On that particular day, I was starting for office. I had my bath, and walked into my room to choose my dress for the day.
Now our computer is in my room, and at that point, Dad was using it, transferring photos from his camcorder. While I was choosing my dress for the day, my dad remarked that though he had transferred the photos to the computer, he was not able to view them and called for my help.
Still choosing my dresses, I asked him whether he had done every step correctly. He insisted he had. I asked him to open the folder he had specified as the destination folder. He already had it open and showed it to me. Sure enough, the new pictures didn't seem to be there.
I scrolled down the window and found that the images were added to the folder, but Windows had not sorted the view after addition. I pointed this out to my dad, saying that the files were shown at the bottom of the view - they had been transferred, but Windows did not do a sort and that was the reason he did not see the files where he expected them to be.
"But it usually arranges everything in the specified sort order!!", he insisted.
"Maybe you should refresh", I said.
"How do I refresh?", he asked.
Now I have explained how to do a refresh many times to my dad, but he being he, asked this question again.
"Press F5", I said, and walked over to the wardrobe to continue my dress-selection-process.
"Not working", came the voice of dad.
"It will work, dad!!" After all the files are already there; all it has to do is refresh - how can it not work?
"No, it doesn't!!"
I walked over to the comp, and ask him to press F5 again. This time, I keenly watched what he was actually pressing. He pressed the 'F' key and the 'I' key. What I mentioned as "F5" fell on his ears as "FI".
"No dad!! Press F5!!"
"That's what I am doing!!"
"No dad!! Press F5!!", I said, this time emphasizing the "5" part.
"Oh ok, F5!!" he said, and pressed the 'F' key and the '5' key.
"No dad!! Press the F5 key at the top!!", I said, and for good measure, point out the key.
"Oh this one!"
He presses the key, and this time, the files are displayed all fine.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Great Essays
I browse the Internet a lot. I browse at office (when I should actually be working). I go home in the evening, have my dinner, and browse till late in the night. My browsing is not limited to a particular topic in any way. I browse on topics that interest me either at that point of time, or that have always interested me.
During such browsing periods, I sometimes come across articles that have me going, "Wow..!!" or, "Amazing...!! What a brilliant piece of writing!!" After my previous post, I was thinking on what to post next, when I realized I could have a post that linked to these essays - and also explain to readers why these essays were good enough to feature here.
As I listed the essays in my mind, I realized for an essay to be called a "great essay", I would have to set a bar. This is the bar I have set:
The article or essay must have
1) changed my thinking in some fundamental way (or),
2) must have opened up my mind to a different thought process, (or)
3) must have brought out what was in my mind all the while, but whose existence I had not 'realized', or was afraid to acknowledge.
With that bar set, I present before you these essays - essays that I term, "Great". A note here before we proceed: some of the essays are software development essays, so if you are not in that field or if you are not interested in software development, then you may not understand what makes those essays Great Essays.
Here we go!!
Usability for programmers
Joel Spolsky's essay comes up first, simply because it was the first Great Essay that I read. This essay is software development related, but users of software may also relate to it; so I would actually recommend any software user to read it. Yes, at 9 pages, its a pretty long essay , but its worth reading. I say this essay is worth it even for non-software guys because the essay mainly deals with how to make an application easy to use. This means that the essay shows you examples of bad UI design that confuses users - something that non-software guys would readily empathize with. That is the reason why I recommend this essay to everybody who uses and creates software.
At the time I read this essay, I was working in a particular team in my previous company, and we used to share interesting links among ourselves. This team included the VP of the company I was working for. I was initially reluctant to share this link, as I knew my team-mates would shout me down for sending a 9-page essay, but after much dithering, I took the risk and sent it anyway. Next morning, when I checked my mail, I found a mail from the VP, that went like this:
"This is brilliant!! Must read for all!!!"
All day long, the VP looked at me and smiled with the realization that a bit had flipped over in his brain. I don't think he ever smiled at any of us like he did that day.
This essay was the one that introduced me to Joel Spolsky and I have learnt a lot from his essays ever since. From his website, I have got to know the Business on Software forum (where I got to know various aspects of business, as well as some different views of India and what people in other lands think of India) as well as StackOverflow.com (where I have come across some great questions, answers and links). It has been a great association with Joel so far.
Milgram experiment
I generally read a lot of articles on Wikipedia. However, I am not sure how I stumbled upon this one. Guess it must have been while researching the various topics mentioned in Michael Crichton's novel, Sphere. In the novel, the main character performed experiments on the lines done by Asch and Milgram. Wanting to know who Asch and Milgram were and what was the significance of their experiments in the first place, I browsed Wikipedia and stumbled upon this one.
The article basically talks about an experiment conducted in 1961. We all know the horrors of the Holocaust during WW II. Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to answer the question of whether people who commit such horrific, disturbing acts as those performed during the Holocaust were simply "following orders from above". Milgram devised this experiment to know whether ordinary people would commit acts against their conscience when prodded on to do so by a person in authority.
As I read through the article, I was nodding my head at every point, and when I finished reading it, I realized the impact of the experiment - I could very well be one of the 'teachers'!! Read the article to find out what I mean...!!
Staying on the topic of psychology experiments, do not miss the conformity experiments by Solomon Asch.
You and your research
I have linked to the original article, but I actually read the article on Paul Graham's website.
This is actually a speech given by Richard Hamming at Bell Communications Research. Hamming was a mathematician involved in building telecommunications and computer systems. Hamming was brought in to Bell Labs so that he could program computers that would calculate the solutions to the equations that scientists working on the atomic bomb brought in.
Somehow Hamming hated this - he felt this was menial work, compared to the actual work of developing the bomb. He wanted to know why he was put in to do this work, when others were obviously working on the more exciting parts. He started to analyze what were the differences between him and the others; when someone achieved something great, he asked that person what made him do it, why, and wondered why others did not do the same. This led to some profound observations that are listed in this awesome essay.
Basically, the speech is about what one should do if one wants to do great research. By now if you are a person not associated with research in any way, you are probably thinking, "I am not associated with any research fields, so this essay is not for me". Actually, this isn't the case as Hamming himself says:
Yes, you might not understand few things in the essay if you are not part of the science & research fields or do not keep track of those fields, but I would still recommend this essay to you because its filled with great information and quotes on how to become great in your particular field - most of what Hamming talks about surely apply to your field and to you. Here's one example: most people believe you need luck to acheive greatness. There is also the belief that you need "lots of brains". Hamming takes the bull by the horns here:
There it is - Luck favours the prepared mind and If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results!! Who could have put it better than that? Yes, there is a certain amount of luck, but if you do your work diligently, always striving to improve yourself, your knowledge and the quality of your work, luck ceases to be a significant factor very soon.
There are other great quotes here. While on the topic of drive, Hamming says...
There are other great nuggets in this speech, which I shall leave it to you, the reader to enjoy. The gist of the essay is that you must ask yourself three questions to be great:
1) What are the important problems of your field?,
2) What important problems are you working on?, and
3) Why not?
Sadly, I sent this article to a friend of mine. This speech is a pretty long speech, and my friend immediately dismissed it, saying it was too long. In the process, she missed a great chance to improve her life by standing on Hamming's shoulders. Do not make that mistake - go on, read it!!
Good and bad procrastination
I do procrastinate a lot and always felt guilty about it. All my life, I have been reprimanded by my parents for this. I thought I was the problem and tried a lot to change myself - I slightly did improve once I bought my cell phone and started storing my tasks in it. But the guilt remained, I guess. However, once I read the article's title, I was shocked - can there be any 'good' procrastination? But it turns out there is, as Paul Graham explains wonderfully.
Paul Graham says that procrastination isn't really bad - yes, you are putting off tasks, but as long as you are putting off unimportant tasks to work on more important ones, who cares? And that's the big difference here - when you procrastinate, there are two things happening: a) you are working on something, while b) the one you are supposed to work on lies unattended. What Paul Graham says is to ensure that the task you left unattended is less important than the task you are doing. When you procrastinate, ask yourself whether what you are doing now will give you much more benefits than the one you were supposed to do. If the answer is yes, then it is good procrastination - something you stand to benefit from, and hence don't have to feel guilty about.
Paul Graham also differentiates between errands and tasks. Any person has a never-ending stream of to-dos on his plate, but each one should learn to differentiate which of these to-dos are errands and which are tasks. (Here 'errands' are stuff that don't provide much benefits in the long term, while 'tasks' are stuff that provide benefits in the long term). Errands are small stuff, and hence its OK if we skip doing them. But how do we determine which is small stuff and which isn't? Here too Paul provides the answer...
Aha... tell me, which of the items in your to-do list right now would be mentioned in your obituary? Imagine your funeral - are people going to stand around and say, "He was such a good man - he used to shave regularly!!" No, they aren't - they are rather gonna list your achievements in life. For that, you should have done some real work - something they can say proudly at your funeral.
At this point, you are probably saying, "But not all errands can be ignored!! If I don't shave for two or three months, nobody around me is gonna like me!!" True, there are some errands that just cannot be ignored - these errands must be taken care of, but it may be ok to delay them by a day or two. Of course, there are other errands that can be safely skipped.
Note that there are other errands that simply cannot be skipped - for example, Paul describes an "absent-minded professor" who is so involved in solving a problem that he forgets to shave, eat or even look where he is going. Whenever, I think of such professors or scientists, who are so engaged in a problem, I also think of ignored wives. (I don't know why - hope I don't come across as sexist). In this case, an ideal scenario would be for the scientist to spend time with his wife, while still working dedicatedly at his research. Such kinds of errands require a balancing act, and one that comes with experience and understanding of the work you do and the persons you interact with. In my opinion, it would be better if we treated this as a task, rather than as an errand, since this does have ramifications in the long term.
Reading this article gave me a relief - it told me that there was nothing really wrong with me - procrastination wasn't really bad, as long as you learnt to use it to your advantage.
