Archis's Blog

I’ve been very controversial around Pune due to my lack of respect (but I call it admiration) for “Industry Experts”. Well, this is not to say that I don’t respect and possibly admire them as human beings, but I really don’t see what the industry has got to do with anything.

The one scene that comes to mind immediately is the one on Degobah where Luke tells Yoda, “I’m looking for  a great warrior.”, and Yoda replies, “Great Warrior……. Wars not make one great.”

And the one country that claims moral superiority over USA and the western world for their materialistic nature (which I never saw when I was in the US), is the one country that disrespects personal values and attaches so much importance to dog tags and certifications. If ever you wanted the definition of Hypocricy, this is it!

Ever since I entered college, I’ve been hearing, “Listen to that fellow, he is an industry expert.”

I would rather have listened to a person if he were knowledgable, or intelligent, or wise instead of because he’s an industry expert. I believe that it somehow diminishes the value of the people who’re really experts on their own merit and gives too much credit to those in the industry who’re not really experts by even a long shot. And this vague phrase to describe them does not help anyone differentiate between the two.

I was told that my assumptions of how the industry works or should work were wrong and was told that I would never get a job (and I possibly still would not pass through 90% of the interviews conducted on the campus activity at college). But I found a company that works just the way I had imagined the industry to work. And I’m loving it.

I am now one of these “industry experts”. I personally feel insulted when someone calls me this – as if the industry has anything to do with my expertise. I was the same person for 4 years. I’ve known the same things and held the same opinions. All of a sudden, my opinions are considered seriously because I’m an industry expert. And more so, in the one country that claims not to be money-minded like the “Americans” (not sure why we generalise to all Americans by looking at Hollywood movies – wonder how we would feel if all Indian girls were to be generalised based on Mallika Sherawat movies).

It’s insulting because it fails to value me as a person. I’m a very selfish person. I want publicity and I love it. However, I want it for me! I am what I am due to my abilities – be they good or bad. If I were to be bad and in the industry, would all “industry experts” blame the industry for me being bad? If not, then why do they give credit to the industry for my expertise?

I still don’t understand how people love this phrase. I would think that every “industry expert” who goes to colleges might discourage the use of this phrase because it diminishes his abilities. It claims that he is what he is due to the industry. It means that without his industry dog-tag, he has absolutely no expertise. I personally do claim so. If there are any other computer science experts out there who think they’ve achieved expertise due to hard work and dedication, I would like you to discourage this phrase. You could say that you’re a CS expert who _works_ in the industry. But “industry => expert” is a wrong predicate to be taught amongst students.

Does this mean that the industry is always right? Then how come so many agencies report that most IT projects are behind schedule, over their original cost, and below specifications. Doesn’t really seem like the industry understands expertise does it? If it’s still learning, then how do we know that what an industry expert does _is_the_right_thing_? As a scientist I pose this question. Forget an analytical answer, give me an empirical one – I’ll accept it.

I’ve been harassed and tortured for three years by these experts and told how they know best. And whatever they do in their company is posed as if the entire world does it. Today, I was talking to my classmate about MS and their standards, and he immediately assumed a defensive stance claiming that MS is not the whole industry and I shouldn’t tell first years to be more liberal-minded just because MS is. He tells me that other companies may not have that atmosphere. However, he was not ready to answer immediately why he assumes that what he sees in his company is done everywhere in the world? This arrogance is frustrating, irritating and totally damaging towards the younger generation.

The second problem is that alumni too often assume that they’re, for some obvious reason that escaped me all this time, asymtotically superior to all juniors. When I talk of students studying hard and trying for IBM or MSFT, they tell me that for many years nobody from FC got into MSFT (which is wrong, I met at least two Fergussonians there), and since they didn’t get through, how would I expect the juniors to get through. This is a totally Sith concept! And the Sith must be eradicated from society. I expect my juniors to think of joining the NSA, NASA, DRDO, work on India’s moon missions, etc. And assuming that they would perform only less than or equal to me would be a very damaging assumption (for them).

This assumption gets translated into lectures and talks telling students how a company like MSFT will never hire them since they’re not in an IIT. To hell with them! I’ve personally talked with my manager at MSFT and I assure you this is not so. If you’re good, MSFT will hire you. MSFT seriously believes in the principle, “Great IITian….. Hmm…. IIT’s not make one great.”

So this is a message to industry experts, please let us remove this myth and call ourselves computer science experts. Even if I work in a Cyber Cafe, I will still remain this very expert. I shall still have the same knowledge and wisdom (or the lack of it). And I shall lack what I lack even if I work at MSFT. The point is, give me respect for being me – not due to the dog-tag I wear around my neck. A dog with a rich owner is no “better” than a dog with a poor owner. A dog is ultimately a dog. Respect me for being a dog and for what tricks I can do, not for who my owner is.

