Confessions of a "Coder's" Mind !

Beginning to write after a very long time again,

This time I am in lesser of mood for writing technical stuff but more in the grove of discussing life, of What happens with me, and still be in the illusion that very little of the people out there might read my blogs.
Lol anyways …
I write out of rigor,
I write out of frustration,
I write out of passion and I write just to write.
Sometimes I feel like I am a lone voyager in deep dark space ,
Sometime I get a feeling of being alone in the crowd,
other times I feel more comfortable knowing that nobody is watching me, and I am free to do whatever I would want to do.  
There are all these mixed feelings inside me, all these emotions… rather virtual situations that I find myself placed in. I satanically blame it on the world for pushing me, but I know deep within me … that I am the one to be blamed for what I am.

I have something special, I have a gift… a gift of logic.
I can fragment a situation in its basic elements to have a picture of the atoms and molecules that reside within and I can still get the big picture.
Am I GEEK? hummm….. that brings a very important question to life. Am I really a geek … well someone named Edward G. Nilges describes GEEKS in a better way here.  

http://www.developerdotstar.com/community/node/246

‘the archeology of a GEEK’ it says , I couldn’t completely identify with the Ideal Geek in this passage but yes I have a part of it in me, a bigger part that is. Something bigger than normal… does that make me a GEEK…
f**k if it does, I don’t care.
I like what I am, but I would wanna be better.
I would wanna be a successful professional, a good son, a caring husband and a good father… does that mean that I am married… and have kids…

NO …. I am around 22… but I live ahead of my age, in a age of people who get lesser pays than me and still run there whole families in it **Happily**
yet I want MORE…
Why? I ask myself… God Damn WHY?
Coz I need the green to fulfill my dream…
I have a million ideas STUCK inside me that ooze out in drips and drops from my M-Sealed mind time to time…
What is that would make me happy… what is it that I want …. What’s that ultimate one thing that I would wanna have…
I don’t know.
Really!
after have been in computing for last 13 years … and that too programming, I graduated this year… OFFICIALLY,
This world don’t understand people like me… they think were just showoffs but I know what I have lost to become what I am now…
“Kids” of my age brag about there jobs in BIG Organizations... “Kids” who have joined BIG Companies Like Satyam , TCS  or L&T Infotech, tell me now and then about the big conference halls and big auditoriums that they get Training in.
I have not been a part of that stream .. I have learned stuff the hard way with sweat and toil and I know what is the value of knowledge..
Now ,
I work in a small company on a bigger post…. But here too the age factor comes in… I applied for the post of LEAD software developer but was put on as Sr. Software Specialist… why … ?
I have been working in Jobs from last 6 years …
Still people disagree to digest the Idea of a so called “Fresher” as a Lead.
Then I get another disappointment…. Another developer joins the league …
I find in the company records that my experience is mentioned as only 3 years and this NEW developer gets a 5 year slot….
When I meet this nuuooo guy I find out that he’s as dumb as an ass…
I ask him for how much time has he been working in .net … the guy says some 13 or 14 months …. Less that 1 and a half year ….
Why was he given the 5 year slot when I am the one who has been working his ass of for the last 6 years…   just coz he’s married and has a kid?
Its not that I have anything against this guy, he’s a nice fellow, but what I am against is with people who still have notions about YOUNGER Superiors.

So what do I do now …. Do I leave this JOB and look for a place that has a more acceptable work / AGE Ethics… or do I stay here and prove to these guys that I am the one who is supposed to be a LEAD and not a Sr. Developer.
I still have not encountered a valid reason to YELL at my HR or Director and ask them when did they get the right to decide my career…

I ask a question to everybody out there… does this happen in every company out there…
I have held 5 jobs in 6 years …. Longest one I held was 2 years 10 months and that was a GOVT Job… I left that job coz of lack of competitive work there. But that was one place where I found the maximum ETHICS in terms of JOB / AGE Factors…

I took the test by Donna here …
http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/davis_integrity.html
nd found out that I has only two True marks put up

I suppose that means that I am a good player …
And I do know why…
Coz I love what I do … I have a passion for creating…
Of giving life to software…
I find a strange but humongous feeling of satisfaction, feeling of Happiness and content, when my code does work and helps as client. And that’s what has been driving me for the last 13 years in programming.  That’s what keeps me up…
And yet there are people who worship me, like I am some sort of a GOD for them, they ask me to teach them, to tell them the **SECRET** of a good coder. And most of them also get disappointed when I tell them that’s there’s no secret, all there is, is LOGIC, is hard Work and Dedicated Effort. KIDS of my age think about making it BIG in 2 months, what they don’t realize is that there are Billions of KIDS out there who think in the same way and that only thing that they can put them apart is HARD Work .

The girl I loved the most left me… said she never even considered me as her ‘Friend’
One heart break that I won’t be able to forget and forgive myself for.
That’s a part of me too.

But still I work,
I work each day, I code each day and each night,
I find joy and satisfaction in my work. And that’s how I spend my life.
I suppose that this is a typical Coders life, and still people talk of work ethics and Managerial Disputes as ISSUES that affect a team players life.. While in reality I think that is what decided how a person plays part in a corporate environment…
I am more of a type of a person that takes the whole project to success single-handedly … I am the one who in the hour of need works 28-30 in continuation to take on the MESS created  by others and sort out to write better applications.
But with only a Faint Hope that someday my contributions get noticed. But also in the back of my head I pray like hell that that someday is near soon … coz I don’t want to wait anymore… I have waited for 13 long years to take on the corporate BAZOOKA and I now think that the time is ripe and perfect to play my cards…
I just hope someday soon I might get the rank that I deserve…
I long for position and responsibility coz I know I was created to be there…  I know I can do miracles when given the opportunity… weather they be technical or Personal, people know about my powers, but they are mum, they don’t speak … I know from within, coz I have seen it in there eyes,
The astonishment,
The happiness and the amazement when they see my work,
Some people in the past have had enough courage to say it to me but others just prefer to keep quiet.

