig Brochshmidt ) , Inside COM ( Dale Rogerson ) , countless articles ( I remember Crispin Goswell's COM programmer's cookbook and an MSDN article called "CPP to COM" ) and finally Frank E Redmond's "DCOM book " gave me the click point which gave me the COM nirvana.

I was the first and to my notion only person who has taught COM as a course in the state of Kerala (in the year 1999). I designed , delivered a course for then nascent Nest Cyber Campus in the year April, 1999. I started with a C++ class and gradually moved the students to COM. This was really successful.

From 1998 to 2001 , I was regarded as a COM guru which gave me good fame , couple of good job offers and some money through Consulting. The arrival of ATL (reached critical mass during Visual C++ 6 ) boosted my credentials because people were new to templates , COM , Multithreading .

All things have to have an end , so the saying goes. People who cannot navigate COM territory drifted to GNU Linux programming or Java Platform. Java implemented most of the features at the language level compared to COM's technology level offerings. Visual basic and Borland's Delphi helped people to write COM objects fast. But, Visual Basic's appartment model threading forced developer's to choose ATL as the only mechanism to write Component's which can run at the Session scope or Application scope of Active Server Pages ( ASP ).

Then , C# arrived on the scene. C# had all things Java and more !. C# edged out C++ from the application programming landscape and people who resisted the change were in for some kind of career crisis. Finally , I also moved to C# ( "You made me a Communist" saga ) and mentioning COM in public was heavily crisized by people around me. Then, it was Managed code nirvana all around. Ocassionally , I have written a Visio Pluggin or Outlook addin using COM/C++. Finally , I wrote an Open Source compiler ( http://slangfordotnet.codeplex.com/ ) in C# to silence my critics.

After hearind about Windows runtime , I read couple of articles and saw a video from Channel 9. The COM is back with a bang. All the Windows runtime objects implement IUnknown and Introspectable ( new name for venerable IDispatch ) . Windows runtime is mix of COM runtime and CLR run time. It seems to use CLR meta data format for native components as well.

Then they use some thing called Language projection ( fancy name for Language mapping ) to map meta data to programming language constructs. As per the diagram , C++ projection is native mapping , VB and C# through the CLR and Javascript through Chakra runtime.

When I reached back to Kochi this weekend , I ran to my book shelves and spotted my worn out copy of Don Box's Essential COM and read it ! .

My C# friends are pissed off and this has given me some kind of pleasure !!

"Coolie Programmer"- a fresh look !

2011-09-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

In the late 90s , there was a Polish Born Swedish Naturalized Manager , to whom I was reporting to for a period of three years. He was no oridnary manager and he has written an Electronic CAD product for Windows in the 1991/1993 time line as a solo programmer. He is one of the best Programmer I have come across till date. He used to write the bulk of the code for the application and I was instrumental in re-engineering the product's graphics engine for 32-bit Windows.

At times , when I used to "cheat", He used to utter a phrase , "Do not behave like a Coolie Programmer.".
I had a dislike for that usage back then and I used to quip to myself that compared to other programmers
in my cirlce , I have done a lot ( like Compiler construction , 2D/3D vector graphics , Font engines etc ) and
this fellow is calling me a "Coolie Programmer".

It took close to two years for me to get an appreciation from him. I got it , when I emulated 32 graphics under Windows 95 so that our application can run on 16-bit graphics subsystem of Windows 95 without
changing a single line of application code.

When I moved on , I really understood the meaning of his usage , when I saw the mentality among most of the programmers whom I have come across.

How can you detect a coolie programmer ?

A coolie programmer is some one who learns only when things are necessary. He will give all kind of excuses like priority , focus etc. These people treat programming just as a job and most will have less self esteem. They will see everything happening around as a game ,and will demote programming as a lower level activity and they will be craving to start a restaurant , MLM to spin the money.

Opposite of this is Model Driven Programmers,
These are programmers who will study programming models , evaluate libraries , learn patterns , try to relate their practice to the fundamentals , speak from first principles and philosophically inclined etc.

Semantic Gap !

2011-09-22T19:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday , I had a discussion with a friend of mine involving topics like Qt Library , Meta Object Compiler of Qt , MultiThreading , Objective C , MAC OS X Programming etc. The person in question has got great belief in his ability to learn anything very fast ,and if the past is an indication of the future, he has done well in this regard and likely to do it for long time to come.