And it’s also a message to juniors. Don’t believe in all this crap. There are no rules in the industry and there are no barriers. You’re as good as anyone else. You’ve got to stop believing you’re bad just because someone tells you so. I don’t think Einstein, being a great physicist, was ever able to or even claimed to be a judge of the physics ability in general of other people. I don’t think Euclid went around judging people’s mathematics ability. And we know for a fact that all judgements of intellectuals about Edison’s abilities were totally wrong. The “materialistic” west learnt to value human beings instead of their tags. Our great philosophical society, for some reason, fails to understand this. Judgemental attitude is bad, and only a Sith deals in absolutes. If someone tells you you’re bad and there’s nothing you can do about it, then destroy the Sith you must!

The IT industry is an amazing thing in more than one way. And that’s why it has an equal number of frustrations as there are rewards. In no known history was an industry so liberal as the IT industry. For example, suppose I wanted to become a jeweler. Where would I start? I have no idea. Where do you go and buy gold for the ornaments? Do you want into a gold shop and buy a few grams of it? How is it packaged? How is it delivered? Can I compete against jewelery shops in my neighbourhood who’ve been doing this for generations? The same applies to farming. I don’t believe even if I wanted, that I could buy a whole lot of land and begin farming. So all industries have a tradition. While this is the reality, it’s not a very good reality.

But IT changed all that. IT does not discriminate. IT has no inheritance (no pun intended). That’s what frustrates many and simultaneously elates many more. In IT, you can be from a big city or a rural village. It makes no difference at all. You’re abilities are what matter. That’s _all_ that matters. No longer can you attend expensive coaching classes that hundreds of people in India cannot afford, get admission into a highly funded institution, and claim to be intellectually superior to them. IT is a brilliant leveler (though maybe not as great as death). IT allows entry for people from all walks of life and from all strata of society.

Naturally, this creates frustration amongst many too. I personally know people who never took their academics seriously, never studied seriously, never did any hard work for years, and having grown up in the government-job-era of the early ’90′s, they had no idea of what was coming. They assumed that because their parents are rich, they could get away with it. 20 years ago, they probably would have been able to get away with it. But not any more. No company will give them a job based on their family name or parent’s inheritance. If you can’t peform, you’re out.

For a person like me, this turns into a blessing. I’ve never really gotten along with the coaching-class-based educational system. I’ve never found people really interested in math or science or anything for that matter. So I’ve never managed to get good grades, having blatantly refused to write boring pointless historic crap. I was more interested “why” Mahatma Gandhi did something, or what his reasons were, or “why” Bhagat Singh did what he did. I was least interested in “when” they did it. Makes no difference to me. Let us call this a more scientific approach to history.

I was threatened for five years that I would never get a job in my life, especially in the IT industry. But I held on, and now I’ve got one that I’m happy with. If you’ve read the panchatantra,  you’ll find a story about how four brothers who were out to seek their fortune, were given four lamp-wicks by a wise man and asked to walk down a road and to dig whenever a wick fell. For three brothers, they progressively found mines of copper, silver and gold. They were ready to share their riches with an equal share (as per their original agreement). But the fourth brother wanted more and he went on and got eternal torture. I’m not really interested looking for anything where I would become the fourth brother. In fact, to be safe, I prefer being the first one.

Now you can see why the IT industry is a blessing. Even with all these threats by some past students from various colleges (including some from my own), I could get a job. And all thanks to this new industry and the new conventions. This would not have been possible 20 years ago. I could not have been able to make inroads in a tightly controlled system of lobbyists in each industry.

This craze for the industry is hurting the country more then ever before. The phrase “industry expert”, in my opinion, is the beginnins of such a cult. And it must be stopped right now! This is what I learnt from history. ISSC blamed me for having bad grades in history in 10th. Well, my response to them is that I learnt more from history than many high-scorers ever will! I’ve seen these same signs previously. The very minute we begin to think as “us” vs. “them”, we’ve become a Sith lord. We really have to value expertise objectively. Tomorrow, I might find myself with an incessant love for teaching, and this cult will immediately throw me out as one without any expertise because I may not be working in the industry anymore. That would be the day I will have completely lost faith in India. We who always blamed the USA for treating us as others and not giving Indians the same treatment as Americans, if we allow such a system to develop, then I would hope that God exists, and I would hope that all that stuff about a Judgement Day is real and I hope to see that Judgement be passed upon hypocrites.

With popular demand of me posting all the Mad Scientists and how it was working with them (especially Aravind Akella and his Guru Atul Gosain), here it comes…..

Perraju Bendapudi: He appeared to be very scary the first time I saw him. His reputation preceeded him, of course, and most notably Arijit Sengupta and I had googled a lot about him before joining. That increased the melodrama. Everyone on campus would look at us differently upon mentioning his name, right from the receptionist. That kind of prepared the whole psychological background. I can safely say that at least half of the c4b guys took three weeks to relax when around him. People tell me he insists on not hiring any girls which explains the female shortage on campus.

Phani Talluri: This fellow was the most approachable mentor of c4b. He has a very inviting smile, a hypercaffenited energetic temperament, and is just constantly happy. Never seen him not smile. Without doubt he is easily approachable. He was initially assigned to me, but I was switched to Hari later that day.

