Archis's Blog

I’m going to use my blog as a confession ground partly to make up for all the bad things I do. Hopefully, forcing myself to admit this will make me a better person in the future.

I recently behaved rather indiscreetly regarding a friend of mine who considered me a friend (and I considered her a friend too). I said some things about her on another friends orkut scrapbook, and she found out and got mad at me. Naturally, the first instinct was, “Why did I discuss it on orkut?” However, after a couple of hours, I have to admit that it’s not about orkut but the content. If I had made those comments over a messenger in private, does that make my comments ok?

I’m trying to overcome this self-justifying defensive instinct, and this is my first step towards forgiveness. I hope a public apology will be the first, even if small, step towards making reparations for my actions.

There are a few things I learnt from this experience:

1. One must push the limits, but not break them, especially when they are other people’s limits.

2. Your own personal conditions are in no way a justification for your mistakes. I learnt this the hard way. The best you can do is justify to yourself and make yourself feel happy. I haven’t slept. I’m frustrated at work. I’m tired. I’m exhausted. I’m a loser. I have no life. These problems are your own problems and others shouldn’t have to suffer for them.

3. Words do more damage than wounds. If you strike someone with a knife and they bleed, they will heal. If you hurt someone with words, it’s kinda permanent. Sure you’ll learn to put things behind you, but you don’t forget it.

4. Keeping it secret is just a way of encouraging these tendencies. One good thing I like about orkut is that you say only that which you are confident of saying. It’s a good practice to follow when chatting on messengers. Always assume your chat transcripts are world-visible. It will make you a better person. Maybe this too much privacy of our own tools encourages us to be bad people. We feel secure in transmitting mails and all, so that over time we start saying bad things. This tendency manifests itself in bad thoughts later.

I sincerely feel guilty and this blog post will remain here to remind me to behave myself in the future.

I hope this mitigates those “I wanna do a project, do you have a project?” kind of questions and explains all my views in excruciating detail. For any questions, you’re always welcome to mail me and I’ll revert back with another entry. Me not being either an “industry expert” (I’ve exhausted all industry-expert humor for now – but I promise to come up with new insults soon), and neither am I an “alumni” (if you’re new to Pune culture, this isn’t an adjective which means past-student, but a very special honour – it’s a bit hard to explain here unless you’ve faced some “alumni” yourselves), so there’s little scope of me ever being able to speak on these topics directly to students.

Let’s get down to business. I’ll post suggesstions here and justifications later, so that any of you who want to get a quick overview won’t waste time:

1. Projects should always be focussed on a “problem”. They must begin with a problem, and only end in solving the problem. If you’re beginning with, “I want to do something in Java/.Net/”, you’re in trouble. Now, this could be a valid assertion, assuming you’re talking about extending the language/technology in question. If you want to increase the “Java platform” itself, this makes sense. But if you’re talking about using Java to do (where is as of yet undefined), you’d better rethink your choice of becoming a computer scientist. Not sure if you even know how a “problem” is defined.

2. A problem must be something real and substantial. It must be something people can relate to. Something that, if “solved”, must no longer exist. Let’s say you pick up “Base64 encoding a string” as a problem, then after your solution, base64 encoding of a string should no longer bother your target audience.

A problem must always have a target audience. If nobody needs a base64 encoding of a string, don’t do it. If someone needs a base64 encoding of a string, and won’t use your program for it, don’t do it. Do something that someone real uses. This doesn’t have to be a “live” project. Do something at home. I don’t care. But do something that works! Even if you’re mom or dad or grandpa uses it, it’s okay.

In my opinion, a great project is one that achieves something – something that at least someone cares about – even if it’s one person on earth (including you). Let’s take an example later.

3. Write “REAL” code: Go to your own college. I’m sure everyone’s complaining about some missing tool, or “I wish I had a tool to do this”. Now think to yourself. In your own college, one that is admittedly “academic” and “non-industry-oriented”, there isn’t a single tool written by many of you today, that solves any of the problems they crib about. Now if your so-called “academic” college won’t use it (which is why you bring in “industry experts” to deliver lectures), why should a multi-billion-dollar industry trust you?