The Doomslayer
I came upon this essay after reading Michael Crichton's novel, State of Fear. State of Fear basically says that in many cases, public concerns such as global warming are not really major concerns - rather they are fears generated by governments/institutions interested in keeping people under control and making them behave within certain limits. Thus, Crichton goes on to say, global warming could possibly be yet another fear and hence doesn't really deserve the attention that it currently gets.
This is disturbing - and I went on to the Internet to verify some facts stated in the novel and that's how I came across this article. This article deals with the same lesson that State of Fear tries to put forward - that certain issues are not really issues worthy of attention; they are rather, unfounded fears.
The article talks about how Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich came to lay a bet between themselves. Julian Simon was a professor of business administration while Paul Ehrlich was an entemologist. In the 1970s, Ehrlich became popular by his work, The Population Bomb, that warned people that "famines of unbelievable proportions" would strike by 1975, "hundreds of millions of people" would starve to death in the 1970s and 80s, and that the world was "entering a genuine age of scarcity". The basis for these predictions was that the growth in the population is not matched by the growth in natural resources, which would evidently lead to an increase in prices, and making these resources inaccessible to most of the population.
Simon did not believe so, and very soon, the two laid a public bet - Simon asked Ehrlich to select any five raw materials, and select any date more than a year away. Simon believed that the prices on the future date would be less than the prices on the day of the bet, thus proving that raw materials would be more accessible and would not be affected by the burgeoning population.
Ehrlich took up the bet - he selected chromium, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten, and on paper bought $200 worth of each metal using the prices of Sep 10, 1980 as the index. The future date selected was Sep 10, 1990, a ten year period. During that period, the prices fell, with the result being that on Sep 10, 1990, Ehrlich sent Simon a cheque for the difference in price.
How could that be? As people use more and more resources, natural resources should
come down, right? After all, people can produce more of their kind, but natural resources cannot reproduce, so at one point, we should be hitting a limit, shouldn't we? In fact, the article asks this very same question...
And there is an explanation, as the article itself states...
On the Wikipedia article for this bet, a quote from Simon says that he concedes that increased usage of such resources does inevitably lead to increased prices - but they are only in the short term, since in the long term, people generally find out solutions to the problem.
In case you are thinking that I have changed my views on global warming and other such concerns, no I haven't. But one thing that was new to me was the fact that I had never considered that problems such as the one put forward by Ehrlich were solvable - to me, once population began to increase, it was like it was the end of the road. I guess I am not the only one like this. It never crossed my brain that man's ingenuity would solve these problems.
IT Survivors - Staying alive in a software job
In a particular company in which I worked, the project in which I was in rapidly turned from a sedate one into one where we were spending long hours at office. I used to come into office at 10am, only to leave at 2am or 3am the next day. The worst part was that the deadline for the project was initially stated as January, but later on extended onto February, then it became March, then May and so on... and during each of these months, we worked from 10am to 3am. I felt frustrated at the long hours, but the work was good, since this was my first experience in a software services co. as well as a big company, and I was being exposed to new methods and styles of working.
But family life suffered heavily, with my Mom one day picking up a newspaper article headlined, "Separate your work life from your home life", and pointing it at me, screamed, "This is for you!!" As such, I was hoping for a quick end to the project. One day, an opportunity to leave for another project presented itself, and I left to join the new project. But my mind didn't rest - it kept working on why there was a need for the horrid nature of my work hours during that period - and again, turned to the Internet for answers. I searched for answers as to why people put in long hours in software projects and I very soon started searching for why people manage software the way they did in my team, and one fine day, stumbled upon this article that aptly catches the reasons from a very high level.
First off, if you have read the breathless news reports that appeared when I was in school (and possibly still appear) about the IT field, you would have got the impression that nothing about the Indian IT industry can ever go wrong. In fact, if you tell anyone outside the IT industry that you work there, you can see that they are thinking: "Lucky guy! Wish I were in his shoes!!" (In fact, a medical professional who had come to our office for a presentation said, "You are IT guys. IT guys are intelligent people - you understand things fast..." (May not be his exact words, but they were to that effect). His assumption was that since we were IT guys, we would all have high IQs, we would grasp things immediately, and we were generally a cut above the members of the general population like him. This is the hype/respect around IT companies in India.)
To all you readers, if you have ever thought so, you will have to read this article. Note that all IT companies are like this - but if you have worked for sufficient time in the industry, then you know what Harshad Oak, the author, is talking about.
Because of the hype about IT companies, and also because of their contributions to India, many software developers generally do not talk about the conditions in such companies. Harshad hits the nail on the head when he says:
Yes, it does seem unpatriotic - just that I did not realize that patriotism has also leaked into this.
The reason why no one talks about is because the pay in such companies is generally higher than the pay anyone of the previous generation would have earned, when they retired. Hence the young guys assume that because they are being paid "unreasonably", there is nothing wrong in expecting unreasonable amount of work hours.
Sadly, it does appear to be the way in which most software cos in India operate. This makes it hard to look around and switch cos - a reason why everybody seems to have accepted this as a way of life and started switching around for money. Software cos have also observed this, and seem to have started equating employee welfare with more salary. Harshad again hits here:
In A Field Guide to Developers, Joel Spolsky mentions that
Sadly, in my belief, Indian IT companies have crossed that point long ago.
OK so...
Those were some essays that I felt deserved mention. You may or may not accept my list. In your opinion, there could be essays that are far better than the ones listed here - in such cases, do leave a link in the comments section and also a short explanation of why you consider these essays to be Great Essays. It would be nice if you could also list which of the above 3 criteria your essay satisfies to be called a Great Essay. Also, in case you do agree/do not agree with some points in my post, do comment!! In the meanwhile, I will leave you with links to three other essays that can also be considered Great Essays.
Why startups condense in America
Another essay from Paul Graham. He lists the reasons why Silicon Valley type environments are currently available only in the US and what it would take to replicate them elsewhere.
Why nerds are unpopular
An awesome essay that tries to answer the question of why geeky students are picked upon in school. Paul Graham goes into history to analyse the reasons why this occurs. Awesome!!
Toilets in Japan
Toilet - when you hear this word, you probably think, "What's there to speak about a toilet?" I thought the same too - I thought toilets were done; there was nothing that could be done to improve them, if anyone actually thought about improving them. Also, I had the belief that there could not be much technological advances in toilets - after all, its a toilet, what could there be in it? But this Wikipedia article opened my mind to the amazing toilets in Japan.
Sigh... why aren't such toilets available in India?
During such browsing periods, I sometimes come across articles that have me going, "Wow..!!" or, "Amazing...!! What a brilliant piece of writing!!" After my previous post, I was thinking on what to post next, when I realized I could have a post that linked to these essays - and also explain to readers why these essays were good enough to feature here.
As I listed the essays in my mind, I realized for an essay to be called a "great essay", I would have to set a bar. This is the bar I have set:
The article or essay must have
1) changed my thinking in some fundamental way (or),
2) must have opened up my mind to a different thought process, (or)
3) must have brought out what was in my mind all the while, but whose existence I had not 'realized', or was afraid to acknowledge.
With that bar set, I present before you these essays - essays that I term, "Great". A note here before we proceed: some of the essays are software development essays, so if you are not in that field or if you are not interested in software development, then you may not understand what makes those essays Great Essays.
Here we go!!
Usability for programmers
Joel Spolsky's essay comes up first, simply because it was the first Great Essay that I read. This essay is software development related, but users of software may also relate to it; so I would actually recommend any software user to read it. Yes, at 9 pages, its a pretty long essay , but its worth reading. I say this essay is worth it even for non-software guys because the essay mainly deals with how to make an application easy to use. This means that the essay shows you examples of bad UI design that confuses users - something that non-software guys would readily empathize with. That is the reason why I recommend this essay to everybody who uses and creates software.
At the time I read this essay, I was working in a particular team in my previous company, and we used to share interesting links among ourselves. This team included the VP of the company I was working for. I was initially reluctant to share this link, as I knew my team-mates would shout me down for sending a 9-page essay, but after much dithering, I took the risk and sent it anyway. Next morning, when I checked my mail, I found a mail from the VP, that went like this:
"This is brilliant!! Must read for all!!!"
All day long, the VP looked at me and smiled with the realization that a bit had flipped over in his brain. I don't think he ever smiled at any of us like he did that day.
This essay was the one that introduced me to Joel Spolsky and I have learnt a lot from his essays ever since. From his website, I have got to know the Business on Software forum (where I got to know various aspects of business, as well as some different views of India and what people in other lands think of India) as well as StackOverflow.com (where I have come across some great questions, answers and links). It has been a great association with Joel so far.
Milgram experiment
I generally read a lot of articles on Wikipedia. However, I am not sure how I stumbled upon this one. Guess it must have been while researching the various topics mentioned in Michael Crichton's novel, Sphere. In the novel, the main character performed experiments on the lines done by Asch and Milgram. Wanting to know who Asch and Milgram were and what was the significance of their experiments in the first place, I browsed Wikipedia and stumbled upon this one.
The article basically talks about an experiment conducted in 1961. We all know the horrors of the Holocaust during WW II. Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to answer the question of whether people who commit such horrific, disturbing acts as those performed during the Holocaust were simply "following orders from above". Milgram devised this experiment to know whether ordinary people would commit acts against their conscience when prodded on to do so by a person in authority.
As I read through the article, I was nodding my head at every point, and when I finished reading it, I realized the impact of the experiment - I could very well be one of the 'teachers'!! Read the article to find out what I mean...!!
Staying on the topic of psychology experiments, do not miss the conformity experiments by Solomon Asch.
You and your research
I have linked to the original article, but I actually read the article on Paul Graham's website.
This is actually a speech given by Richard Hamming at Bell Communications Research. Hamming was a mathematician involved in building telecommunications and computer systems. Hamming was brought in to Bell Labs so that he could program computers that would calculate the solutions to the equations that scientists working on the atomic bomb brought in.