Hereby I conclude the “Confessions of a Coders Mind” in this hour of midnight where I have begun that get that queasy feeling of having said too much. Hey but as I said I write out of frustration. No hard feelings anyone.. I am drunk on a heavy dose of Insanity.
;-)

The Grackester,
AKA : GRaCkula, GRaC, Gunish Rai Chawla

Making a computer do ‘Anything’…

Moving on from my first blog entry, I have somehow convinced my vastly diverse and unmanaged ways of innovativeness to focus on topics that follow the central theme of My Eternal Quest, “Can a computer really do anything?”
The blog might interest people who consider themselves in the categories of Beginners and Intermediate computational evangelists. Although I am writing in a place where some of the best technology authors of this planet expose there skills, but I do hope that I will find some interested audience.

I am considering subjects that go beyond standard development and programming processes, mostly because I myself am already becoming tired of making Software that ease out the life of a standard sheep like human being with sub standard computational needs such as online air ticket booking systems, online Cineplex ticket booking software, simply because of a very logical reason, that is, ‘there are far too many people on this planet who will happily do all this stuff and I should not probably interfere with there jobs when I can do something that satisfied my senses and desires in a much better way’.
During my 14 years of programming experience I have confronted many people who have no idea of the power they handle daily, when they walk into there office and switch on a machine that they solely recognize for solving there day to day streamlined processes. I try and imagine how many of those people will ever one day recognize the potential and power of a computer.
At this point of writing, I think I should identify the species of machines that I am again and again refereeing to as a computer. When I say ‘a computer’ I specifically mean a desktop machine and not those embedded chip type ones. My vision takes me to a belief that one day I should walk into my home or office and my computer makes me coffee without my asking for it by typically sensing that I need coffee, more like a mother sensing when her child needs some relaxing, I am in near future hoping to work on this growth of personalization and affection that can exist between a man and a machine. Perhaps this is what I thrive on; perhaps this is what I was built to build.
Ahh, speaking of the subject of ‘built to build’; I recent came across a webpage that addressed the matter of writing programs that write programs to write programs. I will perhaps write about this in my later entries. My concern of pointing out the relation between the human nature of ‘built to build’ things and ‘programming to program other programs’, is a well fitting analogy, this closeness in the analogies is what drives my belief further that very soon Man and Machine will unite.
Another interesting subject that can be picked up from here is ‘Uniting Man and Machine’; it is something agencies like NASA etc. must have been working from very long to crack, ‘Connecting the human brain to a silicon chip’. I think I can waste a lot of blog space simply writing about many techniques that have come into being to do this but I guess everything has its time to be done.
For now I think I will start off with my core topic and I think I should generalize it a bit to ease out the discussions for programmers.

It’s like giving your desktop a personality. I am not considering giving a particular name to it as on now but for reference purpose I think I will call my new mate BOB. I think it is also good that I point out that we are not building a Peedy or a Bonzy Buddy kind of application. We are going many steps ahead of what Peedy had to offer by giving it a BRAIN of its own, by brain I am considering a NLP engine and an Expert System.
I think we should move from speech to vision in a schematic way. First I will discuss how to use speech and then how to implement vision. From this we will also move to building a remote robot that will be controlled from my desktop using simple parallel port interfacing techniques.
I will typically be working on platforms of .NET, mainly because it is the only platform that does NOT drive me nuts even after 12 hours of continuous programming as I have found out after trying out everything for around 14 years from ALGOL, FORTRAN to JAVA and further even down to LISP and believe me if you can … Many Many More!.

-Gunish Rai Chawla

Hello World!

Hello World!

Every programmer in the world knows this statement. I Came across it some 13 Years ago when i was just around 9 years old. I saw my first computer, it was a 386 with 5 1/4 floopy bootable, no hard disk memory . From then to this day it has been a hell of a joy ride for me. Computing , Programing, Hardware all these and more make up most part of what ever i do or think or feel today.

In those days, there was no windows available, we only had a squnkily put Black and White Moniter with a dull flickering cursor on it, what was told me to be called MS-DOS. The idea was very exciting and took my imagination by storm. I was told i could do anything with a computer, and i remember i exclaimed in AWE ..... 'Really,... ANYTHING!' the instructor laughed away and said 'yes Gunish, Anything'

From that day to this day, the quest for actually making a computer do anything and everything has never ended. To this day i am on this journey of invariably Programing and Going through painfull stages of learning and reading Long and non interestting Istructions Manuals (Mostly without the help of any teachers, coz the stuff i ventured into was alien to even my instructors) to find answers to my Quest. How can a computer do 'anything'?.

And to this day the Question still holds its values to me. 'Can Really a Computer do Anything?' Well during this journey i do beleive that we can do many things with a computer. But the 'AnyThing' factor still eludes us. Working on Numerous Projects through my life as a Computer Programmer, i have always sought to find excitement in bore and dull subjects of Database Managemet and Billing systems, (the Funny Irony is i still am Building Some Even Today!).

When will this quest end and how far down the line i am, what all have i worked on and what all is it that i am supposed to do before i become OLD enough to stop Programing,

Is What i am going to write about in this Blog of Mine. Hope somebody somewhere identifies with me and Finds some answers to the eternal Question .... "Can a Computer Do Anything!"

-Gunish Rai Chawla