Your own HoD won’t trust the code that you write, but overnight, you expect a multibillion-dollar company to just trust you? And let me make this very clear – the industry, once they hire you, implicitely trusts you. I had a disagreement about this issue with a senior many years ago, and he had said I would “learn that trust isn’t everything” when I joined the industry. As I have yet to apaprently join the “industry”, I maintain my original opinion, and actively promote it. When I write code, I am questioned by nobody. My manager doesn’t ask me why I did something a certain way. If I say something can’t be done, he takes it at face value and defends my decision higher up. He’ll never ask for a second opinion. My mails are not monitored and I could burn all my team’s code on a CD and walk out with it without anyone checking. It’s that simple. You can now imagine just how much trust Microsoft has in all it’s 70,000+ employees worldwide (vendors and interns over and above this number). That’s how the industry works. And this trust has to be earned.

“How do I write real code?” It’s simple. Write code. Distribute it. If one person uses your code for their problem, it’s “real” code. Now it is very important that they really do use it. Some friend shouldn’t just fire up your program, run it, and then fire up something else later. You’re program needs to be the only program they use for the specific problem your program attempts to solve.

4. “Impressive projects” (IPs for short), are mostly for cowards. Let me explain. In my day, I’ve seen (and continue to see) extremely fancy-sounding names like “kernel-module-janky-panky-thingy”, or “hyper-threaded-multi-headed-monster” to name the remotely sane ones. Now while those of you doing “small” projects like GUI’s for a database might get intimidated by these names, let me attempt to give you some confidence.

If the comment, “My project is 90% done”, can be made about any project, that project is cowardly. How many of those kernel modules being made is the college using in their labs? How many of those jhanky-panky things are being used by your own teachers? So far as I’ve noticed, ZERO! The cool thing about an IP (impressive project) is that the minute you begin it, you’ve already defined an exit-route. Regardless of what you end up doing, you just say, “Hey it’s 90% done”, and you got 100% marks for doing 90% of a very complex project.

The really brave are those who take up those silly-sounding database GUI projects. Due to their silly-sounding nature, everyone is already critical of them before the evaluation begins. Being a silly-sounding project, they really need to “deliver”. If it doesn’t work, they’re screwed. Forget 99%, they need it to be done 100% or even more sometimes. Think about this for a moment.

One of the reasons I have never been, nor will never be asked to get involved in industry-student activities (where industry jerks go to the college and tell students how stupid they are), is that I keep asking the wrong questions. I distinctly remember at least 3 IPs where I asked the teacher praising it, “So ma’am, does your machine use this file-system driver?”, and she didn’t reply, and I didn’t need to ask anything further. That’s why “defining the problem” is the most important step. Define it and solve it goddamit!

If you’re still not convinced, let me put this in another way. Most of you know I love making my own toothpaste just for fun. Now I recently made a toothpaste that’s 90% done. It can kill off absolutely any bacteria, virus, fungus and any other pathogens known to man! Wow! It’s super-awesome! Just one minor issue – we can’t use it on our teeth yet. But wait! It’s 90% done! We’re almost there! We solved the major issue that no other toothpaste in the world solves! We killed off all germs! Take that you idiotic dentists studying for 1000 years! I, a mere computer programmer, invented a better toothpaste than you! And now, I want you all to invest 100 million dollars in my new invention so I can make it safe for teeth, and we’ll all be rich!

Just tell me how many if you will invest in my super-awesome toothpaste? The moral of the story is, just go do a project you enjoy and have fun with, and don’t be intimidated by these IP’s. If you’re doing a small GUI project, you’re braver than many of them, and you’ve got a lot more to be afraid of – because you will be scrutinized, you’ll be interrogated, you’ll be broken down into bits before you get a single point for your project, which needs to do everything you said it would do. Your project needs to be safe for teeth, _and_ kill as many germs as possible. So take heart and trust me – the industry will value you. Have you ever heard of the standard comment at college that goes something like…. “sometimes low-scorers are hired by the industry and high-scorers remain jobless”? Believe me – the industry isn’t stupid. They never hired low-scorers. They hired those who were scrutinized the most and didn’t have the escape routes that the others had.

As an ending note: if you do manage an IP and only deliver the solution
- well, you’re beyond all praise. I honestly mean it. This blog entry was not meant for you.