Somehow Hamming hated this - he felt this was menial work, compared to the actual work of developing the bomb. He wanted to know why he was put in to do this work, when others were obviously working on the more exciting parts. He started to analyze what were the differences between him and the others; when someone achieved something great, he asked that person what made him do it, why, and wondered why others did not do the same. This led to some profound observations that are listed in this awesome essay.
Basically, the speech is about what one should do if one wants to do great research. By now if you are a person not associated with research in any way, you are probably thinking, "I am not associated with any research fields, so this essay is not for me". Actually, this isn't the case as Hamming himself says:
I will talk mainly about science because that is what I have studied. But so far as I know, and I've been told by others, much of what I say applies to many fields. Outstanding work is characterized very much the same way in most fields, but I will confine myself to science.
Yes, you might not understand few things in the essay if you are not part of the science & research fields or do not keep track of those fields, but I would still recommend this essay to you because its filled with great information and quotes on how to become great in your particular field - most of what Hamming talks about surely apply to your field and to you. Here's one example: most people believe you need luck to acheive greatness. There is also the belief that you need "lots of brains". Hamming takes the bull by the horns here:
...I find that the major objection is that people think great science is done by luck. It's all a matter of luck. Well, consider Einstein. Note how many different things he did that were good. Was it all luck? Wasn't it a little too repetitive? Consider Shannon. He didn't do just information theory. Several years before, he did some other good things and some which are still locked up in the security of cryptography. He did many good things.
You see again and again, that it is more than one thing from a good person. Once in a while a person does only one thing in his whole life, and we'll talk about that later, but a lot of times there is repetition. I claim that luck will not cover everything. And I will cite Pasteur who said, ``Luck favors the prepared mind.'' And I think that says it the way I believe it. There is indeed an element of luck, and no, there isn't. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it. So yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not.
For example, when I came to Bell Labs, I shared an office for a while with Shannon. At the same time he was doing information theory, I was doing coding theory. It is suspicious that the two of us did it at the same place and at the same time - it was in the atmosphere. And you can say, "Yes, it was luck." On the other hand you can say, "But why of all the people in Bell Labs then were those the two who did it?" Yes, it is partly luck, and partly it is the prepared mind; but 'partly' is the other thing I'm going to talk about. So, although I'll come back several more times to luck, I want to dispose of this matter of luck as being the sole criterion whether you do great work or not. I claim you have some, but not total, control over it. And I will quote, finally, Newton on the matter. Newton said, "If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results."
There it is - Luck favours the prepared mind and If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results!! Who could have put it better than that? Yes, there is a certain amount of luck, but if you do your work diligently, always striving to improve yourself, your knowledge and the quality of your work, luck ceases to be a significant factor very soon.
There are other great quotes here. While on the topic of drive, Hamming says...
One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, "How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?" He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, "You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years." I simply slunk out of the office!
What Bode was saying was this: "Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest." Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate.
There are other great nuggets in this speech, which I shall leave it to you, the reader to enjoy. The gist of the essay is that you must ask yourself three questions to be great:
1) What are the important problems of your field?,
2) What important problems are you working on?, and
3) Why not?
Sadly, I sent this article to a friend of mine. This speech is a pretty long speech, and my friend immediately dismissed it, saying it was too long. In the process, she missed a great chance to improve her life by standing on Hamming's shoulders. Do not make that mistake - go on, read it!!
Good and bad procrastination
I do procrastinate a lot and always felt guilty about it. All my life, I have been reprimanded by my parents for this. I thought I was the problem and tried a lot to change myself - I slightly did improve once I bought my cell phone and started storing my tasks in it. But the guilt remained, I guess. However, once I read the article's title, I was shocked - can there be any 'good' procrastination? But it turns out there is, as Paul Graham explains wonderfully.
Most people who write about procrastination write about how to cure it. But this is, strictly speaking, impossible. There are an infinite number of things you could be doing. No matter what you work on, you're not working on everything else. So the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well.
There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important.
That last type, I'd argue, is good procrastination.
Paul Graham says that procrastination isn't really bad - yes, you are putting off tasks, but as long as you are putting off unimportant tasks to work on more important ones, who cares? And that's the big difference here - when you procrastinate, there are two things happening: a) you are working on something, while b) the one you are supposed to work on lies unattended. What Paul Graham says is to ensure that the task you left unattended is less important than the task you are doing. When you procrastinate, ask yourself whether what you are doing now will give you much more benefits than the one you were supposed to do. If the answer is yes, then it is good procrastination - something you stand to benefit from, and hence don't have to feel guilty about.
Paul Graham also differentiates between errands and tasks. Any person has a never-ending stream of to-dos on his plate, but each one should learn to differentiate which of these to-dos are errands and which are tasks. (Here 'errands' are stuff that don't provide much benefits in the long term, while 'tasks' are stuff that provide benefits in the long term). Errands are small stuff, and hence its OK if we skip doing them. But how do we determine which is small stuff and which isn't? Here too Paul provides the answer...
What's "small stuff?" Roughly, work that has zero chance of being mentioned in your obituary. It's hard to say at the time what will turn out to be your best work (will it be your magnum opus on Sumerian temple architecture, or the detective thriller you wrote under a pseudonym?), but there's a whole class of tasks you can safely rule out: shaving, doing your laundry, cleaning the house, writing thank-you notes—anything that might be called an errand.
Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work.
Aha... tell me, which of the items in your to-do list right now would be mentioned in your obituary? Imagine your funeral - are people going to stand around and say, "He was such a good man - he used to shave regularly!!" No, they aren't - they are rather gonna list your achievements in life. For that, you should have done some real work - something they can say proudly at your funeral.
At this point, you are probably saying, "But not all errands can be ignored!! If I don't shave for two or three months, nobody around me is gonna like me!!" True, there are some errands that just cannot be ignored - these errands must be taken care of, but it may be ok to delay them by a day or two. Of course, there are other errands that can be safely skipped.
Note that there are other errands that simply cannot be skipped - for example, Paul describes an "absent-minded professor" who is so involved in solving a problem that he forgets to shave, eat or even look where he is going. Whenever, I think of such professors or scientists, who are so engaged in a problem, I also think of ignored wives. (I don't know why - hope I don't come across as sexist). In this case, an ideal scenario would be for the scientist to spend time with his wife, while still working dedicatedly at his research. Such kinds of errands require a balancing act, and one that comes with experience and understanding of the work you do and the persons you interact with. In my opinion, it would be better if we treated this as a task, rather than as an errand, since this does have ramifications in the long term.
Reading this article gave me a relief - it told me that there was nothing really wrong with me - procrastination wasn't really bad, as long as you learnt to use it to your advantage.
The Doomslayer
I came upon this essay after reading Michael Crichton's novel, State of Fear. State of Fear basically says that in many cases, public concerns such as global warming are not really major concerns - rather they are fears generated by governments/institutions interested in keeping people under control and making them behave within certain limits. Thus, Crichton goes on to say, global warming could possibly be yet another fear and hence doesn't really deserve the attention that it currently gets.
This is disturbing - and I went on to the Internet to verify some facts stated in the novel and that's how I came across this article. This article deals with the same lesson that State of Fear tries to put forward - that certain issues are not really issues worthy of attention; they are rather, unfounded fears.
The article talks about how Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich came to lay a bet between themselves. Julian Simon was a professor of business administration while Paul Ehrlich was an entemologist. In the 1970s, Ehrlich became popular by his work, The Population Bomb, that warned people that "famines of unbelievable proportions" would strike by 1975, "hundreds of millions of people" would starve to death in the 1970s and 80s, and that the world was "entering a genuine age of scarcity". The basis for these predictions was that the growth in the population is not matched by the growth in natural resources, which would evidently lead to an increase in prices, and making these resources inaccessible to most of the population.
Simon did not believe so, and very soon, the two laid a public bet - Simon asked Ehrlich to select any five raw materials, and select any date more than a year away. Simon believed that the prices on the future date would be less than the prices on the day of the bet, thus proving that raw materials would be more accessible and would not be affected by the burgeoning population.
Ehrlich took up the bet - he selected chromium, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten, and on paper bought $200 worth of each metal using the prices of Sep 10, 1980 as the index. The future date selected was Sep 10, 1990, a ten year period. During that period, the prices fell, with the result being that on Sep 10, 1990, Ehrlich sent Simon a cheque for the difference in price.
How could that be? As people use more and more resources, natural resources should
come down, right? After all, people can produce more of their kind, but natural resources cannot reproduce, so at one point, we should be hitting a limit, shouldn't we? In fact, the article asks this very same question...
After all, people are fruitful and they multiply but the stores of raw materials in the earth's crust certainly don't, so how can it be possible that, as the world's population doubles, the price of raw materials is cut in half?
And there is an explanation, as the article itself states...
It makes no sense. Yet it has happened. So there must be an explanation.
And there is: resources, for the most part, don't grow on trees. People produce them, they create them, whether it be food, factories, machines, new technologies, or stockpiles of mined, refined, and purified raw materials.
"Resources come out of people's minds more than out of the ground or air," says Simon. "Minds matter economically as much as or more than hands or mouths. Human beings create more than they use, on average. It had to be so, or we would be an extinct species."
The defect of the Malthusian models, superficially plausible but invariably wrong, is that they leave the human mind out of the equation. "These models simply do not comprehend key elements of people - the imaginative and creative."
On the Wikipedia article for this bet, a quote from Simon says that he concedes that increased usage of such resources does inevitably lead to increased prices - but they are only in the short term, since in the long term, people generally find out solutions to the problem.
More people, and increased income, cause resources to become more scarce in the short run. Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity, and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to search for solutions. Many fail in the search, at cost to themselves. But in a free society, solutions are eventually found. And in the long run the new developments leave us better off than if the problems had not arisen. That is, prices eventually become lower than before the increased scarcity occurred.
In case you are thinking that I have changed my views on global warming and other such concerns, no I haven't. But one thing that was new to me was the fact that I had never considered that problems such as the one put forward by Ehrlich were solvable - to me, once population began to increase, it was like it was the end of the road. I guess I am not the only one like this. It never crossed my brain that man's ingenuity would solve these problems.