Hari Krishnan: A very sweet, soft-spoken, “Good Boy”, eligible bachelor who is highly undervalued with the ladies. Poor fellow doesn’t realise that without any girls on campus, it’s no big deal nobody admires him. I’m now his mentor teaching him how to approach and talk to girls. He was voted as the best mentor in c4b due to his very distinctive style.

Cassius Duarte: A fun fellow who keeps giving us T-shirts and headphones and all the cool stuff. The administrator for my group.

Arijit Sengupta: A geek and nerd to the last. Totally knowledgable about anything related to anything having to do with Microsoft. Popularly known as the “Son-in-law” since he’s favoured by so many managers and big-shots in the company. This guy spent loads of MS money by making international calls from the mobile phones given to him to work with.

Amit Kumar Yadav: Just a plainminded person. About the most plain minded person I’ve met in a long time. He was one of the extreme hardworkers amongst the entire group. Very sincere, no partying, no drinking, no movies. This guy easily gives the best ROI to MS. Peri had promised him that if he finished his project on time, Peri would jump from the 9th floor of Cyber Towers. I assure you, the next two weeks, we were egging this guy to finish his project on time! Unfortunately, it was too huge to be done in 2 months. His only weakness was his incessant love for the GDCI cafeteria instead of the IDC one.

Sri Satya Aravind Akella: Planning to dedicate an entire entry to him, so won’t spoil it here. This fellow is the Hero of Code4bill. He’s the guy who made c4b valuable!

Mahesh Paliath: A hardworker. Nothing wierd worth mentioning. But did a great project that really made everyone happy.

Harsha S: This fellow is an obssessive coder. He thinks code, eats code and sleeps code. Kinda scray dude. He seems like he has caffine-releasing hormonal gland in him. Never saw him calm and composed.

Atul Gosain: He deserves four or five entries for you to get to know him quite well. Will write more later. Too much is coming to mind. In fact, I wouldn’t be against writing a seven-book series with titles such as “Atul Gosain and the Tennis Court”, “Atul Gosain and the counter malfunction”, etc.

Abishek K: The eventual winner, this fellow was a freak too. One of the best freaks ever known to me. Obssessed about swimming. Making mysterious important phone calls to Banglore every evening (we never did find out who they were meant for). And it seems this fellow completed Akella’s two-month project in one day (which he himself denies, but Akella claims so).

Joseph Joy: One of the reviewers but not quite as mad as Peri. He’s the more rational side of MS (till we met him, we never thought MS had a rational side). He was the first fellow interested in the inside stuff of our projects  – architecture and algorithms and all. Till his review, we were used to putting in a lot of crap into the project and not documenting it. After this meeting, he scared the shit out of me and I began noting down exactly what I had been putting into my code. His second review was more fun, since I had done my homework better. At the final party he was quite shocked to see the amout of “research” the c4b interns had done apart from the MS-assigned work. I think he’s really amazed at our creativity. I can safely say he has never met and probably never will meet any group like the top 20 and based on what we told him at the party about what we did for two months, I don’t think he wishes to meet anyone like us ever again.

Shankar Shastri: He was the most normal of all reviewers. Very friendly and somewhat non-aggressive. His reviews were just really nice sessions that made us feel like a million bucks.

Srini Koppulu: This guy talks to you as if he is an entire army. The first time he reviewed our projects, he too scared the shit out of me! But that’s what c4b was all about – about overall personality improvement. We got used to him and leart how to properly deal with him. That was what the internship was mostly about - I doubt whether we really gained any technical ability during those two months. But now we’re capable of interacting much more comfortably with Vice Presidents. Sometimes he can go really soft on you. It’s really nice when he goes into that mood. He’s one of the very supportive people I’ve seen. He has a keen eye for business which many of us lacked initially. This brought up a lot of friction between what he wanted us to do and what we thought we ought to do. Over time we learnt to see what he was exactly aiming at. Once in sync, he’s a fun fellow to be reviewed by.

Anu Engineer: The profound philosopher of MS. He’s responsible for making Kobra chicks really famous on campus. He thinks about a lot of philosophical stuff. His sessions are worth listening to.

I’ll dedicate a separate entry for the girls – Neha, Meenal, Richa, etc. Keep reading…….

Being a fan of C S Lewis’s Narnia books, I thought I’d write a blog entry based on a very excellent paper I found on the net describing the two magics (can’t find the link right now, will post it as soon as I get it).

I wanted to comment on another aspect of the two magics.

This aspect of activeness and passiveness. JKR Magic is very active in nature. Whereas CSL magic is extremely passive. In JKR magic, the characters positively use magic or influence it to induce certain results. They perform spells, make potions and stuff of that sort. CSL magic, on the other hand is invoked passively, and in most cases unknowingly (remember, “Thou shalt not tempt God!”). CSL was most obviously promoting Christianity through his books (which I loved).