5. Commitment: I know most of you have never met people who’re committal, but hey, they do exist you know! Now, I don’t mean this in the context of management-style blazer-wearing people. I mean it in the plain human definition of it. If you want to be brave, learn to write down the problem you’ll commit to solve, and only go to the examiner with, “It’s solved”, or “It’s not solved” (unless you’d rather back me a million dollars for my toothpaste).

Define the problem in use-case terms ONLY! That’s the only way to really commit. If you’re making a Linux installer, and if I were an examiner, I’d ask it to install Linux on my PC without asking you a single question otherwise. If it didn’t install Linux, but instead did some hyper-threaded-multi-headed thingy, I wouldn’t give a damn! Use-case scenarios are frightening to commit to, and that’s why you need to learn this while you’re students. Now is the time to make those mistakes.

And believe me, there’s a difference when I say this. I work for a company that produces products that _you_ personally use (well, I hope so anyway; and if you don’t use our products, I’ve proven my point even better). I don’t come to you and say, “I’m some bigshot industry fellow who knows everything and you’re stupid.” The code I write, physically reaches you. You’re being, while you’re reading this blog, my direct judges. You’re my evaluators. You’re directly responsible for my bread-and-butter. How many of you use Live Search? What if I told you Live Search uses some jhanky-panky-super-cool technology that Google doesn’t have, will you use it? If I said, Live uses C#, will you use it? Think of orkut. What technology does it use? What Os does it run on? What AJAX engine does it employ? Have you even once considered these questions? All you care about is the quality of search results, and the ability to _communicate_ using orkut. Orkut’s problem is a use-case scenario. “To enable Person A to talk to Person B”. Even if it’s 90% done, it’s worthless. Even if it’s 99% done, it’s worthless. Only if it enables Person A to talk to Person B, do you – the judges, the evaluators, the jury – use orkut! Then why is it, that having expressed a desire to work for this industry, you hate these “academic questions” asked by allegedly stupid university examiners? In my opinion, the university examiners ask the perfect questions – the very questions that you would ask me when I come and ask you to use my product. In a way, calling them stupid, is calling yourself stupid.

I admit, they don’t care what technology you’ve used, or how hard you’ve worked, or that cool kernel-thingy you did. But then again, neither do you care for all these things. Learn to live with it – better now than later. That’s what life in the industry-without-double-quotes is. That’s how we live daily. If Person A cannot talk to Person B, I’m worthless to the world regardless of what transport protocol I may have used and how many layers of encryption I may have put on it.

The one final suggesstion I would make to you – learn to make commitments and learn to live with them. Never have excuses based on technology, hard-work, or impressive-sounding names – that’s for cowards.

6. Ensure you’re thinking of deployment: How many projects in our labs are run directly from IDEs, and how many are binary executables? Even more so, how many of those executables are packaged? On Linux, there’s deb and rpm, on Windows there’s MSI. How many projects can you “install->double-click->run”? Again, would you use my products if I gave you a large source tree? This is a tough call, but it’s an important one. Being able to write something that’ll run on even one machine that you don’t have control over provides immense pleasure.

7. Use all the tools at your disposal: Use a source versioning system. Store your code in a CVS/SVN/VSS repository. Keep incremental changes as diffs.

Compare those diffs. Look at how you wrote the code. If something goes wrong, you can revert back to a working build instantly. It’s important to be able to use these tools regardless of where you work. If you’re handling any content, a versioning system is critical – even if you’re only working with office documents and not source code. Your company/clients/stakeholders are going to want your sharepoint to hold all incremental changes to documents that are made. Use source-analysis tools to find memory holes. Even knowing that a certain tool exists for a certain job can be valuable.

8. “If I do all this, when will I do my project?” The answer is simple – do a simple project, but one in which you can focus on all aspects of development. I had attempted to make this suggesstion in the syllabus, but the university is still living in the 1980′s so we’ve got to give them some time before they can catch up on almost 22 years. In the meantime, I personally recommend build only notepad if you have to. Build sudoku. Build minesweeper. But build something that you yourself should use for hours on your own. Not for testing, but for actual “using”. Build something that allows you to explore various challenges – how to version source code being edited by 20 people at a time, how to write comments, how to build binaries, how to build packages, how to ensure and test packages will install and run and take care of dependencies for unknown configurations. These are all fun and interesting aspects, but most importantly, they’re just plain old bread-and-butter aspects of a programmer.