IT Survivors - Staying alive in a software job
In a particular company in which I worked, the project in which I was in rapidly turned from a sedate one into one where we were spending long hours at office. I used to come into office at 10am, only to leave at 2am or 3am the next day. The worst part was that the deadline for the project was initially stated as January, but later on extended onto February, then it became March, then May and so on... and during each of these months, we worked from 10am to 3am. I felt frustrated at the long hours, but the work was good, since this was my first experience in a software services co. as well as a big company, and I was being exposed to new methods and styles of working.
But family life suffered heavily, with my Mom one day picking up a newspaper article headlined, "Separate your work life from your home life", and pointing it at me, screamed, "This is for you!!" As such, I was hoping for a quick end to the project. One day, an opportunity to leave for another project presented itself, and I left to join the new project. But my mind didn't rest - it kept working on why there was a need for the horrid nature of my work hours during that period - and again, turned to the Internet for answers. I searched for answers as to why people put in long hours in software projects and I very soon started searching for why people manage software the way they did in my team, and one fine day, stumbled upon this article that aptly catches the reasons from a very high level.
First off, if you have read the breathless news reports that appeared when I was in school (and possibly still appear) about the IT field, you would have got the impression that nothing about the Indian IT industry can ever go wrong. In fact, if you tell anyone outside the IT industry that you work there, you can see that they are thinking: "Lucky guy! Wish I were in his shoes!!" (In fact, a medical professional who had come to our office for a presentation said, "You are IT guys. IT guys are intelligent people - you understand things fast..." (May not be his exact words, but they were to that effect). His assumption was that since we were IT guys, we would all have high IQs, we would grasp things immediately, and we were generally a cut above the members of the general population like him. This is the hype/respect around IT companies in India.)
To all you readers, if you have ever thought so, you will have to read this article. Note that all IT companies are like this - but if you have worked for sufficient time in the industry, then you know what Harshad Oak, the author, is talking about.
Because of the hype about IT companies, and also because of their contributions to India, many software developers generally do not talk about the conditions in such companies. Harshad hits the nail on the head when he says:
However I was avoiding writing this particular piece as it seems like an unpatriotic thing to do, to tell the world how bad the working conditions in software companies in India have become.
Yes, it does seem unpatriotic - just that I did not realize that patriotism has also leaked into this.
The reason why no one talks about is because the pay in such companies is generally higher than the pay anyone of the previous generation would have earned, when they retired. Hence the young guys assume that because they are being paid "unreasonably", there is nothing wrong in expecting unreasonable amount of work hours.
The software professional Indian is today making more money in a month than what his parents might have made in an year. Very often a 21 year old newbie software developer makes more money than his/her 55 year old father working in an old world business. Most of these youngsters are well aware of this gap and so work under an impression that they are being paid an unreasonable amount of money. They naturally equate unreasonable money with unreasonable amount of work.
Sadly, it does appear to be the way in which most software cos in India operate. This makes it hard to look around and switch cos - a reason why everybody seems to have accepted this as a way of life and started switching around for money. Software cos have also observed this, and seem to have started equating employee welfare with more salary. Harshad again hits here:
Top bosses of companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, etc. need to send the message loud and clear to their company and to other companies listening at national IT events that employee welfare is really their top concern and having good working culture and conditions is a priority. Employee welfare here does not mean giving the employee the salary he/she dreams of.
In A Field Guide to Developers, Joel Spolsky mentions that
If you start to hear complaints about salaries where you never heard them before, that’s usually a sign that people aren’t really loving their job. If potential new hires just won’t back down on their demands for outlandish salaries, you’re probably dealing with a case of people who are thinking, “Well, if it’s going to have to suck to go to work, at least I should be getting paid well.”
Sadly, in my belief, Indian IT companies have crossed that point long ago.
OK so...
Those were some essays that I felt deserved mention. You may or may not accept my list. In your opinion, there could be essays that are far better than the ones listed here - in such cases, do leave a link in the comments section and also a short explanation of why you consider these essays to be Great Essays. It would be nice if you could also list which of the above 3 criteria your essay satisfies to be called a Great Essay. Also, in case you do agree/do not agree with some points in my post, do comment!! In the meanwhile, I will leave you with links to three other essays that can also be considered Great Essays.
Why startups condense in America
Another essay from Paul Graham. He lists the reasons why Silicon Valley type environments are currently available only in the US and what it would take to replicate them elsewhere.
Why nerds are unpopular
An awesome essay that tries to answer the question of why geeky students are picked upon in school. Paul Graham goes into history to analyse the reasons why this occurs. Awesome!!
Toilets in Japan
Toilet - when you hear this word, you probably think, "What's there to speak about a toilet?" I thought the same too - I thought toilets were done; there was nothing that could be done to improve them, if anyone actually thought about improving them. Also, I had the belief that there could not be much technological advances in toilets - after all, its a toilet, what could there be in it? But this Wikipedia article opened my mind to the amazing toilets in Japan.
Sigh... why aren't such toilets available in India?
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
"But what can I do on Wikipedia?"
Just the other day, I received a mail sent to the BarCampChennai mailing group from Kiruba Shankar. Kiruba was planning to hold a Wikipedia Academy session at his office. The basis for the Wikipedia Academy is the finding that of the total number of people who use Wikipedia, only a few (1%) actually contribute to it (links here and here). The Wikimedia Foundation, in order to increase the number of people who edit Wikipedia, brought up the idea of Wikipedia Academy.
I was not aware of this statistic, though I was aware that not everyone knew that Wikipedia was open for editing by everyone. Actually, I was under the belief that everyone who had a computer was aware of the fact that Wikipedia could be edited by anyone. I was rudely awakened from this a few months back, when one of my colleagues, a software developer himself, noticed that I often had a browser window open to some article in Wikipedia, and asked me why I was constantly browsing through the site. I explained that I liked learning new things and also that I was looking to see if I could make some changes.
He asked me, "You mean to say you make changes to Wikipedia?"
"Yes."
"How did you get access?"
"I registered." (Note: you don't have to register to make changes to Wikipedia, but I said that anyway).
"Huh okay... but how did you register? Did you write to them/email them?"
"No... I just clicked the Login/Register link at the top and registered."
Here, a look of shock came across his face.
"You mean you can register just like you sign-up for an email site?"
"Yes."
"And then?"
"And then I go ahead and start making edits, i.e., changes..."
"So you mean to say anybody can just go ahead and change the content of Wikipedia?!!", he asked, with a look of disbelief on his face.
"Yes."
Our conversation ended there, but it lingered in my mind. I had always believed that people around me knew that Wikipedia was open to modification, that it was based on the open-source culture. Of course, I later revised my belief to include only those subset of people who had access to the Internet. But this conversation forced me to think that maybe, just maybe, not everybody with Internet access knew Wikipedia was waiting to be edited by them.
At this point, Kiruba's mail arrived. So it was true. Not everyone with an Internet connection knew Wikipedia could be changed.
Well, I thought I'd present at the Academy, but for various reasons could not do so. However, as part of my preparation, I interviewed a few of my colleagues in office on what they thought about Wikipedia, whether they knew that Wikipedia was editable by us normal people, and if they knew it was editable, then had they contributed? If not, why not? What were the reasons? Here I present to you in this blog post, their responses and my responses to theirs.
My mini-survey:
First, I had intended to interview a large variety of people in my office, from software developers to managers to the HR guys. But as it turned out, I interviewed only those people in my team and near my cubicle - thus everyone I interviewed were software developers, and that too only 4 in number. But as it turned out, there were some interesting responses. I shall place before you the interesting responses first, and then my replies. Am not giving out names here, so here goes:
Team Member 1:
She did not know that Wikipedia could be edited by us normal people until I told her. She was very surprised and even appeared shocked. She took a few minutes to recover from the shock, and then asked what prevented a person from entering incorrect information on Wikipedia. When I explained to her the various policies to prevent incorrect information, such as recent changes patrolling, user watchlist, banning users and IP addresses, reverts etc., she seemed somewhat satisfied, but still insisted that these did not prevent anyone making the incorrect edit in the first place, which I graciously accepted.
I asked her whether she had ever seen noticed the Wikipedia logo. She had, and I asked her what she thought of when she saw the word "Free" in the "The Free Encyclopedia" text on the logo. She said she thought the word meant that she wouldn't have to pay for the usage of Wikipedia. This was interesting, since the "free" actually means free as in open-source, i.e., you can go ahead and change something if you find it lacking in something.
Since I found it astonishing that people did not know Wikipedia was open to all, I decided to probe that angle. I began by asking her, "During the time you believed Wikipedia was not editable by you, how did you think content appeared on Wikipedia?". She said she believed that it was done by employees of Wikipedia who were paid to do so - something like normal web sites, such as news sites, where content editors key in the page content. I then asked, during her frequent visits to Wikipedia articles, had she never noticed the 'edit' links to the right of every section in the article, or atleast the 'edit this page' link at the top of every page? This would have given her an inkling that something about Wikipedia was different. To this, her answer was that she hadn't even noticed the links.
Some days later, I asked her, "Now that you know Wikipedia is editable by you, will you edit?" She said she was not sure whether she would, since she was afraid there was a possibility of her making a change which later would turn out to be factually false or against some Wikipedia policy, and bring down her reputation.
Colleague in next cubicle 1:
She was not aware that Wikipedia was editable by everyone on Earth, until I told her. When I asked her what she thought of the word, "Free", she replied that she thought she wouldn't have to pay any money for using it. When I asked her whether she had noticed the 'edit' links at the top, she said she hadn't, or if even she had, they really hadn't indicated to her mind of being indicative of something different.
Colleague in next cubicle 2:
He was a geek and a voracious reader of articles on the Web. For all these reasons, I expected that he would know Wikipedia was editable by everyone. And I was right. Yes, he had heard of Wikipedia. Yes, he did know that it could be edited by everyone. His understanding of the word "Free" was free in the monetary sense as well as free to edit/change. Okay, I thought, so he must have made some changes/contributions.
