I have moved

Hey all - I have decided to try out wordpress as my blog host. So please go to http://technikhil.wordpress.com/ and check it out. I will continue to have this blog for awhile till things settle down however there will not be any new posts on it.

Rest in Peace - Telegraphy

I saw this article today : LiveScience.com - Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegram
When I first saw the topic line, my first reaction was - Who would still be using this method of communication in this day and age? Here we are looking at the demise of regular telephony now, who would have thought the telegraph still existed out here :) It was the first technology to ever use wires to communicate (correct me if I am wrong) instantly and for a long time it was the only way to communicate. I have never sent a telegram in my life but there it is.
Western Union isn't going away however, it's doing very well with its money order business and the loss of the telegraph doesnt affect it much.

My Programming Personality

Like the in every other profession, programming has its fair share of characters. From the arrogant genius to the enthusiastic incompetent and every flavor in between, you come across a recurring set of personalities, until you start wondering if nature uses her own set of design patterns for developers.
I came across this article on Digg which, details a nice set of design patterns for programming characters. I have been I am sorry to say several of the characters depicted at various stages of my career and I suspect I still am some of them. If you have known me please leave a comment on the one you felt I was around you... I am not promising, but I will try to improve :-)

Back on a project

Well the last couple weeks or so have been the first test of whether I would be able to manage both a billable project and a blog at the same time. I got on a billable project in a company that has a firewall policy that blocks blogs and blogging. This is a not exactly the most forward looking policy for a company that makes most of its money from the internet, but hey, a gig is a gig.
While I have not been able to actually publish posts I have been able create a few drafts that make me hopeful. At least I will be able to build a library of posts to publish at leisure :) I am hoping to be able to post at least once a fortnight.

Microsoft to enforce patents on FAT ?

I saw this on Slashdot today. Now this may be just fud or it may be the real thing, but this issue has some pretty profound implications, especially for device manufacturers.
Most devices like MP3 Players, External Hard Drives, Digital Cameras, etc use a FAT as the file-system for their memory in order that they are natively supported on Microsoft systems. The licensing fee should not be an issue for high value, high margin devices (like Digital Cameras) but would become a problem for devices that already operate on thin margins (like thumb drives).
The issue becomes a bigger one when you start considering Non-Microsoft operating systems. Linux has FAT support and removing this would mean they would be unable to interoperate with the MS computers (or use NTFS which could easily be patented also). That’s a serious problem given the dominance that Windows enjoys. This is not going to win MS any brownie points with the public. What do you think?

Atlanta weather

What is with the weather in Atlanta nowadays? It’s the beginning of January and it feels like spring. I actually felt hot wearing a jacket today! Not that I am complaining mind you - weather like this is much more welcome than the usual: cold and blustery with rain.

In my experience the weather in Atlanta has always been one of its great attractions. Possibly it’s my thin tropical blood or my growing up in the hot sweaty climate of South India but I find the climate in Atlanta to be just about perfect. It is not too cold and not too hot (except for a few days in summer) and there is nice breeze.

It’s located far enough inland to miss the brunt of the hurricanes and yet has rivers and lakes that act as moderating influences. It has a lot of tree cover (especially considering it’s such a large city) and while it is rainy during the hurricane seasons its not all that bad.

My internal project

When I joined my first company waaaay back in the mists of time at the dawn of this millennium, I was a wet behind the years eager trainee, looking forward to my first project.
What I got was an internal project that was thought up on the back of a napkin by the division head. It was a timesheet management system and some of us trainees were supposed to work on it, gaining some skills till we could be put on billable projects. There were no real requirements and we were too green to ask for any. There was an experienced guy who was the informal lead on the project and a project manager who had newly joined the company. I wasn’t really impressed by the software development lifecycle process (this was supposed to be a SEI CMM Level 5 company) but I was eager to learn and I picked a place close to the experienced guy and dug in.

We decided that we wanted to do it in ASP because that was what was being used everywhere else and seemed to be the thing to use. We began easily enough and it was relatively plain sailing. I thought I did a really nice job (created a few nice DHTML features etc) for the 3 months that I spent there. We had a release and then I was rolled off onto another project.

Fast forward 3 years, and I have had some solid coding time under my belt. I have had a few releases and done a few 48hr coding sessions. I happened to come upon my timesheet project. I was appalled at my code!! No stored procedures, no architecture, and no consistency. Even the DHTML was specific to IE 5.0 and would break the page if loaded in another browser. It sure showed me, and I was extra nice to all the newbies for the next couple of weeks :)

Another 3 years and its 2006; ASP.NET is in its second iteration. The .NET platform is firmly established as the platform of the future for Microsoft and Visual Studio .NET is considered the de-facto standard for developer productivity tools. I am in between projects and my manager decides to put me on an internal project. The project is introduced and I can see the business need being articulated. Several pointed questions about scope, time and priorities later we come down to a bare-bones design for the project. I have a friend of mine from my previous company on this project. We have seen all of this before, we got this... The platform (ASP.NET and SQL Server) and the development environment (Visual Studio .NET) is quickly decided on and we start on the design. Two days later and we have the beginnings of a database model, a class structure (after a fashion) and a whole bunch of unknowns and variables. Our bare-bones project is looking more and more complex - its deja-vu, but this time I am the experienced guy...