Why did we move back?

A list of reasons in no particular order for moving back to India from US - so that I wont be caught pants down when my son asks me this question may be 17 years from now.

• I want my son to be born on this piece of land we call India. It might be madness to think this way, but I want him to have an Indian passport. I want him to have the aroma and pollution of this place in his lungs right from the moment he takes his first breath. I want for him to have the spiritual grounding that my parents and this place gave me.
• My parents, Prathi's parents and everybody else wouldn't have experienced the whole thing if we were back in US. At max, we could have only got our parents or Prathi's parents, which would have the others miss the experience.
• Its very difficult to get the roots out of a place once you settle. I don't know how the people in armed forces do it. They move every three years, I guess they become used to it. Its a big impact on kids as well, sometimes more than the adults. If we move constantly you cannot setup your roots and so you cannot grow. "sthaana bala" as they say is more important than it seems.
  
• Agreed that there is lot of insecurity here in India. It was to a certain extent, a false sense of security there in US. Don't why Indians who go to US excel in what they do and succeed.
  
• I am going to bet on India. India is going to be better and developed in a decade or two. We are definitely on the path.
• I doubt I would have started a company on my own if I were not in India.
• The legal problems and bureaucratic hassle with H1B and Green card is to much to bear.
• Living in continous thought of not being home is too stressful. It would feel like living out of a suitcase. I don't think I can accept America as a home that easily. Living away from home forever is something that I can't bear.
• Last but not the least (I think the most important), Prathi has always wanted to settle back only in India. She wouldn't even consider marrying me if I wanted to settle in US.
  

Calcite formation

This is a photo of the calcite formation at my home. They say it takes years for things like this to form. This came into view in about a years time. Amazing, what continued persistence can create... this is more of a lesson for me to persevere and to be determined.

Are we intelligent as a country?

How intelligent are we as a country when we compare ourselves with other people. I would say, our own intelligence is acting against our favour. We are quite a mass of intelligent people. Each one of us, are smart (even shrewd), but as a nation we are quite dumb. Its like the electrons. If all of them move in one direction we have a current flowing, else maximum we can have is minor static charge.

Actually this was something I have been thinking, and lo and behold, I found Scott Adams writing about it in his blog but altogether in a different context. He says -
"... military studies done years ago where researchers compared the performances of small groups that had different compositions of intelligence. They found that the groups with the highest percentage of bright people performed the worst. Apparently all the smart people insisted they had the best ideas and nothing got done. The best performing groups were the ones where there was one smart person and the rest of the group deferred to him. Therefore, I would argue, too much intelligence ruins everything."

I don't know how real this is, but I think it definitely makes sense.

Thoughts

Being a father, I automatically tend to feel that I have rights or command over what I have created. I want him to be a cardiac surgeon or a pilot or this or that. All those things that I might have secretly wanted to be myself, but then again he is not what I created. Children are souls given a body through me and hence I dont have control over them. May be moms have better control if at all, since they helped create the body more intimately, what I gave is just like a part of the seed. Simple truth! but I guess so many dads waste their cycles over this. All we dads can do is hope and help. I wish my dad realizes this. This will make him more happy. As the FORUM gurus say, I "hope" he creates and goes behind bigger problems that will make his life grand.

"The rung of ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher"

- Thomas Henry Huxley

After thought: One should then not consider their carreer as a ladder, since one can never rest. One might then never be able to enjoy the journey, since one will be always thinking of finishing climbing the ladder.

Reading Peopleware

[This is a very old writeup - some notes and thoughts I gathered while reading the book. This is posted here so that it can be saved for later]

By Srinivas Yermal
Sunday, February 17, 2002

Peopleware
Productive Projects and Teams
By Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, 2nd edition, 1988

"Most of the managers are prone to one particular failing: a tendency to manage people as though they were modular components."

Parkison's law:

In 1954, the British author C. Northcote Parkinson said that the work expands to fill the time allocated for it. This "law" might apply to people who don't enjoy what they do. Or Tom and Timothy note that - organizational busy work tends to expand to fill the working day.