When I say real code, go out to a public CVS. Contribute just 100 lines to Apache or MySQL, or Postgres, or Linux. Instead of a 10000-line kernel-thingy, submit 100 lines to _the_ kernel. 100 lines that will be used by hundreds of thousands of users all over the world! Now that’s “real” code! It’s not the quantity but the quality that counts.

Naturally, I don’t discourage building a kernel driver, but then have the guts to commit to it. It shouldn’t be done for “40 marks”. The only acceptibility criteria is that it be merged into the kernel tree. There should be no other criteria. If you’re solving the problem of “non-existence of a driver”, after your solution, this problem must go away (as I mentioned above). After your solution, there should “exist a driver” – not on your PC or in your lab, but in the kernel production tree. Being able to make this commitment is what the thrill is all about. Make a commitment on notepad, but then ship it! It should go into production. If you can’t commit on even notepad, then you’re seriously in the wrong place and reading the wrong blog. Its upto you – whether you want to be a coward and be non-committal, or be courageous and commit to a small deliverable!

I don’t want to encourage the terrorists by popularising or sensationalising this horrendous act, but it’s worth mentioning. As you might know, there have been three serial blasts (2 of them within a matter of 15 minutes) at VERY prominent and to-be-visited locations in Hyderabad. One of them took place at Lumbini Park (where incidentally I was hanging out precisely on last saturday), and the other at a place I’m not aware of.

My heartfelt condolences to those who lost their loved ones in this incident, and being revengeful in nature, I hope the authorities apprehend those responsible for this attack.

I kind of begin to understand just how the Bush Administration defended the War on Terror and the consequent Iraqi Invasion. It’s easy to sit here and blame them for using the fear of the masses, but I now know what it feels like. As you may know, I work at Cyber Towers – practically the symbolic building of the IT industry in Hyderabad. On wednesday evening (that’s just 2 days ago), there was a bomb scare at Towers, and at the main Microsoft campus. We (three people forming my team – including me) evacuated the buildings casually, and though thankfully not lazily. We first thought it was a drill, because a drill had been announced for that specific hour by security. Thankfully, since the warning did not say, “this is a drill”, we took it seriously. One of us had a car, and he wanted to go back in and get his car out.

At that time we took it so lightly. I mean, hey, we’ve all seen bomb hoaxes right? We’ve seen them at colleges (apart from riots, mobs and a lot of scary stuff), and we’ve seen them around our houses. But when 3 bombs go off 48 hours after a hoax, that makes you think.

In response, I’ve begun carrying my insurance card, my official ID badge, at all times. I just went out and read all the instructions for emergency evacuations and other incidences. I made sure my emergency contact instructions available with HR were uptodate.

So this is my request to you all. I know many may not take it until a hoax occurs with you, followed by a consequtive blast in the same city, but it’s worth a shot.

Please read your safety instructions carefully. This applies to our campus most, but it applies to any places that you enter. For all you know, you might be the one personally responsible for bringing in that one bomb that may take a life. And it only takes one bomb – they’re generally built by most competent people such that they’re quite sufficient on their own. so never ever underestimate them. They’re not going to come in wearing a “I wanna bomb Microsoft” T-shirt.

NEVER EVER tailgate. If someone has a security badge, they’re capable of swapping it themselves. They don’t need assistance. If they need assistance, the security personnel stationed at entry/exit points are trained to assist them. If you find someone without a badge, be brutal – but be safer than sorry.

To all those innocent people who lost their lives for a cause that will undoutably have some noble justification assigned to it such as “freedom”, well… honestly I don’t know what to say, but I am terribly sorry for the loss we suffered today.

Disclaimer: All content in this blog represents my opinions and only my opinions, and does not even remotely, incidentally, implicitely, or accidentally, or in any other way represent the opinion of my current, past or future employers or any institutions I may have been affiliated or associated with.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/15/1341224&from=rss

Now before we misinterpret it, let me make that clear. I don’t mean servers of other companies which are running Ubuntu. I meant servers of Ubuntu.

