Two Sides of a Coin

I usually take my coffee without sugar. So, when the people ask me, how am I able to drink such bitter coffee, depending on my mood that day, I say

* Life is so sweet, that I don't need to add any artificial sweeteners

or

* Life is so bitter that this bitterness is nothing compared to that

Well, I guess both are 2 sides of the same coin

What do you think guys?

Enable/Disable USB Drive

Lot of organisations have started disabling USB drives to protect the user to copy the data to/from the USB Pen Drive. But, I guess there are always ways to work around the problem. Check out the following post to see how we can circumvent the problem.

Add URL to Common Search Engines - Google, Yahoo, MSN

Want to add your URL to the search engines ( Google, Yahoo, MSN). Now, click on the links below and add your URL to the search engines.

* Google
* Yahoo
* MSN Live
* Gigablast
* Scrub the web

CRM : the Hutch way

It is very funny, how the indian service providers do thier CRM. Yesterday, I got a call, the person on the other side say I am calling from Hutch and we have a wonderful offer for you. I said, OK, tell me the offer. Now, the person asks, please tell me whether you are using a pre-paid or a post paid connection.
I am surprised, I have been Hutch for more then 2 years, the person says he is calling from Hutch and he does not even know what kind of connection I am having. So, I ask him, Boss you have called me up, you say you are from Hutch, don't you know what kind of connection I am having.
Hearing this, the guy does not know what to answer. He says, Ok sir, I will find out and get back to you.

It sounded so funny, the service provider gives away the customer data to these marketing people and they start making calls to the customers. with out knowing anything about them. If Hutch would have done, some kind of preliminary data mining, the number of calls could had been reduced and they would had got a better convert ratio.

Till date, I have not heard from him. I am still waiting to know what kind of connection I have??

Good vs Vanilla Programmer

Recently, I came across a post, that detailed about how a good progammers acquire skills. How if one goes thru the rigors of coding and understanding the simple routines ( like string reversal) can teach you much, because you build such routines using the basic functions provided by the language.


I agree for becoming a good programmer, one should have undergone the rigors you have mentioned. This gives you the understanding of how, why and what is happening.

But, I believe the market has moved to a point where anybody who can drag and drop controls over a form is calling himself/herself a programmer. Is the use of IDE's made life easier ? Yes, to a point they have taken out of the pain out of the job. When you meet these people and they are not able to comprehend or appreciate the code or the design, people tend to get upset.

The analogy to the same is the car making. Robots dish out cars in the assembly line. All looking same and doing the same function. But that does not mean, the market for custom cars or niche cars is over. The car makers making custom cars/niche cars command a premium for thier work. So, over the time, the tools(software) will become more intelligent to the point that they can generate the code themselves. All kind of applications that offer no more intelligence then what can be programmer will write2, will be rolled out by the tools. The market for the drag and drop programmers will vanish. But the market for custom, hand written software will still exist. The real programmers will command a premium and they will be able to carve out a niche for themselves.

How long the intelligent tools will take to appear? My guess, once the cost of the programmers goes beyond a certain level, the cost of creating such tools will become justified. Just like the oil vs the bio fuels.