Seven False Hopes of software management -

1. There's a new trick you've missed that could send productivity soaring.
   
2. Other managers are getting gains of 100% or 200% or more.
   
3. Technology is moving so swiftly that you're being passed by.
   
4. Changing languages will give you huge gains.
   
5. B'coz of the backlog, you need to double productivity immediately
   
6. You automate everything else; isn't it about time you automate away your software development staff?
   
7. Your people will work better if you put them under a lot of pressure.

Gerald McCue with the assitance of IBM area managers designed a study which revealed that -

• 100 sq feet of dedicated space per worker is important
  
• 30 sq feet of work surface per person
  
• noise protection in the form of enclosed offices or six-foot high partitions

"Anything you need to quantify can be measured in some way that is superior to not measuring at all." - Tom Gilb

More important than any gimmick you introduce is a change in attitude. People must learn that its okay sometimes to not answer their phones, and they must learn that their time - not just the quantity but its quality - is important. Because once you are out of the flow, you will take close to 15 min. at an average to get back into the flow. And being in the "flow" or "zone" is the most important thing that any intellectual worker needs to get any work done at all.

Management, at its best, should make sure there is enough space, enough quiet, and enough ways to ensure privacy so that people can create their own sensible workspace.

Christopher Alexander's book Notes on the synthesis of Form is considered a kind of holy book by designers of all kinds. Alexander codifies the elements of good architectural design in his three volume set entitled The Timeless Way of Building. Alexander proposes a meta-plan instead of a master plan. It has three parts -

• a philosophy of piecemeal growth
• a set of patterns or shared design principles governing growth
  
• local control of design by those who will occupy the space

Four patterns to improve the institutional space

1. Tailored workspace from a kit - allow people who use it to design it.
   
2. Provide windows
   
3. Indoor and outdoor space
   
4. Public space - At the entrace of the workplace should be some area that belongs to the whole group. An age-old pattern of interior space is one that has a smooth intimacy gradient as you move toward the interior.

"Without communal eating, no human group can hold together. Give each a place where people can eat together. Make the common meal a regular event. In particular, start a common lunch in every workplace so that a genuine meal around a common table (not out of boxes, machines or bags) becomes an important comfortable daily event... In our own work group at the Center, we found this worked most beautifully when we took it in turns to cook the lunch. The lunch became an event; a gathering: something that each of us put our love and energy into."

--A Pattern Language

Formula for success -

1. Get the right people
2. Make them happy so that they dont leave
3. Turn them loose. (This includes the fact that you will coordinate(only) the efforts of the team)

"Popcorn is not professional" - The term unprofessional is often used to characterize surprising and threatening behavior. So making and eating popcorn in office cafeteria is unprofessional.

SECOND THERMODYNAMIC LAW OF MANAGEMENT - Entropy (levelness and sameness) is always increasing in the orginization. So your organization may have rigor mortis, but your little piece of it can hop and skip.

Why People leave?

• a just passing through mentality: Co-workers engender no feelings of long-term involvement in the job
• a feeling of disposibility: Management can only think of its workers as interchangeable parts (since turnover is so high, nobody is indispensible)
  
• a sense that loyalty would be ludicrous: Who could be loyal to an organization that views its people as parts?

The insidious effect here is that turnover engenders turnover. People leave quickly, so there's no spending money on training. Since the company has invested nothing in the individual, the individual thinks nothing of moving on.

The best organizations are striving to be the best. This is the common goal that provides common direction, joint satisfaction, and a strong binding effect. There is a mentality of permanance about such places, the sense that you'd be dumb to look for a job elsewhere- people would look at you as though you were daft(?). A common feature of companies with the lowest turnover is widespread retraining. No job is (should be) a dead end.

The Self-healing system

When you automate a previously all-human system, it becomes entirely deterministic. The new system is capable of making only those responses planned explicitly by its builders. So the self-healing quality is lost. Any response that will be required must be put there in the first place. If the business policy governing the new system has a sufficient degree of natural ad hoc-racy, its a mistake to automate it. Determinism will be no asset then; the system will be in constant maintenance.

