Hello, World! (continued)

Why did I choose the hackneyed "Hello, World!" as a title? Well, that's the subject of the first program written by just about anyone in any computer language. Maybe it is the most politically correct phrase to use in computer training texts, 'cos the next most popular one - FUBAR - is oft expanded as "F****d up beyond any repair" instead of "Fouled up ..."!!!

So, methinks, why not start at the very beginning - with the starry eyed engineers fresh out of Engineering schools, who would be at the bottom of the pyramid of any organization dabbling with software. Software management starts from there, and my ramblings are about Software Management. My context is Software Development service organizations in India.

A couple of weeks back, we were in God's own land interviewing prospective engineers. I would start off with "O-kay, so there is this farmer with a goat, a cabbage and a wolf. And a very small boat that he can take only one of them at a time across the river. So how do you think the farmer did it?". Silence. Blank stare. To break the silence, I would ask, say -
"You know what is a goat?"
"Yes, sir, I know got. Every house has one, sir. Animal, sir" (this being God's own land, a goat is a "got" - as in "gawt")
"Huh? Is it? Mine doesn't! OK, so how did he do it?"
Believe you me, 99.9% of the time the first answer is "First, farmer takes wolf in bot..."!!!
OK, so he recognized the obvious risk, but doesn't recognize the other obvious one.

To others, it would be "How would you eat an elephant?"
Silence. Blank stare. After some coaxing
Candidate 1: "One can't / doesn't eat an elephant"
Candidate 2: "How can you think of eating a divine animal like an elephant"
Candidate 3: "Sir, I have never eaten an elephant. I will taste the elephant, then I will kill it and eat it" (Oh, so you think the elephant will quietly allow you to cut a piece off it to taste it?)

You see, the answers are not important, the thought process is. Which ones would you select? Most of the time, I would be thinking of doomsday. With the e-schools teaching everything else but "the answers are not important, the thought process is", we are creating PCs instead of engineers capable of thinking. PCs? Yeah: Motherboard, HDD, etc. put in a chassis, OS installed with a bunch of general purpose tools, that's it. What do we do with it? Not very obvious!

This is where many problems start in Software management. Demand creates supply. But, if it is this kind of supply, I'd rather be a "got"herd. So help me God!

Hello, world!

How does one fit a square peg in a round hole? Quite normally, I guess, if the diagonal measurement of the square peg is slightly less than the diameter of the round hole. The original saying does not deal with mathematics or even measurements - just the difference between a circle and a square. Were you to attempt fitting a round peg in a square hole (somehow doesn't sound quite right, no?) you would find the same problem of dimensions.

In the world of software development (call it by any name) one is faced with the pegs-n-holes dilemma - since it is all about people (oye, keep the thoughts above the shoulder!) , ideas, thoughts and tasks. I am a denizen of this forest, and I am tentatively trying to express myself in a medium created - but funnily, never used seriously - by other denizens of the same forest.

My job, as my KRA goes, is all about "keeping customers happy by giving them what they need, in the process making sure revenues keep coming in" (the "what" stands for software of the computer kind!). And the whole thing revolves around people, and in this blog I intend to put down incidents, observations and anecdotes about software and its creators.

E&OE, apologies if what I write strikes a wrong chord with anyone - "five fingers in a hand are not equal"