In CSL, all active magic is also “evil” magic (has a lot of Jedi philosophical similarities). The White Witch, the Lady of the Green Kirtle, etc. were all evil because they “invoked” magic. This has obvious similarities to using power for personal gain. Invoked magic always has the motivation of personal gain (or is implied to do so in the books). All “good” magic is that which is invoked by principle, by definition or by moral superiority. Essentially, if you’re a good person, good things will happen to you. It is actually a brilliant and ingenious way of explaining religion to young children – I certainly got the point much clearly than having read the Bible. The movie even has the quote, “There is a deep magic, more powerful than any of us, that rules over Narnia. It defines right from wrong. It governs all our destinies, your’s and mine.”

Hence, when the children are called to help out Narnians, rarely do we see the good characters actively engaging in magical acts. In fact it is unspokenly tabood to do so.

In the JKR universe, magic is very active. Both good and bad sides use it. Magic is more like a knife – it’s use depends on it’s user. A knife may save lives in a surgery and also may take lives in murders. JKR magic is invoked rather heavily – except when Harry was protected by a deep ancient magic – which sound similar to the Stone Table’s magic from CSL.

My my, three blog entries in a single day and two more to follow. I’m on a roll here. The reason is that lots of projects are now switching from planning and design into implementation phase. My Ph.D. applications are in full swing and lots of other developments happening in life very fast this week. Gotta blog it all for future reference.

Anyways, back to the topic. We live in the IT industry. This is our life. And the industry is a winner-take-all system.

Please understand that in IT there are no half-way measures. There are three rules on which the game is based:

1. It has to work – nobody gives a damn about philosophy or principles. MAKE IT WORK! Don’t show me your face if it doesn’t work.

2. I have to be able to use it: If I have to depend on too many gurus or wierdoes, I don’t use it. Better use Windows that I can handle instead of Linux that I need to depend on Gurus to handle for me (doesn’t seem like much freedom when they begin talking).

3. If my friends are using it, then I’ll buy it: This is common. Software cannot be tested like cars. I won’t trust anything until someone else trusts it.

This is how the industry works. This is how mentality works. Mark my words on this – if and when Linux becomes the dominant OS on the Desktop, it will become the dominant OS on _all_ desktops. The IT world moves like a flock of pigeons. There won’t be a gradual transition.

Remember wordperfect? Everyone I knew used it in the early ’90′s. Then came MS Word. Everyone I knew used it. Everyone I knew used Lotus 1-2-3. Then everyone used Excel. Everyone used QBasic. Everyone used C. Everyone used VB. That’s how the world works. If your product adheres to the above three rules better than any other product, _everyone_ uses it. If it falls short, nobody uses it.

If we try to change the rules of the game, them we lose. Look at CSLinux. It was popular so long as it was Fedora-based. It ahered to the three rules above. Then came the philosophical people who moved it to Ubuntu for no reason (and even while admitting that Fedora boots up much faster, and GNOME runs deadly fast). Now, nobody is using CSLinux. And due to the low usage, volunteers don’t work since the release cycles aren’t justified anymore.

I’m going to push for a move back to Fedora. I don’t care about philosophy. I will deliver a product that works. End of story!

The Chronicles of Narnia! Of course! In all the book-to-movie translations that I’ve seen so far, this one comes really close. It’s actually perfect. There wasn’t ONE SINGLE suggesstion I could have made to change the movie to reflect the book any better.

You can read my really long review about this, but the fact is that they really did not make it more Hollywood-ish like the Harry Potter books were made when turned into movies. Narnia is just what it was supposed to be. No changing of spell names, no changing of characters and preserving the basic theme.

Most of you will criticize me that the Harry Potter books were way bigger than the Narnia books – and this is true – the Narnia books are possibly one-fourth the size of the smallest harry potter book. But it’s about the basic theme. There’s that internal gut feeling that you get. The Narnia movie completely portrays _what_ it’s all about – the whole concept of the Narnian world, the concept of the books, the principals behind the story. The Harry Potter books are great – they have this element.

The movies, however, are pure entertainment. I mean, for people like me, that was the major downer in LOTR. I’m a guy who wants a strong story line, a strong underlying principle, and if you can cram them in, loads of special effects. But a compromise in the story’s weight to increase battle scenes or to have Harry fighting dragons and all just doesn’t impress me. I like dialogs. I like philosophy. I like to see characters in challenging situations, as humans where they must use their brains, their courage, their wit, their personna to escape. That’s what books are all about. The Narnia movies did a great job of it. I feel Prizoner of Azkaban is the best HP movie so far – a really great one where the story is kept strong.

Since I’ve been asked this a lot of times, it’s time it came on here. The team I was working for at MSIDC was the incubation team.

IMHO, the Incubation Team is the funnest and most energetic team on campus (but lets not get into a debate since everyone loves their teams at MS – essentially because they get to pick it – which is something very unique with MS).

Here’s a small FAQ that I compiled from the questions I was asked:

Q: What’s it like to work for Incubation?