When I asked him whether he had made any contributions, he said, "No, I have not made any contributions."
"Why?"
"Just like that..."
He could not give me a clear answer.
Team Member 2:
Yes, he had used Wikipedia. Yes, he knew Wikipedia was editable by everyone since he had seen the 'anyone can edit' text at the top of the home page on the English Wikipedia. Okay, but had he made any contributions? He interrupted me to ask why I was asking all these. I told him about Wikipedia Academy and my plan of presenting there.
He said that he had not made any contributions. When I asked him why not, he said most of what he wanted to know was already on Wikipedia. I told him that incidents that would take place in the future would not be there on Wikipedia, and that as the incidents took place, he could add them to existing articles or create new articles. To this, he asked what he would gain out of it? I couldn't answer that question right then.
My responses (and some of my thoughts):
So there ended my mini-survey. It was interesting in that I got some varied and different viewpoints. However, here are my responses. I am also laying before you my thoughts on Wikipedia - these were a result of the discussions with the above people during my mini-survey.
One important observation seen here is that even though people may have used Wikipedia a lot, it really does not seem to register in their minds that Wikipedia is open for editing by all - even though there is an image on the top left of every Wikipedia article with a logo that explicitly states, "The Free Encyclopedia". Of course, people *do* see this, but they assume free in the monetary sense. However, there are other links that give an indication of the different nature of Wikipedia. One is the 'edit this link' link at the top of every page. Second is the 'edit' link for every section. Third, right on the home page, is the text, "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". There is also the link, "Editing" present below this. So despite a preponderance of clues, people still seem to miss it. I am not sure why this is so.
When I was explaining to my team member about Wikipedia's policies to prevent incorrect information, she asked me what prevented a person from making an edit in the first place. Since in my mind, I have often associated Wikipedia with open-source, I immediately thought how a person submitted his code to an OSS project. In most OSS projects, once you decide to contribute, you really cannot commit your code straightaway to the source code repository - you have to submit your code to the project maintainers. This code is reviewed, and if deemed suitable, is accepted. A few more accepted code like this earns you respect, which means you very soon get direct commit rights to the repository. Once you have got this, you no longer need to have your code reviewed for someone to accept it. (I am not really part of any OSS project, but I assume this is how it works in most cases).
This is not the way it is on Wikipedia. You can submit your changes (equivalent to committing into the repository) straightaway. It doesn't matter whether they are right or wrong. Nobody reviews your changes. Here's one example. Once your changes are accepted, users who see the changes will notice something factually wrong, and only then does someone act on your change - either rectifying it or removing it totally.
Thus, while in open-source, as a newbie, your changes are reviewed first, on Wikipedia, even if you are a newbie, your changes are accepted first, and then reviewed. So yes, what my team member said is right - no method exists to prevent the incorrect edit in the first place.
Another point raised by the same team member was her fear that one of her changes could be rejected because she made an edit which was factually false or was against some Wikipedia policy. To this, I could only ask her to be bold.
"But what can I do on Wikipedia?"
One question which I found on people's faces (yes... nobody verbally asked me this) was, "What will I edit on Wikipedia? What do I know? I really don't know much...".
If they are asking this question, it means people either think low of themselves (all of us do at some point, we just have to keep telling ourselves that we are capable of much better and bigger things) or they assume that you have to be an expert in some subject or field to edit Wikipedia. That's not really the case. Check out what the About page of Wikipedia tells us:
You don't have to be an expert to make contributions. Take my case. I am a software developer with 4 years of experience, but I really am not an expert in anything (even software, but don't tell that to my boss). Still, I edit Wikipedia, making changes here and there!! You might argue by saying, "Well, you probably make changes to software-related articles." Huh oh - many of the changes I make are not really related to software. Want proof? Check out my contributions.
At this point, you are probably thinking, "Huh.. this guy is in the software field. So he probably knows more about software than about anything else. If that's the case, he should be making changes on software articles. But he says he isn't. Then what the heck does he change?"
Aha... Finally, I am able to bring my long-winded rant to the point of this post. Here is what I do (and which you can do) on Wikipedia, without having any expert knowledge in any subject. Note that I live in Chennai, and thus, most of them are from the point of view of a Chennaiite. However, they do apply to any place, any culture, anywhere in the world.
a) Chennai's public bus transport is operated by the MTC. The MTC runs various buses, such as deluxe, White Board, etc. May be when the MTC introduces yet another classification, you can update the MTC article.
Recently, the MTC has been introducing new and innovative routes. If you find any new route that has been introduced in your area, you can update the List of MTC bus routes article. Don't worry if you don't know all the info about a particular route. Go ahead, be bold and make the entry with whatever you know. The community nature of Wikipedia ensures that someone else will add the missing data.
For example, two months back, I noticed a new route, M119, from Guindy to the OMR. I had been planning to add it on Wikipedia, but procrastination held me back. When I went to the page sometime later, it was already there.
b) You can update articles pertaining to certain subjects as news related to those subjects breaks. On November 26, 2008, as news broke of the Mumbai attacks, user Kensplanet created an article roughly two or three hours after the event started. As the two and a half day event progressed, people kept editing the article, often adding information they gleaned from various media sources, and in some cases, just rewriting it to make it clearer.
You too can do the same - this requires no expert knowledge, you don't have to be at the actual location, but can contribute to such articles, as long as you provide proof for what you say.
In another example, on 5th November 2008, the noted Indian filmmaker, B. R. Chopra died. On the same day, his article was edited to indicate his death. Again, something that requires no expert knowledge - a layman like you and me can do this job. I later went on and changed the article's categorization to indicate his death.
c) Indians *love* movies and movie stars. I am not a movie fanatic myself, but I know some friends who want to be at the "first-day-first-show" of their favourite movie stars or of highly anticipated releases. In such cases, you can do Wikipedia a small service by adding as much details about the movie (such as plot, cast list, etc), and updating the relevant article on the movie. An example would be recently released movies like Abhiyum Naanum and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.
If going to the movies just to add info to Wikipedia isn't possible for you or strikes you as absurd, its ok - you can still help Wikipedia. Raadhika Sarathkumar's article on Wikipedia does not have her entire filmography (as of December 2008). May be you do remember some of her films - check the list and if you find some missing ones, you can add them.
Again, such changes also count as Wikipedia contributions, and do not need any expert knowledge - you would have watched her movies innumerable times on TV.
Esha Deol's article on Wikipedia was uncategorized until 22nd November 2008, when I added the categorizations. Again, something that really requires no expert knowledge. We all do read about celebrities and their activities in the newspaper, even if we are not that interested in their lives.
d) Are you good at English and another language? If yes, probably you can translate the 2 million plus articles on the English Wikipedia into the other-language-Wikipedia. Let's take Tamil, the predominant language in Chennai. As of December 2008, the Tamil Wikipedia has 16371 articles only, while the English Wikipedia has 2,669,949 articles!! If you are good at translation, may be you can translate English to Tamil and vice-versa. Again, something that requires no expert knowledge.
You might argue here that expert knowledge is required for Tamil and English. Ummm no... a working knowledge of both languages is enough. Its ok if you make spelling errors in the translation - the community nature ensures that someone will come along later and rectify your mistakes. Just ensure that you are factually correct all along.
e) Probably you are one of those guys who work outside the city/town/village where you grew up. If you are in India, there's a high chance that you travel back to your hometown by the Indian Railways. If yes, then you can contribute to Wikipedia by adding articles on the train services you use. An example is Cheran Express. You too can do the same. Just an article listing the origin, destination, and the route is good enough for starters.
f) Still not convinced? Let me try... May be you can fix spelling errors in articles (that's what I have been doing for some time on Wikipedia!!). Yes, even fixing spelling and grammar errors are counted as contributions on Wikipedia!! Also, rewording a particular passage in an article to make it clearer is also a contribution.
g) Do you like taking photos? Photos help build a better understanding of the object under study. Are you a graphic artist, who can produce some good animations? Many articles on Wikipedia could do with such photos/animations. In fact, Arun Ganesh has taken some good photos of various Chennai landmarks and placed them on Wikipedia.
h) Its just not necessary that you have to contribute only to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation, which also runs various other sister websites. You can take a look at them here. You can contribute to these too. For example, Wikiversity is a online Wiki site that provides free learning materials. Again, like Wikipedia, the content is provided by people like you and me. If you know something that is not there on the site, then you can go ahead and key it in.
i) There are other sites that are not related to Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation in any way, but follow the Wikipedia model. An example is wikitravel.org, which is a free travel guide for various places in the globe. Take a look at Chennai's article on Wikitravel. Let us assume you are a frequent visitor to Chennai - then you can consolidate your experiences (both good and bad ones) and place them on the article. You probably know which hotels are good, which roadside eateries are recommended, which food is good/bad for you, what one should remember to pack, etc. All these can be added to this article.
Okay, most of that info is already there, I hear you say that. But things can change!! Some hotel may close; some new hotel may crop up, you might find a new budget hotel that doesn't compromise and which you did not know about because it was hidden behind some flashy buildings - you can add all those here. Even that is a contribution.
"But what's the use?"
Right... this has been a long post.. Am getting impatient to post this, so I'll end the post with my answer to the final team member's question, as to what is the benefit to him out of doing all this - I can only say that it is probably the intention to help others with any knowledge that I have, however small the help or the knowledge may be.
What do you the readers think? What are the other ways in which you feel one can contribute to Wikipedia? Remember, small contributions also do count!! So do come out with your own ideas in the comments section!!
I was not aware of this statistic, though I was aware that not everyone knew that Wikipedia was open for editing by everyone. Actually, I was under the belief that everyone who had a computer was aware of the fact that Wikipedia could be edited by anyone. I was rudely awakened from this a few months back, when one of my colleagues, a software developer himself, noticed that I often had a browser window open to some article in Wikipedia, and asked me why I was constantly browsing through the site. I explained that I liked learning new things and also that I was looking to see if I could make some changes.