The Kind of Knowledge he was demonstrating is something which I call , "Operational Knowledge". Since most APIs are "Average Programmer Interface" , Model of learning things as and when it needed works in most of the cases . In services Industry , this is THE quintessential model.

The discussion drifted to Qt programming model. Having a re-factoring project under his belt in Qt , coupled with another project done using WxWidgets some five years ago , he made a remark trivializing
Qt Library.

I took objections to it. The Qt Library is easy because of the design idioms which designers have used and as far as I am concerned , It is a wonderful achievement with a "rugged" language like C++. I began to quiz him about his Qt knowledge to make him understand his lack of understanding of the library.

Then the usual planck started viz "I will learn when it requires" , "Had I got opportunities to work with Qt,I would have cracked it".

I told him this , "Any good C++ programmer might have taken a look at Qt for the wonderful pattern oriented design of the Qt library. If somebody doesn't understand Qt programming model , I consider
him to be a poor C++ developer (mostly !)".

Then discussion drifted to Qt Programming model , Meta Object Compiler , C++ RTT , Signals/Slots , Automatic Wiring of Signals/Slots with MOC hint etc.

At some point of time , I understood that my friend has shut his ears and was like a dead wood !. Then , I softened my blow and discussion took a turn when he named another friend of mine and asked me , whether
he understands things we were discussing.

I told him that he knows Groovy , has used Blocks and Grand Central Dispatch etc. recently. I also did add a statement indicating to him that the other friend , despite his age , is superior in some respect.

Then, he accused me that my bias for Groovy is the reason why I rate the other person. He also tried to
trivialize Blocks as some kind of Function pointers ( a crude analogy which is right in conversational sense).

I began to explain about Blocks ( Lambda or Anonymous methods with slight semantic change for C# developers ) and it's relevance for Multi-core programming. When, I began to explain Closure , Variable Capture and Other functional programming topics , It was a case of me speaking Hindi and he understanding Oriya.

At the end of the discussion , I did explain what Closure is by explaining Relational Model , Regular Expressions , Scheme lambda etc. Due to the semantic gap , we terminated the discussion ,when it was already 11.45 pm.

A nice article advocating MultiLingual Programming

2011-09-22T04:37:00.000-07:00

I know Steve Vinoski as a person who was the chief architect of Orbix ORB which was very popular in the late 90s. He also wrote foreward for the venerable book "C++ Network Programming - Part 1" by Douglas Schmidt.

I found a nice article written by him on the necessity of being a Polyglot.

Enjot it @ http://steve.vinoski.net/pdf/IEEE-Multilingual_Programming.pdf

DSLs in Action book and C++ Template meta-programming

2011-09-21T19:20:00.000-07:00

DSLs in Action by Debashish Ghosh is a fantastic book and I have mentioned about it in some of my previous blog posts. This book is one reason which re-kindled my interest in Meta Object Programming.

His description of Internal DSLs ( DSLs using Host Language support ) helped me to learn lot of idioms in
Java, Groovy , Scala , Ruby and Clojure.

Even though , C++ do not support Meta Object Protocol , C++ Templates can be used to do Meta Programming. They call it Template MetaProgramming. That too , Compile Time MetaProgramming.

I am thankful to the book for helping me to take a serious look at Template MetaProgramming. ( Even though , there was only a small paragraph about C++ template metaprogramming in the book )

Modern C++ Design By Andrei Alexandrescu

2011-09-21T19:13:00.000-07:00

This book has been mentioned to me by lot of people in the last decade . For some unknown reason , I never laid my hands on the book.

Here are my "Insight in HindSight !" ( aka Hindsight Bias - a well studied phenomena )

For a long time , I was viewing C++ as C/C++ ( Still is , for most projects ). I prefer to use C subset of
C/C++ for writing the engine code and C++ class facility to encapsulate my C functions. C++ Templates
were used for Type safe containers via STL. It was a deliberate choice. I had mastered templates from
Mark Nelson's book C++ Templates ( Out of Print , If you come home , I will show my worn out copy ).
But , Being a programmer from the C era , I was bothered about Compatibility and Compiler portability in
the pre-ANSI C++ world.