Ans: Basically, the Incubation Team is sort of like a lab full of mad scientists – let by a really mad scientist called Perraju Bendapudi. The floor that we worked on looked more like the Batcave or probably the Q Branch at MI6. Every day as I walked into that wing, I could see some pretty crazy people attempting to do pretty crazy stuff – some of which has been known to be downright impossible. At MS IDC, the world “impossible” doesn’t exist. We play around with all kinds of crap.

Q: What’s your boss like?

Ans: This wasn’t a real question, but I put it in so I could get an excuse to tell you more about Peri. Peri is a mad scientist in his own right. And he loves to meet other people like himself – though I doubt whether others like him exist. Basically, everyone out there is just unique in their own way. Peri handpicks people to work for his team, and once in a while he gets lucky when 20 code4bill interns arrive at the same time and start using their brains. I think Peri’s definately convinced that India has got loads of crazy people. The c4b guys were completely certifiable. With Peri’s team, anything goes. Spend loads of money, live a luxurious life, and at the end of the day, deliver results. That’s all he cares about. You have to make a difference. Just writing a lot of code won’t impress him. Come up with the next wave of how computing would work. Imagine and build prototyes for tomorrow’s world and he’s happy.

Once in a while he gets really excited and makes promises to jump from the 9th floor of Cyber Towers if an intern will just finish his project on time and deliver. But we care for him so much that we purposely delayed the projects to prevent him from jumping (it was a big temptation, I won’t lie to you!)

Generally seen on campus with a coffee cup in his hand, has a good sense of humor (else he would be an “evil” mad scientist), and can decode some wierd language that our printer used. I got stuck where someone had changed our printer’s interface language to Swahili or something and this fellow decoded it and navigated the menus and brought it back to English. I guess Gene Roddenberry had better keep this fellow booked for the Enterprise’s first mission.

Q: How are the other people?

Ans: Everyone’s a mad scientist. They’re all crazy. They’re all wierd. And they come up with some of the stuff that you might be taking from granted two years from now. These people sit there day and night with only one thing – to make a huge difference in the way you compute today! It’s about revolutionising how you think of computers. That’s our job in a nutshell. Hari, the c4b guys, Anu Engineer, Phani, Harish, etc. are some names that instantly pop to mind. Some of their ideas are very interesting – all of them think of themselves as profound philosophers so no day at campus goes by without a long philosophical discussion.

Q: Is this like working at MSR?

Ans: Not really. I’ve never been to MSR, but I’ve heard about it. If we’re to be mad scientists, then the MSR people would probably be locked up in an asylum. Those guys think far beyond even us. We think of tomorrow. They think of 2020. MSR is working on some damn freaky stuff that’s going to change the way we live 15 years from now. Those guys work on some really amazing crap. Trust me - MSR has some aces up it’s sleeve that will be difficult to counter by any competitor. MSR is not to be messed with.

Q: What kind of stuff do you do, what did you work on?

Ans: (With a wide grin) You’ll see. It’ll be out soon. Then I might be able to tell you, “I did that part”, but not more than what you see on your screen. Sorry, that’s my contract. The best I can do is point you to www.code4bill.com and ask you to read our project profiles there. That’s all we can say. Sorry. But most of the stuff will take years to mature and will be really amazing and it’s only fair that we surprise you pleasantly. So give me a chance to make you jump out of your seats by not asking me.

Q: I saw something on the CNBC show in your screenshot.

Ans: Come now, did you really imagine I was that stupid? All that was total lies. What I told on the CNBC interview isn’t remotely close to what I’ve done. So stop analysing and stop trying to decode that video. You’ll get nothing. I faked a few slides to impress everyone all over india and showed you something about news articles. Oh yes, if you didn’t know, my project was a news aggregator (and you can read that on my c4b profile).

Did you really think that either Harsha, Kunal or Abishek told you the truth? You really have to understand that these guys are some of the damn smartest people in India. They’re not that dumb. Hell, everything works on a need-to-know basis. Even I don’t know what they’ve done beyond what their c4b profiles say and I wasn’t allowed to see their screen shots (forget code). I don’t know how others display even looks like!

BTW, we were coached and interviewed and reviewed and pressurised by some top executives from MS. Did you really think any of us would slip out what we did? As far as that is concerned, we’re tighter than JKR in this regard.

Q: So what’s this about MS setting up a center in Pune?

Ans: I’m not an MS VP. You had better ask Srini such questions. So far as I know, it’s not going to be as easy and as fast and as good-looking as it sounded in the newspapers, but then again, MS has loads of aces up it’s sleeves. Better not believe in anything I say. There’s loads of MS PR people out there who would be very glad to interact with you.

Q: Can I send you crazy ideas and suggesstions?

Ans: Definately. There’s no stopping that. If you feel you’ve got a killer feature for any of our products, feel free to mail me or anyone at MS. We’re all ears. We just have no mouths. I’ll forward it to my boss and he’ll make sure something is done about it. But the right way to do this is to mail our suggesstions alias or some PR people and they’ll get in touch with the right people. In any case, the heirarchy at MS is very lose. Mail anyone you know and they’ll know what to do – even if they don’t they’ll find out easily enough.