He asked me, "You mean to say you make changes to Wikipedia?"
"Yes."
"How did you get access?"
"I registered." (Note: you don't have to register to make changes to Wikipedia, but I said that anyway).
"Huh okay... but how did you register? Did you write to them/email them?"
"No... I just clicked the Login/Register link at the top and registered."
Here, a look of shock came across his face.
"You mean you can register just like you sign-up for an email site?"
"Yes."
"And then?"
"And then I go ahead and start making edits, i.e., changes..."
"So you mean to say anybody can just go ahead and change the content of Wikipedia?!!", he asked, with a look of disbelief on his face.
"Yes."
Our conversation ended there, but it lingered in my mind. I had always believed that people around me knew that Wikipedia was open to modification, that it was based on the open-source culture. Of course, I later revised my belief to include only those subset of people who had access to the Internet. But this conversation forced me to think that maybe, just maybe, not everybody with Internet access knew Wikipedia was waiting to be edited by them.
At this point, Kiruba's mail arrived. So it was true. Not everyone with an Internet connection knew Wikipedia could be changed.
Well, I thought I'd present at the Academy, but for various reasons could not do so. However, as part of my preparation, I interviewed a few of my colleagues in office on what they thought about Wikipedia, whether they knew that Wikipedia was editable by us normal people, and if they knew it was editable, then had they contributed? If not, why not? What were the reasons? Here I present to you in this blog post, their responses and my responses to theirs.
My mini-survey:
First, I had intended to interview a large variety of people in my office, from software developers to managers to the HR guys. But as it turned out, I interviewed only those people in my team and near my cubicle - thus everyone I interviewed were software developers, and that too only 4 in number. But as it turned out, there were some interesting responses. I shall place before you the interesting responses first, and then my replies. Am not giving out names here, so here goes:
Team Member 1:
She did not know that Wikipedia could be edited by us normal people until I told her. She was very surprised and even appeared shocked. She took a few minutes to recover from the shock, and then asked what prevented a person from entering incorrect information on Wikipedia. When I explained to her the various policies to prevent incorrect information, such as recent changes patrolling, user watchlist, banning users and IP addresses, reverts etc., she seemed somewhat satisfied, but still insisted that these did not prevent anyone making the incorrect edit in the first place, which I graciously accepted.
I asked her whether she had ever seen noticed the Wikipedia logo. She had, and I asked her what she thought of when she saw the word "Free" in the "The Free Encyclopedia" text on the logo. She said she thought the word meant that she wouldn't have to pay for the usage of Wikipedia. This was interesting, since the "free" actually means free as in open-source, i.e., you can go ahead and change something if you find it lacking in something.
Since I found it astonishing that people did not know Wikipedia was open to all, I decided to probe that angle. I began by asking her, "During the time you believed Wikipedia was not editable by you, how did you think content appeared on Wikipedia?". She said she believed that it was done by employees of Wikipedia who were paid to do so - something like normal web sites, such as news sites, where content editors key in the page content. I then asked, during her frequent visits to Wikipedia articles, had she never noticed the 'edit' links to the right of every section in the article, or atleast the 'edit this page' link at the top of every page? This would have given her an inkling that something about Wikipedia was different. To this, her answer was that she hadn't even noticed the links.
Some days later, I asked her, "Now that you know Wikipedia is editable by you, will you edit?" She said she was not sure whether she would, since she was afraid there was a possibility of her making a change which later would turn out to be factually false or against some Wikipedia policy, and bring down her reputation.
Colleague in next cubicle 1:
She was not aware that Wikipedia was editable by everyone on Earth, until I told her. When I asked her what she thought of the word, "Free", she replied that she thought she wouldn't have to pay any money for using it. When I asked her whether she had noticed the 'edit' links at the top, she said she hadn't, or if even she had, they really hadn't indicated to her mind of being indicative of something different.
Colleague in next cubicle 2:
He was a geek and a voracious reader of articles on the Web. For all these reasons, I expected that he would know Wikipedia was editable by everyone. And I was right. Yes, he had heard of Wikipedia. Yes, he did know that it could be edited by everyone. His understanding of the word "Free" was free in the monetary sense as well as free to edit/change. Okay, I thought, so he must have made some changes/contributions.
When I asked him whether he had made any contributions, he said, "No, I have not made any contributions."
"Why?"
"Just like that..."
He could not give me a clear answer.
Team Member 2:
Yes, he had used Wikipedia. Yes, he knew Wikipedia was editable by everyone since he had seen the 'anyone can edit' text at the top of the home page on the English Wikipedia. Okay, but had he made any contributions? He interrupted me to ask why I was asking all these. I told him about Wikipedia Academy and my plan of presenting there.
He said that he had not made any contributions. When I asked him why not, he said most of what he wanted to know was already on Wikipedia. I told him that incidents that would take place in the future would not be there on Wikipedia, and that as the incidents took place, he could add them to existing articles or create new articles. To this, he asked what he would gain out of it? I couldn't answer that question right then.
My responses (and some of my thoughts):
So there ended my mini-survey. It was interesting in that I got some varied and different viewpoints. However, here are my responses. I am also laying before you my thoughts on Wikipedia - these were a result of the discussions with the above people during my mini-survey.
One important observation seen here is that even though people may have used Wikipedia a lot, it really does not seem to register in their minds that Wikipedia is open for editing by all - even though there is an image on the top left of every Wikipedia article with a logo that explicitly states, "The Free Encyclopedia". Of course, people *do* see this, but they assume free in the monetary sense. However, there are other links that give an indication of the different nature of Wikipedia. One is the 'edit this link' link at the top of every page. Second is the 'edit' link for every section. Third, right on the home page, is the text, "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". There is also the link, "Editing" present below this. So despite a preponderance of clues, people still seem to miss it. I am not sure why this is so.
When I was explaining to my team member about Wikipedia's policies to prevent incorrect information, she asked me what prevented a person from making an edit in the first place. Since in my mind, I have often associated Wikipedia with open-source, I immediately thought how a person submitted his code to an OSS project. In most OSS projects, once you decide to contribute, you really cannot commit your code straightaway to the source code repository - you have to submit your code to the project maintainers. This code is reviewed, and if deemed suitable, is accepted. A few more accepted code like this earns you respect, which means you very soon get direct commit rights to the repository. Once you have got this, you no longer need to have your code reviewed for someone to accept it. (I am not really part of any OSS project, but I assume this is how it works in most cases).
This is not the way it is on Wikipedia. You can submit your changes (equivalent to committing into the repository) straightaway. It doesn't matter whether they are right or wrong. Nobody reviews your changes. Here's one example. Once your changes are accepted, users who see the changes will notice something factually wrong, and only then does someone act on your change - either rectifying it or removing it totally.
Thus, while in open-source, as a newbie, your changes are reviewed first, on Wikipedia, even if you are a newbie, your changes are accepted first, and then reviewed. So yes, what my team member said is right - no method exists to prevent the incorrect edit in the first place.
Another point raised by the same team member was her fear that one of her changes could be rejected because she made an edit which was factually false or was against some Wikipedia policy. To this, I could only ask her to be bold.
"But what can I do on Wikipedia?"
One question which I found on people's faces (yes... nobody verbally asked me this) was, "What will I edit on Wikipedia? What do I know? I really don't know much...".
If they are asking this question, it means people either think low of themselves (all of us do at some point, we just have to keep telling ourselves that we are capable of much better and bigger things) or they assume that you have to be an expert in some subject or field to edit Wikipedia. That's not really the case. Check out what the About page of Wikipedia tells us:
Visitors do not need specialized qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge. This means that people of all ages and cultural and social backgrounds can write Wikipedia articles.
You don't have to be an expert to make contributions. Take my case. I am a software developer with 4 years of experience, but I really am not an expert in anything (even software, but don't tell that to my boss). Still, I edit Wikipedia, making changes here and there!! You might argue by saying, "Well, you probably make changes to software-related articles." Huh oh - many of the changes I make are not really related to software. Want proof? Check out my contributions.
At this point, you are probably thinking, "Huh.. this guy is in the software field. So he probably knows more about software than about anything else. If that's the case, he should be making changes on software articles. But he says he isn't. Then what the heck does he change?"
Aha... Finally, I am able to bring my long-winded rant to the point of this post. Here is what I do (and which you can do) on Wikipedia, without having any expert knowledge in any subject. Note that I live in Chennai, and thus, most of them are from the point of view of a Chennaiite. However, they do apply to any place, any culture, anywhere in the world.
a) Chennai's public bus transport is operated by the MTC. The MTC runs various buses, such as deluxe, White Board, etc. May be when the MTC introduces yet another classification, you can update the MTC article.
Recently, the MTC has been introducing new and innovative routes. If you find any new route that has been introduced in your area, you can update the List of MTC bus routes article. Don't worry if you don't know all the info about a particular route. Go ahead, be bold and make the entry with whatever you know. The community nature of Wikipedia ensures that someone else will add the missing data.
For example, two months back, I noticed a new route, M119, from Guindy to the OMR. I had been planning to add it on Wikipedia, but procrastination held me back. When I went to the page sometime later, it was already there.
b) You can update articles pertaining to certain subjects as news related to those subjects breaks. On November 26, 2008, as news broke of the Mumbai attacks, user Kensplanet created an article roughly two or three hours after the event started. As the two and a half day event progressed, people kept editing the article, often adding information they gleaned from various media sources, and in some cases, just rewriting it to make it clearer.
You too can do the same - this requires no expert knowledge, you don't have to be at the actual location, but can contribute to such articles, as long as you provide proof for what you say.
In another example, on 5th November 2008, the noted Indian filmmaker, B. R. Chopra died. On the same day, his article was edited to indicate his death. Again, something that requires no expert knowledge - a layman like you and me can do this job. I later went on and changed the article's categorization to indicate his death.
c) Indians *love* movies and movie stars. I am not a movie fanatic myself, but I know some friends who want to be at the "first-day-first-show" of their favourite movie stars or of highly anticipated releases. In such cases, you can do Wikipedia a small service by adding as much details about the movie (such as plot, cast list, etc), and updating the relevant article on the movie. An example would be recently released movies like Abhiyum Naanum and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.
