Thoughts From India

Gas!!

Just back from the States, the hottest topic there is on Gas (Gasoline aka Petrol) Prices. Looks like it is hotter than the Iraq war or the possible Iran war. Why is it so important? We have been living with very high petrol prices for very long now, so why is it so important for the Americans now?

The special thing is that they have always had cheap gas. As far as I can remember, we have been paying around $4 per gallon of petrol (Gallon =3.8 liters and rough currency conversion). But around 5 years ago, gas was as low as $2 per gallon in US. So the whole US economy is built on cheap gas prices. People have gas guzzling cars, there is literally no public transport (except in downtown), and nobody has planned to conserve gas.

While we look at fuel economy when buying cars (10-12 Kms/liter) in India, in the US people look at how big the car is and how powerful the engine is (10-12 miles/gallon). So gas at $3.5 (when I left) is a shock. People go to office traveling up to 50 miles on cars and suddenly their travel bill has gone up by several notches. With almost non-existent public transport (this is where Europe differs, they seem to have extensive public transport and so people do have an alternative to cars), there is no alternative for people to look at. So now there is a big hue and cry about hybrids (we don’t have any in India, which is a shame) and about economical cars. This was the first time I saw a car Ad in TV that talked about fuel economy of the car. :)

So what are the alternatives now? Not many though. First that is being looked into is ethanol alternatives and Hybrids (also fuel cells). But it is going to take them quite a few years for these to become so widely prevalent that the cost of petrol can come down.

In the short term it looks like costly gas and a lot of heartburns for the US and everywhere else.

IT as a Career - 1

Around the time that college/school ends that people usually start asking me about IT as a career for thier children. In India, it is career is usually a decision made by the parents as most probably the children have no idea at all of what they really like as they have not been exposed to any real work environments at the time they need to make a decision.

This post I expect is going to be the first in a series of posts on my thoughts/advice to people looking to IT/Softwares as an career. Also I suppose, there will be sprinkling of other thoughts along the line.

Software is considered one of the best paying of jobs in India and that has made a lot of people choose it as a career choice.  The problem is that they have no idea, what a job as programmer means when they make that choice.

Before you choose software development as a professions, just think about whether you would be OK with spending the best part of the next 30 years or so of your life, looking at a computer for almost all of your working day. It is not a easy thing if you don’t actually love doing it. If you don’t, then you are going to have a very hard time. Programming is not always easy nor is it as soft job as it looks from outside. For people who have do not share the love for it, it may even at times look illogical (My mother, said that, when she took a BASIC course around 12 year ago, just to check what the hell I was doing everyday after school hours).

The secret of being a good programmer, is to love programming and computers. Even if you are a wonderfully logical mind, if you don’t love programming, you will actually tire of it very soon and then your productivity starts declining, your ratings go down and you start hating the job. Programming is strange in many ways. At times it needs logical thinking, some time illogical and always a lot of patience and brain power.

Strangely, programming can give you immense freedom to be creative, but at the same time can put in the most frustrating restrictions. I remember that when someone asked me why I enjoy programming so much, my answer was it is one of the few professions (that pays well J) where you can create something from nothing, essentially play god (in a world that is the computer. Maybe that is why a lot of good programmers like the virtual world better than the real and are usually categorized as geeks or nerds).

So Rule 1: Be sure that you really want to put yourself in front of a computer for the rest of your life.

I hate Popup Ads!!

Being out of the country seems to suddenly create an urge to learn what is happening there. So I wanted some India news and so visited Rediff.com. I have used rediff a long time ago, when it had just started, but stopped going there after my rediff mail started getting too much of spam.

Rediff seems to have gone into a full out Ads based revenue system. Every inch of the site is covered with Ads. They have popups, they have ones that seem to be on divs, that comes over the text and then go away to a corner after sometime. I dont mind the text based Ads (I even have them on my blogs), but these are highly intrusive and makes using the site such a pain. The Ads that come over the text, even seem to popup once in a while, even after you close them.

After looking into two pages, I decided, I had enough. I have made a decision, I will not go to Rediff again, til they fix thier Ads.

Office of Profit

I find the law that says a member of parliament should not hold a office, that pays and is appointed to by the government very logical and well thought out. A member of the governing body clearly will have enough leverage to get himself/herself appointed to a post, if the government is the one that is doing the appointing. So it is clearly a good thing that this should not happen, so that MPs do not get themselves appointed to posts where they can make money.

But of course, our political class does not see it like that. Once they found it is a problem and it is going to stop them from making money and holding on to power, they are now ready to change the law...

Says a lot for the way our political class thinks..

Banks Stop Working!!

After the strike by SBI staffers, now it looks like all other bank employees are joining in. A bank is nowadays an important part of everyone's life. So a strike by bank employees directly affects each one of us. These are public sector banks, which mean we pay for them. But without an iota of concern for the public they go on strike and create so much of problems for the general public as well as to the economy.

The Left usually paints a dark picture of the private sector, painting them as people out to make money and cheating the public. But usually it is the public sector that creates the biggest trouble for the general public and also has the highest corruption levels.

I think job-security and government ownership are two ways to create most inefficiencies and very bad customer service.

Why A New Blog?

I already have a fairly sucessful blog (what you consider sucessful is debatable, but I am happy with the 200-400 hits that I get daily and so would consider it a sucess)

When I started Dotnet From India, I gave it that name because I thought I would mostly talk only about technology and so the name would suit tha blog. But over time I have found that I want to write about a lot of other things too and the constraint of the original blog was becoming a problem. I could either make it into a personal views+techie blog, but I was not very comfortable with that.

So that led to the birth of this new Blog, Thought From India (Took the From India part from Dotnet From India, so as to create a sense of Identity :), but that does not mean that I would be writing only about India). This blog would be on anything that I feel like writing about and would have no constraints...