This one’s gonna be my patented controversial fun mails and I expect a lot of people to contribute and express opinions, one I’m sure is gonna increase my search-engine ratings heavily. You gotta admit. My admiration for MS increases day by day and they never cease to amaze me at the amount of very subtle yet profoundly significant philosophical thinking they have done. This post is written by the FOSS-promoter side of me in the role of a FOSS-insider, as “one of them”. I hope Microsoft doesn’t kick me out of my job for this – I love working there, but I do wish many more people understood why it’s such fun to work there.

It’s based on certain stuff I’ve been saying previously, but has recently been verbalised due to my experience at Microsoft, and the CSLinux discussions and the many social problems I see plaguing the FOSS people, and yes, let’s not forget their egos – something that always gets me into trouble when I post anything.

Since I’ve seen a lot of criticism of Microsoft in the previous years, which also gives me a great deal of admiration (I also admire Hitler for that matter) for the company – one company vs a philosophy is a big deal. Even if MS collapses, we cannot overlook the fact that it is still just _one_damn_company_ while FOSS is a _whole_lot_of_things_put_together_. The fact that FOSS chooses to attack MS personally so much is something that gives them a great deal of free publicity. The fact that an entire philosophy is pissed of and waging war against a damn company is something that subconciously makes windows users admire it. I think that my own product will be expected to get 3 lawsuits against it within 4 months of its release – and I am praised all the more for it.

Let me explain this mentality. It takes a while (took me six weeks) to understand it clearly but it’s very important to understand it – you’ll get a clue to why MS does many of the things it does.

One thing I learnt when I went there is that if you’re hurting someone, then you’re doing something that _matters_. This is a VERY important concept to grasp and understand right. Something the FOSS world has to really understand at the base. Everytime they pissed of MS, regardless of what they did, it has hurt MS seriously. MS never gets pissed off unless they lose profits – which is true of anyone out there. And that’s something we learnt to do from day one! When someone spends time to criticise you, when someone spends time on defending Linux (even though it has some features missing), when someone claims that features in FOSS are only what the users need and features in MS products are not what they need, when someone subconciously portrays FOSS vs MS, etc. – all this contributes to Microsoft’s publicity directly or indirectly. Because you take time to do anything when you are being hurt – when you lose profits.

There have been many blogs and articles on why .GNU and Mono were the very stuff that almost killed off Java and justified .Net. The fact that the FOSS community would copy .Net is an instant justification that MS got it right (nobody cares about your arguments and tech stuff). Java was working. It was stable. It was a standard. And it was cool. Java was almost blocking .Net’s entry everywhere. Developers at MS, many of my best friends including myself personally, still use Java for their personal projects. Yes. It’s _that_ popular. And FOSS rebelled against Sun over it. Why because they wanted to break the very thing that makes Java so popular – standards. Come now, the FOSS community has not been exactly popular amongst developers for sticking to standards.

In fact, many developers love Linux’s stability, they love Linux’s security, but they hate the fact that they can’t write C code once and move it to different distros in binary form without a whole deal of pain. I’m one of them. Sure, you’ll give me a lot of preprocessor directives and makefiles and configure scripts to help me out; but the fact remains that I really just care about inverting a matrix. I don’t give a shit about your philosophy and I don’t give a damn about the GNU build system’s complexity. I want 100 of my users to be able to type in a matrix and get it’s inverse and to do it as fast as possible.

Microsoft capitalizes on this heavily. Java was the one non-MS thing that really worked – and it worked great. The topcoder applet is a great example. Most of my friends are red-rated topcoders. They can go anywhere and everywhere and login to topcoder.com and load the 1.4M applet and begin coding and increasing their rating. They could be at home, at college, on a vacation, etc. the bottom line is that it doesn’t really matter. It simply “works”. When you distribute a webservice in Java, it really _does_ work by simply plugging in to an app server. Yes! All FOSS-based solutions that _claim_ to work this way either need a lot of target-dependent tweaking either in macros, or configure scripts or elsewhere, or they need someone who knows their way around code.

The fact is that 90% of the world’s computer users are NOT coders. Come to terms with it. People must farm, they must grow food, run banks, run offices, run buses and cab services, run airlines and do a whole deal of stuff. Running around towm, proclaiming, “Hey, I can see the code! I can see the code!” isn’t a big deal for many. They simply don’t give a shit! _I_ don’t give a shit!

Ever hear of the story of the miser who converted all his money into gold and stored it in his backyard and it got stolen? A wise man advised him to put a big stone rock there in it’s place because for all practical purposes the gold was of absolutely no use to anyone while it lay there. That’s what code is for many. I’m not criticising all the stuff about peer reviews and all that crap. The point I’m emphasising is that don’t tell me all that stuff and stop throwing code at my face every time I face a problem with Linux. Talk to me about features, talk to me about installations, talk to me about deployments and talk to me about business value!