Thinking about workflow here, we have to be able to automate the processes in such a way that it complements the human effort not replace it. The automation of only those human tasks which normally form one single unit has to be done, so that we still preserve the self healing capacity in case of failures by allowing the system to side step and the human intelligence to take over.

The reason that non-deterministic systems can often heal themselves painlessly and elegantly is that the humans who make up the system have an easy familarity with the underlying goals. Someday it may be possible to teach computers the goals of the system instead of the actions expected to achieve the goals (talking of predicate rules and business rule engine?).

THE WHOLE IS GREATER THAN PARTS

The purpose of a team is not goal attainment but goal alignment.

TEAMICIDE - Ways to kill a team. Most organizations dont set out conciously to kill teams. They just act that way.

• Defensive management
  
  You cant protect yourself against your own people's incompetence. Once you have decided your group, your best tactic is to trust them. People who feel untrusted have little inclination to bond together into a cooperative team.
• Bureaucracy
• Physical separation
• Fragmentation of time
• Quality reduction of the product
• Phony deadlines
• Clique control

Open Kimono - A person you cant trust with any autonomy is of no use to you. The team has something meaningful to form around when it is trusted. They're are not just getting the job done. They're making sure that the trust that's been placed in them is rewarded.

Skunkworks - People at all levels know whether some sensible insubordination is acceptable or not. People look out for their open kimono managers. They're determined to make them look good, even though the managers may botch an occasional decision.

Employment audition - The project members who listen to the audition are not just an audience; they have a say in whether the person gets the offer. In addition to technical judgement, they're supplying a team perspective on how well the candidate will fit in.

An insecure need for obedience is the opposite of natural authority (the one that exists between a master and an apprentice)

Chemistry for team formation:

• Make a cult of Quality - The best quality prevails and the team gets joint satisfaction out of providing perfect quality work
• "I told her I love her when I married her" - reassurance comes from what psychologists call closure. Divide the work into pieces and make sure that each piece has some substantive demostration of its own completion.
• The Elite team - People need a sense of uniqueness to be at peace with themselves.
• Dont break up the Yankees (the jelled team)
• A Network model of Team behavior - Teams are made up of peers, equals that function as equals. No one is the permanent leader, because that person would then cease to be a peer and the team interaction would begin to break down.
• Selections from a chinese menu - A little bit of heterogeneity can be an enormous aid to create a jelled team. The saddest example of the overly homogenous work group is the all-male team :( Whatever the heterogenous element is, it takes on symbolic importance to team members. It is a clear signal that its okay not to be a clone, okay not to fit into the corporate mold of uniform plastic person.

When teams happen, the work is fun, people are energized and they like themselves. Deadline and milestones are rolled over and they look for more. They feel loyal to the team and to the environment that allows the team to exist.

ITS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN TO WORK HERE

Constructive reintroduction of small amounts of disorder -

• Pilot projects
• War games
• Brainstroming - As a facilitator introduce
• anology thinking ( how would nature do it)
• inversion ( how can we achieve the opposite)
• immersion (what will I do in this case)
• Provocative training experiences
• Trips, conferences, celebrations and retreats

Good sense and order are desirable components of our workday. There's also a place for adventure, silliness, and small amounts of constructive disorder.

HOLGAR DANSK - The sleeping gaint

When something is terribly out of kilter, it takes very little to raise people's consciousness of it. The gaint here is the actual working people whose patience is nearly exhausted, people who can know Silly when they see it.

Notes on the "Notes"

[This is a very old writeup - some notes and thoughts I gathered while reading the book. This is posted here so that it can be saved for later]

By Srinivas Yermal
Friday, March 29, 2002

Notes On The Synthesis Of Form
By Christopher Alexander, 1971

In the preface, christopher says "... the idea that you can create abstract patterns by studying the implication of limited system of forces, and can create new forms by free combination of these patterns- and realize that this will only work if the patterns which you define deal with systems of forces whose internal interaction is very dense, and whose interaction with the other forces in the world is very weak-then, in the process of trying to create such diagrams or patterns for yourself, you will reach the central idea which this book is all about."