By the time , ANSI C++ standard was laid out , I was already working on thousands of lines of C and C++ code ( Mixed Code ) ,on a huge codebase. Incrementally , I began to use STL in my new projects. Still, never tried to follow Herb Sutter , Philip Romanik/Amy Muntz , Andrei Alexandrescu because of priority reason.

I did work with BOOST library for a while in a project ,which gave me better insights into the template mechanism than I knew before. ATL ( ActiveX Template Library ) is another good template Library , I had used.

Now , I am working with a code base which uses Templates , Template Meta Programming, BOOST and Microsoft's COM programming model as an architecture. While revisiting C++ ( idiomatic C++ ! ) , I purchased Modern C++ design.

A Fantastic Book !. I read it , whenever I travel !.

Read and Saw Some of the works of Ravichandran - the crazy star

2011-09-21T03:13:00.000-07:00

I saw the Kannada remake of the Malayalam Movie "Happy Husbands" on Monday ( 19th sept. ). RaviChandran took the role enacted by Indrajit ( a "Casanova" ) and Senior actor Jayaram's role was
taken by Ramesh Aravind. It is kind of role reversal.

I think , "Crazy star" has got a reputation among the kannada fans the kind of things we are fascinated
about Mohan Lal. So , role ,enacted by Indrajit seems to be more fit than the "Harischandra" role played
by Jayaram.

RaviChandran is not an ordinary film star and has acted , directed and produced some of the biggest hits
in Kannada , till date. He introduced Juhi Chawla to the silver screen with his ace movie "Prema Loka".

I saw songs from Prema Loka , Rana dheera and others, today morning. His products are really good and appeals to the masses ( At least the Kannada audience of 80s and 90s ). In the last decade , he has remade
lot of successful movies from Malayalam , Tamil and Telugu and has been a money spinner.

There is a song which Yesudas sang in the movie Prema Loka , where lyrics are really cool.

"Eee Lokata Shristike Preeti Kaarana" is a sentence which I felt to be really a master piece. The songs should be watched with a 1987 mindset to be really appreciative about this talented actor's innovation to
the Kannada movie.

Watch the song which I have mentioned @
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8isLiCnMOJk

"Lifu Ishtene" - a good movie

2011-09-15T18:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday , I saw the movie "Lifu Ishtene" at the Kamakya Theatre. The movie is well paced
and the actor Diganth has done a wonderful job portraying his character.

The film begins with shots where Vishaal ( enacted by Diganth ) is being shown as a globe trotting services sector professional, currently stationed out of Dubai. Then , movie goes for a peek into his life right from the
day he stepped into the school.

The school days and his first crush for a girl in the class were nicely picturised. Then, he moves on to
series of crushes through out his life without making any "breakthroughs" , untill he meets Nandini (enacted by Samyuktha Belawadi ) in his B-school. His happy go lucky attitude and reluctance to commit (by signing up for a job ) led to the break up of the relationship.

Then , he had a chance encounter with Rashmi (Sindhu Loknath) , a wannabie TV anchor. She helped him recover from his previous "shock" and he falls for her. Being a girl who had series of affairs in past , she was not interested. When she got interested , a "friend" from her yesteryears made Vishaal paranoid and He pulled out , like
any youngesters do now a days.

The movie had got some emotional tidbits where Vishaal's friend Shivu dies of Cancer. The shots were they use of WebCams to communicate and dying man's last craving were nice shots.

What I liked about the movie was two good songs , comedy , good camera work and Diganth's screen presence. Sindhu Loknath played her role really well.

One particular shot and dialogue was really cool where Vishaal's father was remembering his teen crushes. This irritates his mother and she reminds his father not make her remember "Shekhar" of her life.

Note:- I know some conversational Kannada (that too , Basic ) and the review should be read with
that in mind. I clearly enjoyed the two plus hours.

A query which lead to further queries

2011-09-14T17:59:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine joined a company in Bangalore and I happen to chance upon him yesterday. Out of curiosity , I googled about his company to understand it's history , managment stakeholders , business models , areas of expertize etc.

The company in question has had quite a few acquistions in the past and I visited each of them to understand their portfolio. I grabbed lot of new memes in the process.

Got lot of information for sure !. Some day , "Kaam aa jayegaaa !".