Sorry about the loooong narrative but I had to do it to build up my case for what I have learnt as a “Unix Solution”. It’s a very valuable lesson I learnt at MS and if only many FOSS people could learn to look beyond their egos and learn to _listen_ instead of constantly defensively criticising and proving-dumb anyone who doesn’t conform to their rule, they would completely kill off MS.

I remember my last PLUG meeting (I missed the last two due to other issues), when Devendra demonstrated usage of a Wifi card with Linux, and Amit demonstrated the XAMPP thing. I remember myself having given countless demos on configuring NIS and NFS at colleges (which sadly still use Telnet or some remote-terminal services; which is a pitiable solution at best).

And I saw one thing that I kept doing which was the first thing I was criticised for Microsoft. They said my first product demo which went to sample users was a “Unix Solution”. Took me a few weeks to understand what that meant. And it was a VERY significant thing to learn. Let’s review all the demos I talked about above:

1. Guru: “When configuring NIS, go to /etc/yp.conf….”
User: Huh? What’s /etc? Why is it yp.conf? What’s all that? I thought we were talking NIS…..
Guru: Uh yes. But …… (blah blah about sun microsystem’s yellow pages……)
User: Huh? Oh ok….. continue……
Guru: Now for NFS. Edit /etc/exports/
User: Hold on…. I want NFS. What’s exports? What’s that etc again?
Guru: Oh yes……. exports because….. (again a lot of blah)
User: Uh. Ok. Couldn’t it be easier to call them nis.conf and nfs.conf?

(But I’m sure someone will reply explaining why this can’t be done right here, and I’ll convey this message the next time I visit a BCS college, but the fact is that they just wont give a damn! They just want to configure NIS/NFS and want it to be _called_ NIS/NFS)

2. Guru: Type “ifconfig” and install a driver with so-and-so…..
User: Huh? What’s that? Why can’t I double-click on an icon and have it detect nearby networks? What’s ifconfig? What’s that got to do with my network? Why can’t they call it “network-configure”?
Guru: …….. (lots of history and philosophy)

3. Guru: Unzip the tarball of XAMPP to /var/xampp, then “simply edit so and so file”, “simply edit so-and-so file”, and it’s done.
User: What’s a tarball? What’s unzip? Why should I put it at /var/xampp? Why not /archis/xampp?
Guru: Oh you can do that, but you just need to set a few paths…..
User: Can’t it do that when I unzip? I mean for god’s sake, why the hell would I want to put something at /archis/xampp unless I want it to run from there? Why can’t the dumb system understand that?

(End-result: user goes home, fires up XP, double-clicks on an icon, gets network running, XP crashes, user reboots, in 10 seconds is back on the network, we on the mailing list call him stupid for not knowing that _obviously_ nis would be yp.conf and _obviously_ the network card is setup by ifconfig (how stupid he is not to be able to make such a simple intuitive association), XP crashes again, he reboots, in 10 seconds is back on the net, he unsubscribes from the mailing list, we go around proclaiming windows is dying and MS is dying and Linux is great, he doesn’t care, XP crashes again…..).

In short, the definition of a “Unix App” is “An app that you know how to use and I know how to use but nobody else knows how to use”.

Most moderators of this list including myself use so many commands whose names make no sense whatsoever to anyone except for ourselves who’ve used them before. For a newbie, there’s no place _find_ the command. I remember myself in FY couldn’t remember the head and tail commands, and knew their functionality. But I simply could not find them unless I already knew what they’re called. There was no command which allows me to say keywords: “last few or first few lines in file” and will search for them in the man-pages. MS is criticised on “Help on Help”, but at that point, I’d have liked help on the help system if such a command did exist; I’m sure someone will reply here in some sort of, “Oh, you should simply have “grep | something | something |” to get the relevant man pages – and the tag-line “Anyone who doesn’t know this is stupid”. Like I care what he thinks. Thousands of colleges have Linux _in_the_syllabus_ which is the holy grail of promotion and _yet_ nobody uses it. Good luck with your “everyone is stupid” tagline, cause companies are running behind these stupid people and paying them and regarding their opinions highly.

The main motivation for this mail is because Amit asked me to explain to the community “what is” CSLinux without getting technical. This mail is a first-order attempt at explaining my long chain of thought and my basic ideology behind all the technical decisions we’re taking. It is a way for people to follow the concept and crux of what it is all about. Another reason I’m posting this mail is because recently CSLinux came under heavy criticism for simply “putting together stuff that already exists”. Well, big deal. If you can’t put it together, why’re you jealous of us doing it? The reason I posted all this is because contributers to CSLinux should feel very proud of themselves. The fact that we’re being criticised means we’re making a difference and a big one at that. The fact that people hate a self-configuring system is because they lose their power of being the big-shots whom everyone turns to for help at colleges. CSLinux should ideally be empowerment. And empowerment of humans (my old claim of freedom for humans before freedom for software). A query being posted on this mailing list should be taken as an indication of personal failure. A failure to write software that explained itself. I have learnt to behave this way and I find I write much better software now. One understanding that I got at MS is that people don’t wake up and write code and read code. People want to run medicine stores, and grocery stores and farm, and make pots and make utensils. “I can see the code, I can see the code!” is not of much incentive to them.