(not the method which leads to the creation of the diagrams, but the diagrams themselves)

"First, the taking in of scattered particulars under one idea, so that everyone understands what is being talked about... second, the separation of the Idea into parts, by dividing it at the joints, as nature directs, not breaking any limb in half as a bad carver might."

- Plato, Phaedrus, 265 A.D

Every design problem begins with an effort to achieve fitness betweens two entities: the form in question and its context. The form is the solution to the problem; the context defines the problem. Good fit is a desired property of this ensemble of form and context.

If we divide an ensemble into form and context, the fit between them may be regarded as an orderly condition of the ensemble, subject to disturbance in various ways, each one a potential misfit. The state of each potential misfit is represented by means of a binary variable, 0 meaning that there is no misfit occuring. The task of design is not to create form which meets certain conditions, but to create such an order in the ensemble that all the variables take the value 0. The form is simply that part of the ensemble over which we have control. It is only through the form that we can create order in the ensemble.

If there is active stability in the ensemble then the form will always be in good fit, how many ever misfits it encounters.

The selfconcious design procedure provides no structural correspondence between the problem and the means devised for solving it. The complexity of the problem is never fully disentangled, and the forms produced not only fail to meet their specifications as fully as they should, but also lack the formal clarity which they would have if the organization of the problem they are fitted to were better understood.

Where a number of issues are being taken into account in a design decision, inevitably the ones whichh can be most clearly expressed carry the greatest weight, and are best reflected in the form, while other factors, important too but less well expressed, are not so well reflected. Unfortunately, although every problem has its own structure, and there are many different problems, the words we have available to describe the components of these problems are generated by forces in the language, not by the problems, and are therefore rather limited in number and cannot describe more than a few cases correctly. For example take the concept of "safety". As far as its meaning is concerned it is relevant to both, a highway or a tea kettle. But as far as the individual structure of the problems goes, it seems unlikely that the one word should successfully identify a principal component subsystem in each of these two very dissimilar problems.

Program

Problem here is that we wish to design clearly conceived forms which are well adapted to some given context and for this to be feasible, the adaptation must take place independently within the independent subsystems of variables.

Three possible schemes of design process-

1. Unselfconcious process - The process which shapes the form is a complex two-directional interaction between the context and the form in the world itself. The human is only present as an agent in this process. He reacts to misfits by changing them; but is unlikely to impose any "designed" conception of the form.
2. The selfconcious process - Form is shaped not by interaction between the actual context's demands and the actual inadequacies of the form, but by a conceptual interaction between the conceptual picture of the context which the designer has learned and invented, on the one hand, and ideas and diagrams and drawings which stand for forms, on the other.
   
3. Improvement to the second scheme is to make a further abstract picture of our first picture of the problem, which eradicates its bias and retains only its abstract structural features; this second picture may then be examined according to precisely defined operations, in a way not to subject to the bias of language and experience.

Some definitions used in the book:

• M - set of misfits (Misfit is a condition of the ensemble as a whole, which comes from the unsatisfactory interaction of the form and the context)
  
• L - set of links (non-directional signed one-dimensional elements) that describe how the misfits interact.
  
• G(M, L) - the graph that defines the problem.

Program - for every problem there is one decomposition which is especially proper to it, and that this is usually different from the one in the designer's head!

The starting point of analysis is the requirement. The end product of analysis is a program, which is a tree of sets of requirements. The starting point of synthesis is a diagram. The end product of synthesis is the realization of the problem, which is a tree of diagrams. Any pattern which, by being abstracted from a real situation, conveys the physical influence of certain demands or forces is a diagram. A diagram is constructive iff it is a requirement diagram (say a mathemetical statement for a race car design) and a form diagram (the water colour perspective view of the car) at the same time.