I’m sure Microsoft must have had something to do with this! But until we can somehow figure out how Microsoft was involved, let’s just assume it wasn’t them and look at alternatives:

I once had a major mail-debate with a prominent freedom-fighter regarding system administrators. His argument was “Linux requires admins with a high IQ” whereas “Windows doesn’t”. Now call me stupid, but I thought this was a good thing for windows. Afterall, I was under the impression that software was meant to simplify our lives (I keep making wrong assumptions on so many fronts lately). Then he goes to say that because Linux requires Administrators with high IQ, they are always competent – by virtue of being Linux admins, whereas a Windows admin is not of high IQ because it’s Microsoft’s fault that Windows is easy to use. Yes, Microsoft is responsible that companies who use Windows, hire admins with low IQ. (disclaimer – I do not subscribe to this opinion personally).

Anyways, a whole community’s eyes (thousands of eyes, to quote said mighty freedom-fighter) did not notice a (probably must be low-iq) procedure that I, as a college student was smart enough to know – use everything over SSL. I quote: “as using unencrypted FTP transfers with accounts”. I’m pretty sure there was something called ssl and secure ftp and ssh in college. We’re talking about servers running GPL’d programs, which, according to some, by virtue of applying the GPL, got thousands of eyes going over them, combined with the fact that they’re being run by the community (add a thousand or so more eyes to the mix), and add to that the fact that we’re dealing with the most popular Linux distro in the world – one that’s going to be the flagship into the entry of Linux on preinstalled desktops by Dell (add a few hundred yet more eyes). Hmm…. maybe I missed something…..

The community has it’s share blames to throw on Canonical too. The kernel has backward compatibility issues with Canonical-provided hardware, which I presume was bought with all kinds of freedom-fighter-retaliation-threats to whoever sold it to them, which means that there’s no hardware lockin (besides the servers were working till now – I mean something was throwing that webpage at me!). Now I found out from slashdot that Vista’s just stupid that it’s not backward compatible with lots of hardware. However, the Linux kernel gets patches “overnight” at the click of your fingers (especially on hardware that was bought with that purpose in mind, and which worked with the previous version). However, it’s Canonical’s fault that they sponsored this hardware. Maybe I missed something again……

Wait, there’s more….. there were missing security patches. Damn that Windows Update! Applies patches authomatically huh? Must be for those low-IQ admins. With high-iq people who can apply patches “overnight”, why bother?

Wait there’s even more…. I’ve faced “case studies” and “statistics” of how Linux machines never ever fail, and any windows failure is always Microsoft’s personal fault, and the configurations had nothing to do with it. And let’s not forget the whole hardware compatibility Vista gave up – just how mean and evil of it! I guess the freedom-fighter-threatened vendor who sold that hardware (or Canonical to have bought it) must be so damned evil, that even after all those threats, he sold hardware that chose to be backward compatible with an upgrade in the kernel. Shouldn’t the stupid, arrogant, low-IQ vendor have anticipated future kernel-changes and made hardware that could live with them? Since the code is by-definition always right (thanks to those thousands + thousands + hundreds of eyes), the evil hardware decided not to allow the kernel to upgrade. Maybe it was that damned DRM again…

Afterall, it’s always everyone else’s fault right?

Disclaimer: All content in this blog represents my opinions and only my opinions, and does not remotely, incidentally, implicitely, or accidentally, or in any other way represent the opinion of my current, past or future employers or any institutions I may have been affiliated or associated with.

In case any of you want more fuel to throw at the UoPs reputation, have I got news for you! And hey, before you disregard my opinions, please note that I’m an “industry expert” now, and a highly-paid one at that. So that means I’m asymtotically right! In fact, I’ve already proven I’m right, so why bother reading the mail? Being partly academician, I just though I’d explain myself a bit. I know, I know, I’m a disgrace to “industry experts” everywhere by calling myself an “academician”, but I just can’t seem to help it.

As you might know, a group of my friends were attempting a major campaign towards upgrading the BCS/MCS syllabus. One of them even attended the BoS meeting to try and get them to change it. This event was…. well, more on this later – it’s a story that deserves my best writing mood. Wait for an independence-day special edition review of that meeting in 72 hours.