If going to the movies just to add info to Wikipedia isn't possible for you or strikes you as absurd, its ok - you can still help Wikipedia. Raadhika Sarathkumar's article on Wikipedia does not have her entire filmography (as of December 2008). May be you do remember some of her films - check the list and if you find some missing ones, you can add them.
Again, such changes also count as Wikipedia contributions, and do not need any expert knowledge - you would have watched her movies innumerable times on TV.
Esha Deol's article on Wikipedia was uncategorized until 22nd November 2008, when I added the categorizations. Again, something that really requires no expert knowledge. We all do read about celebrities and their activities in the newspaper, even if we are not that interested in their lives.
d) Are you good at English and another language? If yes, probably you can translate the 2 million plus articles on the English Wikipedia into the other-language-Wikipedia. Let's take Tamil, the predominant language in Chennai. As of December 2008, the Tamil Wikipedia has 16371 articles only, while the English Wikipedia has 2,669,949 articles!! If you are good at translation, may be you can translate English to Tamil and vice-versa. Again, something that requires no expert knowledge.
You might argue here that expert knowledge is required for Tamil and English. Ummm no... a working knowledge of both languages is enough. Its ok if you make spelling errors in the translation - the community nature ensures that someone will come along later and rectify your mistakes. Just ensure that you are factually correct all along.
e) Probably you are one of those guys who work outside the city/town/village where you grew up. If you are in India, there's a high chance that you travel back to your hometown by the Indian Railways. If yes, then you can contribute to Wikipedia by adding articles on the train services you use. An example is Cheran Express. You too can do the same. Just an article listing the origin, destination, and the route is good enough for starters.
f) Still not convinced? Let me try... May be you can fix spelling errors in articles (that's what I have been doing for some time on Wikipedia!!). Yes, even fixing spelling and grammar errors are counted as contributions on Wikipedia!! Also, rewording a particular passage in an article to make it clearer is also a contribution.
g) Do you like taking photos? Photos help build a better understanding of the object under study. Are you a graphic artist, who can produce some good animations? Many articles on Wikipedia could do with such photos/animations. In fact, Arun Ganesh has taken some good photos of various Chennai landmarks and placed them on Wikipedia.
h) Its just not necessary that you have to contribute only to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation, which also runs various other sister websites. You can take a look at them here. You can contribute to these too. For example, Wikiversity is a online Wiki site that provides free learning materials. Again, like Wikipedia, the content is provided by people like you and me. If you know something that is not there on the site, then you can go ahead and key it in.
i) There are other sites that are not related to Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation in any way, but follow the Wikipedia model. An example is wikitravel.org, which is a free travel guide for various places in the globe. Take a look at Chennai's article on Wikitravel. Let us assume you are a frequent visitor to Chennai - then you can consolidate your experiences (both good and bad ones) and place them on the article. You probably know which hotels are good, which roadside eateries are recommended, which food is good/bad for you, what one should remember to pack, etc. All these can be added to this article.
Okay, most of that info is already there, I hear you say that. But things can change!! Some hotel may close; some new hotel may crop up, you might find a new budget hotel that doesn't compromise and which you did not know about because it was hidden behind some flashy buildings - you can add all those here. Even that is a contribution.
"But what's the use?"
Right... this has been a long post.. Am getting impatient to post this, so I'll end the post with my answer to the final team member's question, as to what is the benefit to him out of doing all this - I can only say that it is probably the intention to help others with any knowledge that I have, however small the help or the knowledge may be.
What do you the readers think? What are the other ways in which you feel one can contribute to Wikipedia? Remember, small contributions also do count!! So do come out with your own ideas in the comments section!!
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Of SQL ANSI operators and Outlook shortcuts
We recently migrated our application from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005.
Since this means that the *= and =* operators shall no longer work, we were asked by our onsite coordinator to search for occurrences of these operators in our code, replace them with LEFT OUTER JOIN and RIGHT OUTER JOIN respectively, and test the code.
We did so, and finding everything to work fine, I opened Outlook to fire a mail to my onsite coordinator. While typing,
I found that the word, 'and', became bold, like this.
"Huh?", I thought. "What's up?"
I deleted the text and typed it again, thinking I had pressed some key by mistake (though I was sure I hadn't). It occurred again!!
My heart began to flutter wildly. Had I discovered a hitherto unknown shortcut in Outlook? Yippee!!! I could impress my colleagues (who are heavy mouse users) with my speed using yet another keyboard shortcut!!! Woooooooooooo!!!
But I wanted to verify it first. Since I already knew that Outlook uses Word as its email editor, I opened up Word and typed in some sample text within *= and =*. If Word behaved the same way, then it was really a shortcut in Word to make text bold.
No.. it didn't!!
"Ok, it was not an inbuilt shortcut of Word, but atleast, is a useful shortcut within Outlook," I thought. "Yippee!! I can impress my colleagues, and enjoy the this-guy-seems-to-know-a-lot look on their faces when they see it for themselves!!"
But I decided to play safe. Calming myself down, I checked Google for links on the *= and =* as a shortcut. No relevant search results cropped up. Feeling a bit let down over losing a potential blog post :p, I persevered, but to no avail.
Sadly, I opened Gmail to check my mail (not sure what made me think of this one). I read a mail from a member of one of the discussion groups I am in, and he had placed some text within asterisks, like so:
Realization hit me. It was the usual shortcut for making text bold!! SHEESH!!
(In case you didn't get it, you can make a text bold by keying in '*', then your text, and then '*' again (of course, without the quotation marks given here). This appears to be a way to represent bold text on email editors that can support only plain text.)
But I persevered on. If it really was a shortcut, then I believed it should work even if we typed it as
since I believed that Outlook identified the start and end of the text by the asterisks. But no, the text did not become bold. Strange!!
Even more strange was the fact that if I typed it in as
then it worked!!!
The only difference between this text and the text above it is that the space between *= and the text is missing here. Also missing is the space between the end of the text and *=. The space character seemed to play an important role.
On further tinkering, I finally understood that Outlook seems to insist that to make a text bold by using the asterisk key, the starting asterisk must not be followed by a space, nor should the ending asterisk be preceded by a space (I don't have any proof by way of any links for this, though). This can be understood by typing
which will not make the text bold. In fact, keying in the asterisk and pressing the spacebar results in a bulleted list!!
SHEESH... its normal behaviour and I got carried away!! In fact, I even thought of a blog post about a new shortcut 'discovered'!!
"Hmm, there goes a blog post!!", I thought. Then my brain told me, "If conferences can be held over failure, then why not post this? It serves as a proof of your learning."
And so, this blog post.
Some notes:
1) Some other shortcuts I found in Outlook as a result of this experience:
a) Typing '*' and pressing a space results in a bulleted list with the black bullet (ya, that's what I call it!!)
b) Typing '>' and pressing a space results in a bulleted list with the right-hand pointing arrows.
(What are the names for these bullets, anyway?)
2) Also see this page for other shortcuts in Windows.
3) I know I should have told this first, but its not too late, I guess... I am using Outlook 2007.
Since this means that the *= and =* operators shall no longer work, we were asked by our onsite coordinator to search for occurrences of these operators in our code, replace them with LEFT OUTER JOIN and RIGHT OUTER JOIN respectively, and test the code.
We did so, and finding everything to work fine, I opened Outlook to fire a mail to my onsite coordinator. While typing,
We searched for occurrences of *= and =* in our code
I found that the word, 'and', became bold, like this.
"Huh?", I thought. "What's up?"
I deleted the text and typed it again, thinking I had pressed some key by mistake (though I was sure I hadn't). It occurred again!!
My heart began to flutter wildly. Had I discovered a hitherto unknown shortcut in Outlook? Yippee!!! I could impress my colleagues (who are heavy mouse users) with my speed using yet another keyboard shortcut!!! Woooooooooooo!!!
But I wanted to verify it first. Since I already knew that Outlook uses Word as its email editor, I opened up Word and typed in some sample text within *= and =*. If Word behaved the same way, then it was really a shortcut in Word to make text bold.
No.. it didn't!!
"Ok, it was not an inbuilt shortcut of Word, but atleast, is a useful shortcut within Outlook," I thought. "Yippee!! I can impress my colleagues, and enjoy the this-guy-seems-to-know-a-lot look on their faces when they see it for themselves!!"
But I decided to play safe. Calming myself down, I checked Google for links on the *= and =* as a shortcut. No relevant search results cropped up. Feeling a bit let down over losing a potential blog post :p, I persevered, but to no avail.
Sadly, I opened Gmail to check my mail (not sure what made me think of this one). I read a mail from a member of one of the discussion groups I am in, and he had placed some text within asterisks, like so:
*some text*
Realization hit me. It was the usual shortcut for making text bold!! SHEESH!!
(In case you didn't get it, you can make a text bold by keying in '*', then your text, and then '*' again (of course, without the quotation marks given here). This appears to be a way to represent bold text on email editors that can support only plain text.)
But I persevered on. If it really was a shortcut, then I believed it should work even if we typed it as
*= sometext *=
since I believed that Outlook identified the start and end of the text by the asterisks. But no, the text did not become bold. Strange!!
Even more strange was the fact that if I typed it in as
*=sometext*=
then it worked!!!
The only difference between this text and the text above it is that the space between *= and the text is missing here. Also missing is the space between the end of the text and *=. The space character seemed to play an important role.
On further tinkering, I finally understood that Outlook seems to insist that to make a text bold by using the asterisk key, the starting asterisk must not be followed by a space, nor should the ending asterisk be preceded by a space (I don't have any proof by way of any links for this, though). This can be understood by typing
* hi *
which will not make the text bold. In fact, keying in the asterisk and pressing the spacebar results in a bulleted list!!