A good designer invents a form that penetrates the problem so deeply that it not only solves it but illuminates it.

The elements of M must have the following properties -

1. To be of equal scope
   
2. To be as independent of one another as is reasonably possible
   
3. To be as small in scope and hence as specific and detailed and numerous as possible

Solution

Given any partition Pi of a set S into subsets S1, S2.... Sn, we may establish a measure of information transfer or informational dependence among these subsets called R(Pi). The desirable partition of M is one where R(Pi) is minimum.

The Properties of the program -

1. The tree is, in its hierarchical form, the same as any other hierarchy of concepts - except that the concepts are here defined extensionally, rather than intensionally by meaning.
2. The particular tree arrived at by the method outlined gives an explicit description of the structure implicitly responsible for the success and stability of the unselfconscious form-making process.
3. The tree gives the strongest possible decomposition of the problem that does not interfere with the task of synthesizing its parts in a unified way. Each subsidiary problem it defines has its own integrity, and is as independent as it can be of the rest of the problem.
4. The constructive diagram for the set S should do two things
   As a requirement diagram:
   
   • It must bring out just those features of the problem which are relevant to this set of requirements.
   • It must include no information which is not explicitly called for by these requirements.
   
   As a form diagram:
   
   • It must be so specific that it has all physical characteristics called for by the requirements of S.
   • Yet it must be so general that it contains no arbitrary characteristics, and so summarizes, abstractly, the nature of every form which might satisfy S.

The general Rule

Every aspect of a form, whether piecelike or patternlike, can be understood as a structure of components. Every object is a hierarchy of components, the large ones specifying the pattern of distribution of the smaller ones, the small ones themselves, though at first sight more clearly piecelike, in fact again patterns specifying the arrangement and distribution of still smaller components.

Every component has this twofold nature: it is first a unit, and second a pattern, both a pattern and a unit (the nature of light and EM waves). Its nature as a unit makes it an entity distinct from its surroundings. Its nature as a pattern specifies the arrangement of its own component units. It is the culmination of the designer's task to make every diagram both a pattern and a unit. As a unit it will fit into the hierarchy of larger components that fall above it; as a pattern it will specify the hierarchy of smaller components which it itself is made of.

---

Hierarchy achieves economy of thought. The right way is the residue when all the wrong ways are eradicated. No attempt is made to formulate abstractly just what the right way involves in the unselfishness conscious.

"The timeless way"

It is a process which brings order out of nothing but ourselves, it cannot be attained but it will happen on its own accord, if we will only let it.

Prayer

'निरायासेन मरणम, विना दैन्येन जीवनं'
- beautifully and aptly the most important things that I ask the Lord. It means to say '[final] death without struggle, and life without dependence'. Everything else is something that He will take care. Not that he will not take care of these things as well, but these are more important than the rest, something that one might want to explicitly ask for.

My son turned one. and we had a small pooja at home. The acharya who had visited our house said this... felt really true. Can truth be felt, in the pit? Even when you donot know what the actual truth is?

Fired or Laid off?

Did I get fired or laid off? hmm... I dont really know. I guess there are three ways of getting out of a company. You leave all by yourself because you give up trying to change the place, or you get laid off because your boss cannot handle you anymore, or may be you get fired for asking the right question at the wrong place.

Personally whatever the reason, I am now into another company. I wish I would have had time to pot some plants.

Indian search engine

A New search engine for the indian community - guruji.com, but what is different about it? For one, I found a really very interesting site about bangalore in the first page of the result. The question however is how long will this site hold against the likes of Google. The site looks and feels very much like Google's simple UI.