Through that workshop, we found out that the current course pattern that BCS follows is known as the “85 pattern”. Now I’m not an expert on verbal interpretation, nor on the University Act (I used to be under the impression that a B.Sc. graduate is not allowed to teach in post-grad, but turns out that it’s allowed and praised), but I sort-of interpreted that this pattern must have been formed in 1985.

Now just think about this for a moment. The first-years entering BCS this year will mostly be 1988-1989 borns. The pattern that will be used to teach them will have been formed 4 years before they were born. I know a girl who’s been dying to go to Hogwarts ever since the 7th book in the Harry Potter series was released. Now, I may not be able to recommend a thousand-year-old school to her, but I guess the UoP would really top my list of compromises-to-Hogwarts. I doubt if there are many other universities anywhere in the world where a course structure is being taught that was formed before the students were born. Now just pause, close your eyes, and ponder this for a moment…… I know it takes a bit of a while to sink in. When Atul (the friend-of-mine who attended the meeting), told me, it took me almost 3 days to comprehend the complete impact of this.

On the other hand, we have 200-year-old self-proclaimed scientific-people talking about the future and the committe to make the next 10-year plan. Whoa there horsey! What future would that be? Are we talking about the revolutionary times when the current freshers were born? Wouldn’t that be an awesome four-year futuristic jump? Afterall, what’s there to complain about? Star Wars was released 7 years before I was born, and I still love it! This structure was formed almost 8 years after Star Wars. Now doesn’t that just make it feel awesome and brand-new?

Wait… there’s even more praise to be said of the mighty round knights of the table. (No no – that wasn’t a typo: the knights’ pockets (or bellies, if you prefer) are nice and round even if the table isn’t – I guess it’s a minor tradeoff). There’s a committee of these knights to plan….. uhhh …. TWENTY YEARS into the future! Now I realise why this 20-year-plan committee is being praised so much. Are the rumours true? Could it be possible? Are we going to jump into the year 2005? OH MY GOD! 30 years post-Star-Wars! Really, now don’t you all think they deserve some praise? What courage! What valour! What intense dedication to education? A pattern that will be formed just three to four years before you enter a course? Didn’t that just raise all your heads in pride?

Just think about the kind of futuristic stuff our next generation is learning. I grew up in the era of lightsabres and death stars. A lot must have happened in eight years. This syllabus was made sometime close to release of “Tron”. WOW! I’m jealous!

However, for all those whiners amongst you who love to still criticise the UoP inspite of such progress beyond imagination, here’s something you can do if you’ve got a spine. Send a polite e-mail to the authorities; there is a “contact us” page on their cutting-edge technological invention called a “web site” (you have to see it to believe it man!) at http://www.unipune.ernet.in/ (although beware – some of their LAMP servers have been known to host VBScript viruses – don’t ask me how they did it, so far as I know, even Torvalds is going to be put to shame if he tries to get a VBScript virus on a Linux+Apache webserver) and simply register your feelings on the great 8-year-post-Star-Wars course that is being taught. I’m just saying present _your_ feelings. Now I studied for 6 months in a department that actually thought the 200-year-old imperialist educational system was perfect, and as I said above, I know a girl who would want nothing better than Hogwarts! But whatever it is, do send a mail (in the worst case, at least lets grant a little girl her wish of a 1000-year-0ld institution; Dumbledore, a recent modern wizard said, nothing is impossible – with your support and guidance, we can take back our course by one thousand years!).

On a serious note: The reason for this post is that I want a “commitment”. Too many alumni and “industry experts” have tortured me during my graduation for me to let this go. No more cowardly whispering and commenting on orkut communities. If you object, go say it. At least, the lack of objecting mails will mean that if I ever find anyone going to a student event and starts blaming helpless 18-year-olds for being pathetic and boasting of his/her great power as an “industry expert”, they shall have me to deal with personally.

