Haja's Blog

Attha

admin — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:27:51 +0000

Didn’t realize when you are around how much you are important to my life….
Thinking back, you made me this way…my thoughts, my personality, my way of life, my character, everything is you…
You made me different from the whole crowd…you are my inspiration…
I didn’t missed you this much in the past, but i am missing you a lot today….
Didn’t understand how much you are important to many people, but can hear the stories now how you made their life different, how much important you are to their life….
With out you, for last few weeks….meaning of life become void…finding it very difficult to come out of it…
Didn’t realize the value of sacrifices you made for us, but can relate it now…
Attha…I love you….

What is life?

admin — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:50:29 +0000

Is it an evolution accident of a hydrogen atom over billion of years…?
Is it work of a super natural intelligent design with method chosen as natural selection….?
Is it work of a god, created by a magic wand in a sudden moment as in genesis…..?
Is it work of some supreme beings from a parallel universe and waiting to see our self destruction……?
Is it a dream of some one and we are not real……?

What is life…… who are we?

Key learnings – From Extreme Programming

haja — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 10:03:00 +0000

From my experience, don’t follow XP (Extreme Programming) methodology for bigger ERP kind of product development; follow this for smaller teams (~20 members) and 2 to 6 months project.
If the team is geographically dispersed, don’t even go near this methodology.
Have real customer, no proxy customer. Lack of proper requirement engineering leaves customer feedback only choice for validating the requirement to the implementation, so customer role is key to team success.
Don’t fake, pair programming. I observed many times one team member taking rest (or do something else) while other member coding, this defeat the purpose of getting quality output by pairing developers. Also pairing for non programming tasks (like server builds etc) not going to help, so avoid these.

xTreme Programming – 101

haja — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 10:00:15 +0000

1. Light weight software development methodology for small to medium sized projects.
No need to follow complex processes and filling tons of documents for anything, save the precious time the mighty programmers have and relieve them from pain of documentation and Bureaucracy.

2. Work elbow-to-elbow with customer in all software development phases (Planning, developing, deploying).
Review and receive feedback from customer all the time, customer need to be aware of the state of the application any given point of time.

3. Release well tested software very frequently.
Shorter release cycles (weekly/daily/monthly), follow test driven development, automate your testing and deployment.

4. Follow Iterative software development cycles.
Start with what ever information available, refine and rewrite as things become clear in an iterative way.

6. Work very closely with the team, write code in pairs.
Two person, one computer, one task, quality of the work product will be better in the long run (lesser bug because two brains working on single task). If possible have bigger cubes, and have every one sitting closely together (including the customer).

7. Continuously improve the code to make it better.
Look for even simpler refinement in past release’s code, and continuously fine tune it.

8. Keep everything very simple and clear; keep it running all the time.
No need for detailed architectural design before starting coding, make it simple, show the result to customer, refine it in later iterations if needed.

9. Have fun.
Following xTreme programming is not that easy when compared to well planned, documented ‘Other’ methodologies, so do all the above without killing yourself and have fun.

10. Retrospect after each iteration.
Correct the mistakes, do course correction, and become better ‘extreme programming team’, after each iteration.

Who is Carl Sagan?

haja — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:18:32 +0000

Carl Sagan was an American astronomer (1934 – 1996), popularized astrophysics and astronomy to wider audience with his COSMOS television series and followed by serious of books related to astronomy, evolution. His crystal clear voice and poetic language mesmerized many people (still mesmerizing), in explaining the complex scientific revelations about human origins and space.

Important events in his life:

1934: Born to Jewish parents, Brooklyn, New York.
1951: Graduated from Rahway High School in New Jersey.
1960: Doctorate in Astronomy and astrophysics.
1968: Worked in Harvard University.
1971: Director planetary studies, Cornell University.
1972: Associate Director Center for Radio Physics and Space Research, Cornell.
1972: Assembled the first physical message that was sent into space for NASA (He was adviser to NASA from his early days, one of the main duties worth mentioning during his tenure at NASA was briefing the Apollo Astronauts before their journey to Moon)
1996: Taught at Cornell a course on ‘critical thinking’ until his death.

Few of his books in my shelf (worth a read):