What is domain knowledge ?

2011-09-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

Now a days , If you chit-chat with a seasoned professional , he will be giving good emphasis on the Domain Knowledge.

IMHO , "Domain Knowledge" is akin to the word "Cousin" or some times "Uncle". You have to ask the specifics to get details of the interpretation of terms , if you are of the type who need better cognition ,to do something with the information you got .

Most often , the guy in question might mean some Functional Domains like Finance , Banking , Retail , Engineering Processes , Manufacturing , Supply chain etc. If the person in question is a new entrant , he will be giving emphasis on Platform , Language or Technology he works . For him, that is the domain.

As far as I am concerned , there are two families of Domain Knowledge

a ) Functional Domain Knowledge ( aka Verticals )
      Banking , Finance , Retail , Manufacturing etc , comes under this.

b ) Technical Domain Knowledge ( Horizontals ? )
      Computer Graphics , Geometric Algorithms , Language Translation,
       Data Modelling comes under this.

From a Computer Programming perspective , a Domain Consists of (IMHO !)

a ) Ontology
     Things or Entities and their relationship within the Domain.
     In other words,what exists out there.

b ) Players within the Domain from a Industry perspective
      There will be lot of actors in the Domain and these fundamental
      forces determine the practice within the domain.

  c ) Workflow Practices
       Workflow is another import ingredient in any Domain.

  d ) Standards and Compliance framework
        In any domain , there will be standards and their will be a
        legal framework as well.

   e ) Academic support
       If a domain is worth specializing , It should have good interest
       among the academia and most of them do.

    f ) Practice models at vogue

In a nutshell ,

"A Domain is an organized body of Knowledge about Solutions in a problem area , whether it
is in Business, Industry or Science".

A ride which won't be forgotten for sure

2011-09-11T20:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening (11th sept,2011), I boarded a Bus from Aluva to Bangalore ,by paying Rs. 1300 to the travel agent. I had to pay 300 extra since the whole of kerala was coming back to work after onam holidays. In the end , we got a Bus which is not fit for long distance travel.

I could not sleep as It would have been risky as the back seat ( back row ! ) travel was like a horse ride. Luckily , I picked up a conversation with a gentleman who was sitting besides me and there was some connect or we could find enough common ground to talk for close to six hours on topic ranging from
each others occupational woes , team management , consulting , game theory , chess , compensation
anomalies ,education etc. to name a few.

Be Standards Based and Vendor Nuetral Professional !

2011-09-08T18:49:00.000-07:00

How do I maximize my return on the effort is a question every Software Professional
should ask himself or herself. Too often , time is spent on working with a particular vendro's
non standard implementation of a particular technology.

I think , it is a good idea to study some standard in the domain which you are working or

planning to work. This is true even if you are working with a particular vendor's implementation.

The standards document embeds lot of deep domain concepts which is hard to come by

unless one spents years acquiring it.

You can live more by consulting Standard documents from OMG , SEI and others !

Revisiting CORBA !

2011-09-08T18:42:00.000-07:00

An application Infrastructure which I am working uses TAO framework. TAO is a Corba Object Request
Broker ( ORB ) which the program is using to communicate between the Client and the Server.

I thought Corba is long dead !. This lead me to re-visit some Corba information which I picked more than
a decade ago. I read about TAO and I was suprised to know TAO is relying on ACE library.

I stumbled upon a good online book @ http://www.ciaranmchale.com/corba-explained-simply/index.html

You can read about ACE library from http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE-overview.html

Discovered a new book stall in Bangalore

2011-09-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

I wanted to buy a book to learn Kannada and I entered a book stall just left to the entrance of the Domlur Flyover from Koramangala to Indira Nagar. The name of the shop is "Axis Books" and to my pleasant
surprise , I found lot of titles which I have not seen till date from any other shop in India.

I got my book as well !

Now, I see why people are hyping Meta Object Programming and Dynamic Languages

2011-09-07T17:53:00.000-07:00

Currently , I am going through the book "DSLs in Action" written by Ashuthosh Ghosh. Being a person who has written Expression Evaluators , Straight line Interpreters , Tree Based Interpreters , Compilers and Dynamic Compilers for DSLs for a decade , It was a curiosity when I purchased the book.

