What I learned being in software industry since 6 years

1. College education is different from working in a software company. You may have been a hero in academics but you may not be necessarily good in a company.

2. If software development is your passion and you are quite emotional about it then do not join the likes of Infosys, TCS, IBM, Accenture or any of those service companies. These places are not for developers. They are for IT professionals as the media calls them.

3. The most important subject that you might help you in software developmet in industry is not C, C++ or java but it is a basic understanding of operating system concepts.

4. If you think you will be writing new algorithm in the industry then you might not get that even in google or facebook.

5. Joining a startup is not as risky as it is considered if you have managed to stay or your startup managed to live for atleast 1.5 years.

6. One of the most important tool in software development is notepad, textpad etc which can allow you to search a piece of code in huge codebase.

7. Common sense is the important skill that would help you do good job in the company.

8. You don't need to be a TopCoder to survive in the best of the industry(likes of google, facebook etc) or a outstanding tech startup. You might need to be a top coder to just clear their interview.

9. Asking tricky programming questions in an interview(started by google, amazon etc) to judge a candidate is the crappiest way to hire but then this is how a tech interview is conducted in the best of the organisations.

10.If you think ,you can keep raising your salary by switching companies every 2 years then you are wrong. You can raise your salary only if you are underpaid and switch to the next league of paymaster companies.

11. 90% of your time in software development goes into investigation and googling while you put 10% into actual code.

12. You can never be a true software architect unless you have worked on non functional requirements like performance, scalablity, reliability aspects etc.

13. If you think being a CS graduate from an IIT would make any difference once you are recruited the let me tell you that your company doesn't give a shit about it.

14. A software company would never consider your interest in assigning a work to you. They just give you what they have.

15. Being a software developer is far more satisfying than being a pseudo researcher in any of those IBM, GE, Siemens etc. However if you are truly inclined in research then go for higher studies and join top universities.

.................and the gyan continues.......................

Technical journalism-a new crap

Technical journalism is the new bull shit that is slowly taking on sanity. I see articles like "6 technologies you should learn this year", "hot technologies for job sector" blah blah on LinkedIN(the cool social networking site that has made celebrities out of programmers) ...It's so strange that Hype created is so powerful that most normal people starting reacting to it...the cult words that's gonna rule for another 3-4 years are "Big Data", "Hadoop", "Cassandra" and the like...you have it in your resume these crazy software recruiters would run to you...you don't have it in your resume you are off the market...infact the actual insane ppl are in the industry who believe knowing a bunch of technologies makes a good developer rather than core competency and common sense...
The whole thing of learning super cool technologies to please recruiters is an unending process and needs a serious reality check. The marketers thrive on hype...they would continue to create new ones...........

Why Muslims are so angry?

The last decade has seen the most outcry about Islam,Muslims,Islamic militants etc etc. The media has taken a lot of interest in serving about what they perceive about Muslims, abt Islam,abt their being outdated, about their issues, about fatwas and what not. The general perception of a common man is Muslims are angry -perhaps with everything on earth...they believe in taking the earth back to 1600 years ago.
So, why on earth they are so angry?I have something to say..these are my personal thoughts and their could be differences with anyone-Muslim or a non muslim.

Before I talk about anything else it is important to understand the present social set up and abt the general public(the stupid common man) that has hardly any say in the matters of the world, his emotions, his Ideas and his way of thinking about right and wrong.

For the SCM(stupid common man) right and wrong is mainly driven by emotions, social setup of the country he lives in etc etc. However, for a muslim right or wrong in totally on the basis of Quran and the approval of the prophet. The SCM is emotional and believes in whatever is told to him through the electronic media, newspapers or internet. He believes in whatever is in vogue and whatever is approved by the mass-the group of SCMs. He isn't bothered about the history, about the circumstances of the events or the hypocrisy of the media.

Lemme reiterate when I say muslim I mean an adherent to Islam and its principles:
Few Question:
1) . Islam doesn't allow usury or interest. A Muslim doesn't like to get involved in usual banking and finance for they involve usury while he is almost forced to get involved.Why on earth there is not ample Islamic banking opportunities for the people forming second largest chunk in the world.

2). Islam directs a muslim to pray 5 times prayer in a day after performing ablution. Most MNCs don't have any facility for that and they are forced to use the basin-You may find them using them for washing feet. A SCM comes to restroom and is astonished and feels awkward to see him holding his feet on the basin and complains the facility.

3). In Islam, having a beard is sunnah(ways the prophet) of high cadre. A muslim keeps the beard for this love of prophet. Alas, this isn't cool for the SCM who feels he is among fundamentalist who blew those towers in NY or creating mayhem in many countries.

4). Islam says to fight for the cause of Allah and religion. Alas, even talking abt it can get you in trouble for the negative publicity it got-thanks to those terrorist and thanks to the media.