Swarm Consciousness

I am not a complete believer of telepathy nor am I a non-believer. I think we have a collective consciousness as humans. This swarm consciousness is most concentrated where people mostly knowledge workers tend to think a lot. This consciousness also learns and evolves because of the evolution of the individual consciousness. I am not trying to say that this is a sort of super collection of memes. If it was, then there would be some form of communication required to pass it. I am trying to put a word around - "multiple people from different places inventing the same thing independently" - sorta thing. There must be a channel of communication know to our subconscious minds to communicate with other subconscious minds (may be memes at subconscious level). I guess if we can dwell deeper into ourselves, we might see the subconscious in action and then we might be able to access this channel.

On a different note, I saw three different companies take off with the name sounding "indigo" independently.

Laid off

I was laid off from my company today. A company where I spent the most of my precious years, now let me go. Why I call these years precious is just for the reason that they were almost risk free. Would I do something else, given another chance, may not be, but I sure will be careful before I take the step.

The layoff is not all that bad. This was something that I guess had to happen. Guy Kawasaki has an article about layoffs on his blog and I wish the guys in the top management read about it.

This has been one heck of a ride. I have to thank Sridhar for such an unforgettable experience. Having been a part of this family for six years as a co-founder and Principal Software Engineer, I am feeling real sad today having to leave. I wouldnt trade this journey for the world.

The funny side of this is that I went through the day not knowing that it was my last day. I was told that it was, almost at 10 P.M my time, which is the morning in California - problems with the global office!

Now I guess I should do what Joe Kraus says - Pot plants.

Startups and Daughters

As an enterpreneur you should definitely not be emotionally bound to any single project. They are like daughters who go away getting married. Its good that they leave. However you never forget them and you take all the care to raise them.

Two articles which sum up the discussion about funding and ways of funding for a startup -

"Whether to grow slowly, organically, and profitably, or whether to have a big bang with very fast growth and lots of capital." - Joel Spolsky

"Venture funding works like gears. A typical startup goes through several rounds of funding, and at each round you want to take just enough money to reach the speed where you can shift into the next gear." - Paul Graham

I am noting them down here for a later reference. I know about Google's notebook and I really like it, but these articles are worth more than a note.

India's Shashti Poorthi

Two things that bother me on the eve of this 60th year of Indian Independence.

First, a country with such diversity (a wonderfully written article by Dasarathi describes it in such beauty) has been plagued by reservations which divides the nation like the British did.

Second, our lack of innovation for our own people and the extent of dependence of Indians of things that are foreign. We cant think for ourselves and that's a pity for people who were considered really brainy.

The speech that was made on that day should not remain as just a speech. I have been reading "Discovery of India" and I dont like the conclusions that are drawn by Nehru. History is not about conclusions. When they are included by the author, it assumes an authentic form which people will believe as the reality, whereas it is just another perception.

And one thing that I am really hoping that will save this country is the youth, the current generation. They just have to take control of their own destiny.

Mt.Hamilton

Raghavan sent me this snapshot of Sandeep, himself and myself on Mt.Hamilton in 2001, I guess. How much I loved to trek and get into the wild side. Now that I am in Bangalore, its tough to find any kind of vegetation except in places like IISc or Lalbagh. Unable to breath in this place anymore.

Rang De Basanti

Watched "Rang de basanti". It really turned on its head half way through and got me all excited. This is going into my list of "must-own" movies.

http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/Info/Aircraft/MiG-Prodyut.html

The less you pay respect to quality, the more it will bite you. Life without reverence to quality is worse than that of animals. Compromising and accepting things of less quality is one example. I guess this is one thing we as indians need to learn, i.e. not compromising on quality be it at the giving or receiver's end.

Reservation policy

There has been so much of opposition and strikes against the reservation policy. I donot understand how somebody who belongs to these categories can accept such reservation policy.

Wouldnt it mean that they are not talented enough to fight for a seat through their sheer merit. They should be not wanting such a scheme which belittles them and discriminates them. This shows that they are themselves ok with this kind of discrimination against them. They should stop blaming others.

Madappaiah, My GGPa

For the purposes of posterity I am putting these "facts" down here. The validity of some of these have to be verified. This is more of a legend at present.