Thanks to this book , I am now uptodate with DSL lingo used in the Enterprise Application Development Community. The pleasant surprise was the appreciation of Meta Object Programming and Dynamic Languages ( Duck Typing ). I used to consider stuff like Scala , Clojure and likes as noise and the book
has shown me that they are wonderful tools writing Internal DSLs. This book also taught me that
all the DSLs which I have written so-far are External DSLs.

Even though , I have had a consulting assignment with Groovy in the past , I never appreciated Dynamic Languages. I was worried about a scenario where the team will write "lousy" code. The book "C# in Depth"
did show me some convincing reasons while "dynamic" keyword is not a bad idea when you are consuming services written in Dynamic Languages like PHP,Python and Groovy.

Meta Object Programming helps you to write code in a expressive manner by typing in the most essential stuff (hints ) to the compiler. This removes the fluff associated with some languages like Java,C# and C/C++.
It is a quick way to proto-type something and a great tool for people who know to use it.

Reading "Beyond Java"

2011-09-04T19:02:00.000-07:00

Beyond Java is a 2005 time line book written by Bruce A Tate ( a well known author ) as a critique of then

main stream programming languages ( At that time , the views were applicable for both C# and Java !) for

the enterprise systems.

It starts with a history of state of things when Java arrived on the scene and Why it clicked. It starts with

a look at C++ Programming methods of the time and explains some problems which might arise , If some

one uses it for building Enterprise Apps ( where change is the norm ).

Then , he slowly builds a case for Java and It's well known Success story.

He then shifts to XMLising yourself to death , Convention over configuration , Aspect Oriented Programming , Mixins (with Ruby ) and even a look at RoR ( Ruby on Rails ).

Currently , due to the influence of Ashuthosh Ghosh ( through the book " DSLs in action" ) , I have started looking at so-called "alternate" languages like Ruby,Scala , Clojure , Groovy ( I had consulted for a Groovy

based application early this year ) etc.

I have gone through the book "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks " by the same author (Bruce Tate ).

Despite it's timeline , Beyond Java's Cognitive value is great. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand Modern Enterprise Application Development.

OMG - Oh My God , a feast of ideas for Architects

2011-08-29T17:03:00.000-07:00

Object Management Group is a consortium which is focused on the standardization of Object Oriented Distributed Computing Infrastructure. Their products are CORBA , UML and so-called MDA.

Currently , I am reading through MDA , Software Factories , Executable UML and UML 2.0. This prompted me to go to the OMG site and I found almost all the standards which I am reading on can be downloaded for free from their site.

All the OMG standard documents can be downloaded from http://www.omg.org/

Constraints leads to better expertise

2011-08-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

A person whom I know well is working in a company where PHP is the primary tool. He has to transfer an Excel file which contains 600 records to a Drupal based application where MySQL is the DB backend

This person sought my help in getting a suggestion for automation.

I did following things

a ) Showed how Excel can be automated from C# using COM interop

b ) Showed How Excel Object model can be navigated to retrieve the data

c ) Did download the MYSQL connector for .NET

d ) Wrote a Small Console program which uses MYSQL connector for .net ( using C# )

Then came a startling discovery that the company do not have Visual Studio installation. I asked the person to export the excel file as a MSDOS based CSV file. Then , I explored various options for CSV parsing and I was amazed to find some kind of native support for CSV parsing in PHP. Used PHP database API to populate the MYSQL database.

Using mono for windows , I did show him how the C# program written can compile and run the program which was using Visual studio.

In the end , It was a nice lesson on C#/.NET , PHP csv parsing , PHP mysql database api , Excel object model , way to use TLBIMP library etc.

A Site on Philosophy

2011-08-22T10:28:00.001-07:00

Pls. check this site @ http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/

Reading a book on Cost Accounting

2011-08-21T06:57:00.000-07:00

I happen to buy a book which was published in the early 70s some time back and I am finding it really amusing because of the rich domain vocabulary it provides. I think , Cost Accounting is the basis of all the ERP systems in this world.

Three aspects of Costs are

Material

Labour

Expenses ( Overhead )

When you talk about Material , we need to identify types of materials ( Materials management ) , storage of materials ( Inventory ) , Stores , Transfer price etc.

Moment we start to think about Labour , we need to think about Wage , Salaired , Payroll computation , Human resource angle etc.