The thought of this mail came to me when while talking about CSLinux, which is currently only a LiveCD, I came on the topic of installation. Lots of stuff came to our minds that an installer should have. When we proposed companies or colleges that putting this into Ubiquity or Anaconda would be a good project, they all pointed us to URLS with installer having _those_ features. The point is are those features in _my_ installer and _today_? Ans: It’s all there. “Code is free! Code is free!” LOL!!!!!!!! There’s 50 installers with 50 features out there, but not one installer with _all_ fifty.

Recently I posted to to a mailing list in response to a mail about Turbo C, and I was speaking of Eclipse and that Anjuta fails miserably beyond just “an editor”. Calling it an IDE is just not upto expectations. It cannot manage makefiles. And I immediately got a response saying, “I personally find managing makefiles through vi preferable……”, The point is, what the hell do I care what you personally find preferable? I want an IDE that manages my project for me. I _have_ an IDE that does it for me. And I’m gonna use it. End result, I unsubscribe from the list cause it wastes my time and bandwidth. I’d be fired from MS if I told users what I personally like. I personally like to code kernel modules. My users personally don’t like to do that. They want to run their shops and offices and desktops. That’s why they hire me to write their kernel modules for them in the first place – and pay me heavily for it. Naturally on that mailing list, it’s all informal and I like know know people’s opinions – so there it was totally appropriate. But personal opinions are not _solutions_ to other’s problems. Just expressing the fact that you don’t like the way someone demands something, isnt going to make him stop demanding it.

Think about CSLinux’s installer. It’s not working. It’s not working even remotely. Most of our audience doesn’t know how to run it, how to install it, etc. The reason I find Redhat succeeding so much even under fire from the Debian community is because they seemed to “get it” when we explained this to them. Instead of pointing us to lots of URL’s where such functionality exists, Venkatesh Hariharan or Rahul Sundaram or other people actually encouraged us contributing such features for Fedora and is ready to give out a redhat scholarship for the CSLinux project – if students will commit, of course. It was a pity to find many companies not getting this point – the very point that makes Microsoft work and that makes Redhat so successful and Java so popular.
 
When I walk into a college, do I have a CD today that has everything they need, under the right names, with intuitive command names, with relevant help, with relevant MSDN/Javadoc-type to-the-point documentation without “I can see the code!” comments interfering in it, with an installer that simply works, has all the features that we claim “Linux has” (which is another way of saying some FOSS project somewhere has it), and scripts to do stuff that 10,000 (a low-order estimate of students in BCS today) need to do everyday. It should be a failure for us if 10,000 students have to do the same thing manually – the purpse of software itself being to automate repeated tasks.

You’ll find that simple symlinking, and wrapper shell scripting can do wonders to the experience. Relevant command names, relevant intuitive filenames linked to originals in /etc/cryptic-name1/crypticname2.conf, relevant shell scripts to get a “default” database in postgres, etc. are things that can make it more fun and more exciting.

When someone asks you, “How to do so-and-so”, you must always develop software where you can answer “Oh, that’s simple. Just double click on that icon and follow the instructions on screen.” That is the ideal CSLinux that I envision. Where configuring NIS should be called “configuring NIS” in the GUI, on the command-line, in the installer, and everywhere else. Where if 10,000 kids are going to configure postgres, then they shouldn’t have to configure it in the first place.

Look at how we promoted the Wiki! We simply tell people to go to the Wiki and begin editing. It’s all there. The Wiki has instructions for modification, formatting everything. How many of you reading this post on a Linux box who’ve never made a man-page before can convert this mail into a man page, and distribute it to everyone and assure me that it will install and be available for reading on the desktop with a double-click? And how many of you who’ve never even heard of a Wiki can visit the cslinux Wiki and put this page up as a Wiki entry? Just try it for fun. You’ll get my point of the difference between a “Unix Solution” and an “End-user solution”.

As Shirish puts it, all comments, feedback, flames are welcome.

If anyone’s known me sufficiently long enough, they’d know that I’m afraid of only one thing in life – and afraid of it to such an extent that it scares the shit out of me! And the dreaded thing is a relationship! Hell ya! I get freaked!

People like me are wierdoes – we love being on our own and to do stuff that we feel like doing whenever we want. Marriage has always been so distant, so far, so out of the way for so long. And now, my mom is busy fixing up a lot of my friends with a lot of my cousions. This is a dangerous spell for moms to have. If they don’t have enough fodder to keep them busy, they sometimes generate fodder – out of YOU!

Boy, am I freaked out! I wish she would just end it. First it was a neighbour of mine, now it’s one of my best friends and soon it could be anyone! If you’re a family friend of mine or especially someone my mom is fond of, better stay away – she’s in full-swing marriage-arranging mode. Moms in marriage-mode are not to be messed with. There is no known defense against them. The only way to save yourself is to stay out of their way. Don’t blame me later. I’ve warned you!