Krishnaiah built the "Nela Mane" (the first/initial/source house). He had three sons - Keshava, Madhava, Govinda. Madhappaiah (Madhava) is my great grand father. Madhappaiah had two wives. The first wife (name unknown) gave birth to sons Anand Rao and Narasinga Rao (the person responsible for bringing sons of Madappaiah to Kakinada). Anand Rao has a son Vyasa Rao and Narasinga Rao has four sons - Rajgopal, Chandrashekar, Ramachandra and Anand Rao (II).

Madappaiah's second wife, my GG Ma's name is Padmavati who gave birth to four sons Ramakrishnaiah, Srinivasa Rao, Lashmi Narayana Rao, Seetharama Rao. Ramakrishnaiah was the eldest of them.


The ancestral home and property were built by GG Pa at around 1890. He was the "Seneyaru" at the Adamar matha in Yermal. (My dad says Uchila and a great part of Padubidri as well). What this means is that he was like a civil court taking care of issues that pertained to land, family fueds and overseeing the maintainance of Adamar matha. Its been said that quite a bit of land that belongs to the family has been gifted by the matha. A boulder on the beach towards padubidri represents his jurisdiction. (Photo of the boulder coming here). This boulder is even named after my GGPa.

The other three sons (Seetharaama, Srinivasa, Lakshmi Narayana), left home at Yermal in search of work and prosperity. They settled in coastal Andhra Pradesh in and around Kakinada. They established restaurants serving Udupi style cooking and are doing well. They gave all the powers on the ancestral land to their eldest brother.

Clippings

It's better to tell a short story well, than a long one poorly.
Source: http://37signals.com/16.html

He who knows not and knows not that he knows not, he is a fool. Shun him
He who knows not and knows that he know not is preachable. Teach him
He who knows and knows that he knows is great. Follow him.
In addition, something that Bannanje said -
He who knows and knows not that he knows, is greater. Worship him.
Source: Unknown

“Perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Oasis in the desert

Its where we are currently living. A desert! Full of constraints and thirst. Dont really know why we are here in the first place. There is one truth, the absolute truth which definitely brings hope. The truth is that there is a oasis in this desert. Allide nammane, illiruvudu summane.

The fact that we see mirages and comprehend it, proves the existence of the oasis. If we had not seen water ever, we would not be able to see the illusion of water at all.

If the oasis were to be in the center of the desert, every person is at a different place at a different angle with respect to the oasis. Each person might be travelling towards the oasis in a different direction and a different path. One person's path which might be taking him towards the oasis might take another person at a different place away from it. Every person's path is as distinct as he or she is. There are ofcourse some highways, some proven ways but they might not always be available to everybody, nor is it mandatory for everybody to take the highway.

Finally we need to be told about the direction towards the oasis by someone who can see it or who has seen it and has come down from the oasis to take us home. However, there might also be such people who think that they are seeing the oasis while looking at mirages. Then it would be really dangerous for us to follow such illusionists.

Notes from "The Art of Unix Programming"

Some quotes from the book -

For this historical sketch, it will be sufficient to note the impact of the first one's central formula: “Given a sufficiently large number of eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”.

For most hackers and almost all nonhackers, “Free software because it works better” easily trumped “Free software because all software should be free”.

Being smarter than anyone else about important but narrow issues of software design didn't prevent us from being almost completely blind about the consequences of interactions between technology and economics that were happening right under our noses. Even the most perceptive and forward-looking thinkers in the Unix community were at best half-sighted. The lesson for the future is that over-committing to any one technology or business model would be a mistake — and maintaining the adaptive flexibility of our software and the design tradition that goes with it is correspondingly imperative.

The right problem

Reading "The Art of Unix Programming", I came across this -

"It is better to solve the right problem the wrong way than the wrong problem the right way".

Encover definitely is solving the right problem. We started at a time when the market was down and survived the downturn. A lot of companies which solved the wrong problem (may be bcoz whatever they were solving was not a problem yet) the right way couldn't survive.

So how do you really distinguish the right from the wrong?

source: http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch01s04.html