Expenses has to apportioned , If the stuff is a capital expense and we enter the world of finance.

Step back , you can see Enterprise Resource planning movement might have been started by Cost Accountant.

After the book , I think I should re-read Eliyahu Goldratt's GOAL !

Profiler Taxonomy

2011-08-21T06:50:00.000-07:00

I happen to attend a session @ k-mug monthly meet at Kochi , Kerala. I encountered a classification for programming language profilers

Intrusive profilers

Non-Intrusive profilers

Being a old hand at using C/C++ profilers , I noticed the advantage of having meta data in the case of .NET CLR based profilers. They can do binary injection better than C/C++.

I'm speaking on "Cross Platform Programming" @ ICE FOSS'11

2011-08-18T01:30:00.000-07:00

I will be giving a talk on Cross Platform Software development @ the ICE FOSS'11 event being conducted by Federal Instituite of Science and Technology ( aka FISAT )

I am planning to cover strategies to develop cross platform/multi-platform software using FOSS tools. In a way , it will be focused on OSS tools and Free Software Foundation's GCC .

The topic includes

C/C++ cross platform development ( using MINGW/GCC )

C# cross platform development ( using Mono Project )

Java Software development

Strategies to migrate some apps to Linux from Windows

WineLib as a Software development platform

How to "Beat" Microsoft ?! ( if at all possible ! )

The details of the event can be retrieved from http://icefoss.fisat.ac.in/

Downloading and Installing Qt under Windows

2011-08-09T23:08:00.000-07:00

To experiment with Qt toolkit , I did download the Qt toolkit for Windows from

http://qt.nokia.com/downloads/windows-cpp-vs2008

If you want a version for MINGW32 go to the following link @

http://qt.nokia.com/downloads/windows-cpp

I also went to the following page to download Qt Creator ( IDE for Qt development ) from

http://qt.nokia.com/downloads/qt-creator-binary-for-windows

The Advantage of Qt Creator is you get a copy of MINGW ( GCC under Windows ) along with the

Installation Bundle.

Happy Qt Programming ...!!

Patterns , Frameworks , Toolkits , DSLs , TDD and others !

2011-08-09T23:00:00.000-07:00

Now a days , I am sifting through following topics

                 a ) Software Factory Approach
                 b ) DSLs ( in Action )
                 c ) Enterprise Patterns and MDA

d ) UML (distilled )

e ) DDD

f ) TDD

After going through it , I understood a fundamental thruth (some degree of truth for sure )

"All these Frameworks and Concepts are only there to raise the level of abstraction when we communicate our ideas regarding Software Construction and Maintenance. These things are of not much use in a large project as people issues dominate. By Follwing these constructs , there is some chance for the community to succeed in what they are planning to achieve. This will make an Individual developer productive in his day to day activities. Unless these ideas do not percolate down to the rank and file , there is little practical value other than the cognitive nirvana !"

Reading about Risk , Organizations and Philosophy of Science

2011-08-07T06:34:00.000-07:00

Last week , I purchased three books from the Very Short Introduction Series. The topics are Risk , Organizations and Philosophy of Science. These are practical matters for every serious Individual.

Risk is all about minimizing the exposure and Organizations for protecting the Individual from Instituitionalism . Philosophy of Science deals with principles of scientific enquiry.

Having a nice time after some time..!

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Business/Management/OrganizationalBehavior/?view=usa&ci=9780199576203

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Sociology/OrganizationsOccupationsWork/?view=usa&ci=9780199584536

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Philosophy/Science/?view=usa&ci=9780192802835

Watched Podcast #177 @ Software Engineering Radio

2011-08-02T19:36:00.000-07:00

I just happen to finish viewing a podcast @ http://www.se-radio.net/ . The Episode #177 is an interview with Steve Will , Chief Architect of IBM i ( OS/400 ).

The Key takeaways include

TIMI

- Technology Independent Machine Interface. This is a akin to JVM and CLR , but does lot of binary translation behind the scene which helps one to write 128,64 and 48 bit programs . This technology is responsible for running AIX ( IBM unix ) applications on I

IBM's strategy is to Scale up as opposed to Scale Out . The rationale has been discussed

MYSQL as a Language for manipulating Database entities and Transparent update to DB2 database . This helps to port lot of MYSQL database based applications ported to IBM i.