This is also a request to all those freshers who’re abused, frightened, and teased. Don’t take crap from someone claiming to be great because they work in the industry – just ask them to express their opinions to the Hon. VC. Forget that they can do some thingummajig in C that you can’t. Once you go to the industry, you’ll mug up a lot of such thingummajigs too. What the heck? There’s standard books where you get magic-thingummajigs out of the box. And in case some of you, modern spoiled youngster brats who love to oppose the great post-Hogwarts-era course, feel you have some kind of comments on the great Tron-era futuristic course structure, then you may e-mail the UoP too.

Afterall, it’s a popularity game. The more mails you can muster up, the righter you are (ref: Archis Gore, 2003, “Right Righter Rightest – a new comparable and relativistic approach for asserting correctness”). A certain department tried to disprove scientific fact by a vote-campaign (Note to self: Try this during the next Nobel-prize nomination! I’d bet that Einstein fellow couldn’t gather as many votes as me! Dammit, politicians should get scientific awards like crazy – or wait – did I just say that Bhatnagar-award-winners are nothing but stupid politicians? Need to think this through…..) A wise man once said, “Bar bar kahenge to genuine samjhenge!”

Slashdot recently carried a post on how IIS is gaining on Apache real fast. And there were many sour-grapes responses, as expected.

However, it’s kindof surprising that nobody considered the possibility that it was the same success which makes Windows so infamous, which is now hurting Apache. Let me explain….

Linux has always been a very small fraction of the market. Very few machines run it. It’s been agile and risk-taking (well, indulge me for now – we can address the arguments that it only borrows tried and tested technology from others later). What I’m saying is, you could have a hundred different package management systems, and a thousand different conf files. And it didn’t matter. Because it was small, when you got a Linux box, you never expected it to be the same as your neighbours anyway. So you kinda never bothered about it being “standardised”.

Windows had always been cursed with success. A $200 billion industry running on top of it was sort of a curse towards fancy changes. Vista is, even if our competitors blame it for not being too revolutionary, revolutionary enough that most businesses are worried that their older apps won’t work on it. This success came at a price. Everyone expects windows to be the same across the world. You can’t have thousand different config files in a thousand different locations. Everything needs to be at the exact place all the time anywhere in the world. Hence, APIs were locked down, and at times, they even had to replicate bugs from older versions of windows, because certain apps expected them!

In the server space, I think that’s the real reason killing off Apache. Apache is expected to be the exact same thing across the web. People expect a certain set of features and _only_ those sets of features. IIS on the other hand, was free to wriggle and change and morph. In it’s latest incarnation, IIS 7 is one of the coolest things I’ve seen. You can write .Net components, or COM components and pipeline requests/responses through any number of these. It’s almost like Apache, except that on windows, you have such an API for everything – SQL Server, IIS, etc. This means that you can write .Net extensions to SQL server quite easily. The point is, while Microsoft was small and low, they could go nuts making changes to the infrastructure. Merging SQL with .Net, and refactoring IIS, and coming up with the killer devtools – especially ASP.Net.

Apache on the other hand, was something people went to when they saw it running on others sites. Everyone is familiar with the LAMP stack – Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. PHP is nowhere close to ASP.Net. However, that’s what people want. Now if Apache suddenly re-architected, or allowed you to write extensions in managed code, or PHP suddenly provided some kind of GUI-based componentized model like ASP, people would go crazy. LAMP is now imprinted in their minds – just like the Windows “start” button. Apache was just too successful.

Google is another example. Look at google today. Live Search can go crazy trying out whacky new stuff. Doesn’t matter. Google is cursed by success. A small change on their homepage, and millions of people notice. In fact, the release of gmail was their first real experience with what it means to be successful. Every move that Microsoft makes is assumed, de-facto, to be evil. Regardless of what it is. Nobody takes the time to read any of the content. (Especially on slashdot). When gmail came out, Google faced a privacy-invasion PR nightmare like never before. Would this happen if AverageJoeMail did the same thing? Absolutely not! Critics would just advice you to stay away from AverageJoeMail, and you’d not go there. However, Google was a success. Critics couldn’t say, “Hey don’t use gmail”, and even if they did, they knew nobody would care. That’s why there were threats of lawsuits against Google directly.

If you’ve noticed, in the past year, Google’s stunts have been reducing. There haven’t been any crazy-ass announcements from them in a while now. The reason? The unfortunate curse of success!