5). The fatwas form an important form of approval/disapproval from a religious authority to the ummah. It is purely for the guidance of ummah(Islamic diaspora). Alas they are nothing but for fun in the eyes of media who distort those fatwas and publish them to sell their paper. An Islamic authority has a duty to issue fatwa if he sees something heretic and not in sync with the principles of Islam...why to make fun of them when u do not know the religious rulings as a background?

6). Islam forbids adultery or homosexuality and considers it an evil act, so does Judaism and Christianity-Alas for the SCM and the media this is a matter of personal choice and is something that is perfectly ok if it is not by force-that's fine but why you condemn the rulings that shariah has for the adulterers in a Islamic country. Aren't they good enough ways to find those sexually transmitted diseases and keep a difference between Humans and animals?

(To be contd...)

People in my Life

This is no rank list...just a list of ppl who had a fare share in my life...I would like to write something abt each of them.
1). Shama

2). Raza Ali

3). Vikas Kumar Singh

4). Amit Kumar singh

5). Ratish Babu

6). Nadeem Khan

7). Ilyas

8). Sultana

9). Sabeeha

10). Vinod Abdullah

11). Dablu mamu

12). Nawab Mamu

13). Praveen chandra rai

Dev D- A movie that still rules my Heart

How many times am I going to see this masterpiece? I have already seen it some 5 times. What should you praise Dev D for? Should you praise it for it is the bold new cinema? Should you praise it for feet sweeping cinematography? Should you praise it for soul stirring music or should you praise for the scissor sharp performance by the two leading ladies who just accompanied the protaganist Dev D to churn out a realistic cinema where every scene imitates the real life just to the right extent. Still Dev D is bizarre in its own way. The direction is just superb and so is editing. Kudos to the genious Anurag Kashyap who is a smart story teller.

Some of the memorable dialogues that never left mind:

1). Sunil to Dev D. "Meri mari maa ki kasamm..khatarnak garmi hai uske andar....jaanleva..teen din tak uta nahin paaya..itna dukh raha tha...by God sir jee paro mein jo talent hai na woh kahin na mile"..The Guy sunil truly represent the gentry who believe in the funda of maligning the reputation of the girl they don't get

2). Paro to Dev D:"Lomdii saale ..tune uska sar phoda latika ko gaadi mein ghumaane ke baad ..Tu kare to sab thik aur main karuun toh"..Awsome delivery by Mahi gill.

3). Chanda to Dev D: "Dobara yahan aaya na toh pyar ho jaayega mujhe...aadha toh already ho chuka hai"..watch out for those expressions from chanda..God there's genuine naughtiness and innocence in Kalki.

The beginning of Machine learning in my Life

It was just a usual day i was googling around after the heart break of getting rejected by Amazon and Directi. One and a half years of reading algorithms didn't pay me well. I landed a job in Informatica. It's been a month I left the books..well almost but something was still pinching me. It was a failure that I was not really able to digest. It would have been a immense comfort to me if I could accept it but No-that's not me.
Life has been a continous unending struggle. I was destined for something. I was searching for wat's so geeky about those PHDs work in google or reasearch companies. You know a human loves everything has he doesn't own. I was always a silent admirer to those fuckingly good algorists or researchers who had not many things to do except for eating,sleeping and thinking. I always considered them to be elite among the engineering fraternity. I was not among them..and that was something that was quite achievable atleast in comparison to dancing or singing--which perhaps I can never be good at. The mind was wandering around. It was thinking of enough ways to boost the technical ego and raise you salary figures except for the way of working honestly in what you do--Nah that's not me again. My Professor used to say you always hold your ears over your head...Perhaps true. I thought about doing a Phd.(sounds so cool) or an MS and if not anything may be an M. Tech. perhaps from IISC. Any of the options were good enough but perhaps few have the desires but not the means to fulfill them. I never saved a penny to even think about doing those courses by leaving my current job which paid me decently enough to live a normal life in a city. Then I Just cam accross this Ad of a guy called dattareya who started India's first non degree course in machine learning. O-level and A-level that's sounds typical computer courses but yes he started it on perhaps the most elite branches of computing. I called him and after a normal discussion I decided I can go for this course. It would be ego boost if not anything else. Uppi my friend who works for dell research (the biggest job hopper who plans to leave before he joins a company) to join me for this course...and then it started.

Advanced Linear algebra, probability theory and statistics and conver optimization- these were the pre requisites to the machine learning game. That's sounds so mathematical and wat's better to feel like a Hero that to be associated with them.

It's been 6 lectures-I am struggling with Maths but who cares I know I'll slog and eventually would float around. The feeling is good -though the maths seems so horribly complex.I do not think what it is going to change in my life ...but all I know is it's elite...supervised learning, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, NLP, data mining..ah sounds so good right??????

The Google Interview

http://ifdefined.com/blog/post/2008/03/Google-interview.aspx