PHP support on IBM i necessitated by Market pull. A customized version of PHP created by Zend corporation for IBM.

Emergence of Eclipse as a formidabble development platform.

COBOL and RPG tight integration

The concept of Single Level Store.

How do you answer some stuff ?

2011-08-02T18:14:00.000-07:00

When someone asks you "Do you know 3D Computer Graphics Programming ?" , how would you answer him. For most programmers they have got only one canonical answer. First they will take disclaimers about what they do not know ( like I am good at Polygon Processing , not good at Texture mapping ,I have worked a lot with Picking Objects , not with Geometry shaders etc, I know some ray tracing but do not have much about Radiosity ) and finally they positively assert that they know it.

The above stuff is a good techie to techie answer. When a business person asks , his question is actually , "Do you have some idea about Computer Graphics Programming ?" . The above answer will make business people loose confidence in you. A person who knows half as you , will clinch the deal by positive assertion without disclaimers. That is why "poor" techies make better sales people !.

Moral of the story : Calibrate your answers for the audience.

Knowing Technology is a Crime in Software Services Industry ?

2011-08-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

I chanced upon a erstwhile colleague of mine yesterday and we exchanged notes regarding what we do. In the enusing discussion , "techie career crisis" became the subject of the discussion.

The summary is as follows

Moment a Techie touches the keyboard to write some code or architect a new solution, a command chain consisting of Project Manager/Program Manager/Delivery Manager/Account Manager/Account Directory/BU head/VP sits on top of him. He is nine level down the hierarchy in a place where rewards are based on where you are in the hierarchy. Hierarchy sense is paramount in services company. The poor Techie is in a catch 22 situation. If he codes , he goes down or else

goes out. Always at the mercy of people who never understood technology in the first place (mostly !)

Visited Gangarams after six years !

2011-08-01T19:06:00.000-07:00

When I was in Bangalore between 2004 and 2005 , I used to visit Gangarams book stall regularly. I have purchased a few titles from there. I used to spend hours between the shelves in those days.

Yesterday (August 1,2011) , I happen to go there after a period of six years ( My last visit was on August 1,2005 !) and still you can find good titles not found anywhere in Bangalore.

As usual , I purchased

Fundamentals of Computer Graphics by Peter Shirley,Steve Marschiner et al (Rs. 675 )

DSLs in Action By Debasish Ghosh (Rs. 499 )

The first book is written by an author who has written a book on Ray Tracing . I happen to purchase that book fom Ithaca,NY where Cornell university is situated. Peter Shirley was a professor at Cornell university in those times.

DSLs in action is an excellent book and I was reading it for last three hours. The way he has specified this model of computation is superb. I will write in detail about his book.

Cricket Trivia Nation

2011-07-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

India should be called a "Cricket Trivia Nation" for it's passion for it. Tendulkar scoring century is more important than India winning the test as co-incidence can be attached a cause and it has tremendous "newsworthiness". I think , this has become the new superstition.

Cognitive Closure

2011-07-15T20:54:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article written by Daniel C Dennet ( Philosopher ) on Language and Intelligence. I encountered a new term "Cognitive Closure" from the article. The term is used by Psychologist and Philosophers. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_closure )

I was more interested in the usage of Psychologist. I Find some application for it in the area of Computer Programming. I have seen propensity to specialize among Computer Programmers these days. Even though , It enhances your career path , I have seen a cognitive gap between specialist and semi-generalists (like me !).

When you become a generalist ( A Generalist is a Generalist to a Generalist and Specialist to Specialist ! - From the Book MBA IQ ! ) , most things are ambiguous , messy and confusing. To Avoid these stuff , people yearn for Cognitive Closure. I think , to have breadth , one needs to be aware of this and try to expand the barriers of closedness.

Awareness of Turing machine , Lambda Calculus , Predicate Calculus as a Programming model ( as in Prolog/Datalog ) , NP hard/complete problems , state explosion , Randomized algorithms will make you some what pessimistic about Computer Programming ( as practiced ). I have seen people who are blind to these stuff , are having successful career in Software Engineering ( In a services company ! ).

Cognitive Closure do has it's merit as well. I would like to expand the barrier of closure than stick to it.