SHEESH... its normal behaviour and I got carried away!! In fact, I even thought of a blog post about a new shortcut 'discovered'!!
"Hmm, there goes a blog post!!", I thought. Then my brain told me, "If conferences can be held over failure, then why not post this? It serves as a proof of your learning."
And so, this blog post.
Some notes:
1) Some other shortcuts I found in Outlook as a result of this experience:
a) Typing '*' and pressing a space results in a bulleted list with the black bullet (ya, that's what I call it!!)
b) Typing '>' and pressing a space results in a bulleted list with the right-hand pointing arrows.
(What are the names for these bullets, anyway?)
2) Also see this page for other shortcuts in Windows.
3) I know I should have told this first, but its not too late, I guess... I am using Outlook 2007.
Friday, October 31, 2008
...but do products have domains?
This is with reference to my previous post, Do code generators have domains?
My IT career has spanned only 4 years, and I have worked for only 2 companies during this period, with the first being a software product company and the second a software services company. Since the work in the first company was developing a code-generator, I never heard the word 'domain' being uttered all through my time there. I heard it first only in the software services co.
Very naturally, I assumed 'domain' was a word that was used only in the software services industry. "Products can never have domains!!", my brain told me. "How could they? You saw it for yourself... company 1 never uttered that word!! Company 2 keeps saying it all the time!!"
Well, that was what I believed for a long time.. but my brain, being ever active ;-), seems to constantly verify whatever it believes against the real world. And very soon, it came up with exceptions!!
Products do have domains. The first example that strikes me when you talk to me about software products would be Microsoft Word. But that's not a very good example in this context, since almost every industry uses Word. I fail to think of one industry that doesn't use Word.
A good example would actually be something like the accounting package, Tally. Tally is a software product that is probably unheard of to people in the retail industry, while accountants using Tally are probably not much aware that there is a software called RayMedi RPOS in the retail industry.
This lack of awareness is because the tools target different domains. They are marketed only to people in the industry they target. Nobody's gonna market RayMedi RPOS to a company that provides accounting services. These products cater to the needs of specific industries (domains) and the people in those industries have probably never heard of those products that fall outside their industry.
Tally and RayMedi RPOS are examples of software products. They also target only certain domains. As such, they are examples of software products that do have domains.
My IT career has spanned only 4 years, and I have worked for only 2 companies during this period, with the first being a software product company and the second a software services company. Since the work in the first company was developing a code-generator, I never heard the word 'domain' being uttered all through my time there. I heard it first only in the software services co.
Very naturally, I assumed 'domain' was a word that was used only in the software services industry. "Products can never have domains!!", my brain told me. "How could they? You saw it for yourself... company 1 never uttered that word!! Company 2 keeps saying it all the time!!"
Well, that was what I believed for a long time.. but my brain, being ever active ;-), seems to constantly verify whatever it believes against the real world. And very soon, it came up with exceptions!!
Products do have domains. The first example that strikes me when you talk to me about software products would be Microsoft Word. But that's not a very good example in this context, since almost every industry uses Word. I fail to think of one industry that doesn't use Word.
A good example would actually be something like the accounting package, Tally. Tally is a software product that is probably unheard of to people in the retail industry, while accountants using Tally are probably not much aware that there is a software called RayMedi RPOS in the retail industry.
This lack of awareness is because the tools target different domains. They are marketed only to people in the industry they target. Nobody's gonna market RayMedi RPOS to a company that provides accounting services. These products cater to the needs of specific industries (domains) and the people in those industries have probably never heard of those products that fall outside their industry.
Tally and RayMedi RPOS are examples of software products. They also target only certain domains. As such, they are examples of software products that do have domains.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Do code-generators have domains?
When I was doing my first job change, I was interviewed by the employees of a particular IT company. From their body language, I understood that the guys interviewing me were new to interviewing people. During the course of the interview, one of the guys asked me what I had done in my previous employment.
Now in my previous job (a software product company), I was involved in the support and development of a code-generator that generated web applications. Users would specify their requirements as pseudocode and our code-generator would generate the code in the language of the user's choice. We gave the users three choices in which he could generate the code: Java, Struts and .Net.
So I told the interviewer that I was involved in the development of a code-generator.
Interviewer: OK, in which domain?
Me: Domain?... (A few minutes of confused, frantic thoughts) What do you mean by domain?
Interviewer: Surely you must have worked in some domain!!
Actually, I hadn't even heard the word 'domain' before!! What were these guys talking about?
Me: Sorry... I don't know!!
The interviewers moved on to the next question.
But that question has stayed in my mind ever since. The company in which I later joined was a software services company, and a few months later, it slowly became clear to me what the interviewers had meant.
What is a domain?
In India, there are mostly only software services companies. There are software product companies, (I am not going to deny that), but what you hear more talked about are the services companies. These companies provide IT solutions to various clients. The client can be from any industry - manufacturing, health care, travel, etc. etc. Hence to provide better services to the clients, any IT company generally divides itself up based on the industries it is servicing.
So in effect, you find the IT services companies grouping the clients they are servicing into these divisions. As an example, let us take a fictional IT company. It has 3 clients - two make cars, while the third is a hotel chain. Thus, this fictional IT company would group the first two into its manufacturing division, while the third would be grouped into its hospitality division.
It is this concept of a 'division' that is given the name 'domain' by the IT industry. But why should they do this? Simple... so that they can provide better services!! A guy who was worked for a significant amount of time in a particular domain begins to understand its intricacies. This means he can provide better value to the clients.
So when a guy from another IT company interviews for your IT company, it is logical to ask him which domain he worked for. This is so that in case there is a vacancy in that particular domain, you can place him there. This would ensure that he continues his growth career-wise, while also ensuring that you reap the benefits of his knowledge!!
Unhappily...
Code generators don't fit the bill!! The main purpose of a code generator is to generate code. Given an input, it generates the output for it, and that's it. Hence, they can be used in any industry!! Nobody can mandate that a code-generator must be used only in the automotive industry, for example. It just cannot be done!!
And that is the reason why the interviewer shouldn't have asked me that question. Plainly said, it is foolish.
Repeat to yourself: Code generators do not belong to any particular domain!!!
Now in my previous job (a software product company), I was involved in the support and development of a code-generator that generated web applications. Users would specify their requirements as pseudocode and our code-generator would generate the code in the language of the user's choice. We gave the users three choices in which he could generate the code: Java, Struts and .Net.
So I told the interviewer that I was involved in the development of a code-generator.
Interviewer: OK, in which domain?
Me: Domain?... (A few minutes of confused, frantic thoughts) What do you mean by domain?
Interviewer: Surely you must have worked in some domain!!
Actually, I hadn't even heard the word 'domain' before!! What were these guys talking about?
Me: Sorry... I don't know!!
The interviewers moved on to the next question.
But that question has stayed in my mind ever since. The company in which I later joined was a software services company, and a few months later, it slowly became clear to me what the interviewers had meant.
What is a domain?
In India, there are mostly only software services companies. There are software product companies, (I am not going to deny that), but what you hear more talked about are the services companies. These companies provide IT solutions to various clients. The client can be from any industry - manufacturing, health care, travel, etc. etc. Hence to provide better services to the clients, any IT company generally divides itself up based on the industries it is servicing.
So in effect, you find the IT services companies grouping the clients they are servicing into these divisions. As an example, let us take a fictional IT company. It has 3 clients - two make cars, while the third is a hotel chain. Thus, this fictional IT company would group the first two into its manufacturing division, while the third would be grouped into its hospitality division.
It is this concept of a 'division' that is given the name 'domain' by the IT industry. But why should they do this? Simple... so that they can provide better services!! A guy who was worked for a significant amount of time in a particular domain begins to understand its intricacies. This means he can provide better value to the clients.
So when a guy from another IT company interviews for your IT company, it is logical to ask him which domain he worked for. This is so that in case there is a vacancy in that particular domain, you can place him there. This would ensure that he continues his growth career-wise, while also ensuring that you reap the benefits of his knowledge!!
Unhappily...
Code generators don't fit the bill!! The main purpose of a code generator is to generate code. Given an input, it generates the output for it, and that's it. Hence, they can be used in any industry!! Nobody can mandate that a code-generator must be used only in the automotive industry, for example. It just cannot be done!!
And that is the reason why the interviewer shouldn't have asked me that question. Plainly said, it is foolish.
Repeat to yourself: Code generators do not belong to any particular domain!!!
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Two new stuff...
...came by mail!!!
The first is the Ubuntu Desktop Live CD. I ordered this since I wanted to tinker with Linux and maybe, just maybe, learn more about working on it. Till now, I have tinkered with the Live CD only, but have plans of installing it on my computer alongside Windows. However, since my family members also use this computer, I guess they might not like the idea of a window asking them to select which OS to use when they start up the computer. Also, I am not sure whether my existing Internet connection will work with Ubuntu installed.
Put simply, all this means that I have not yet decided anything!!
The next one is the book, "My Job Went To India (And All I Got Was This Lousy Book!)" by Chad Fowler. I had heard of this book and wanted to know what was inside it. Of course, the book is targeted at Americans, but I bought it on the notion that there could be some tips that might be helpful to me too!! Will read the book and let you know!!
The first is the Ubuntu Desktop Live CD. I ordered this since I wanted to tinker with Linux and maybe, just maybe, learn more about working on it. Till now, I have tinkered with the Live CD only, but have plans of installing it on my computer alongside Windows. However, since my family members also use this computer, I guess they might not like the idea of a window asking them to select which OS to use when they start up the computer. Also, I am not sure whether my existing Internet connection will work with Ubuntu installed.
Put simply, all this means that I have not yet decided anything!!
The next one is the book, "My Job Went To India (And All I Got Was This Lousy Book!)" by Chad Fowler. I had heard of this book and wanted to know what was inside it. Of course, the book is targeted at Americans, but I bought it on the notion that there could be some tips that might be helpful to me too!! Will read the book and let you know!!
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