Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Why this blog?


The internet is abounded with blogs started by PROGRAMMERS which sometimes provide interesting and/or useful information. Contents of any respective blog are dictated by the affinity of the author towards a particular language, technology or design patterns. I received a forwarded email a couple of days ago which read that having a technical/programming blog looks good on your resume, which definitely is good enough extrinsic motivation for people struggling for a job in these challenging times, to start a new blog.
I am also getting polarized towards more and more specific sub-sections of Computer Science and hence I wanted to start my own blog. However, this name "Typist vs Programmer" unfortunately is not my brain child. Nevertheless, It is an interesting story which gave me this idea and ofcourse name.
For your sheer joy I am sharing the story here with you. It was Monday morning, a couple of weeks ago, when I was going to school using MARTA (Metro Train in Atlanta). A person of Indian origin about 6 feet tall, wearing a pair of blue denim jeans and a burgundy colored t-shirt entered the compartment. He was not plumpy but he was healthy enough to be called fat. He glanced at me and probably found my face familiar. ifter a brief pause he initiated the conversation with a "Hello". I politely replied with a smile and we started chatting. The topic moved from this to that and arrived at our jobs. I told him that I am a PhD student at Georgia State University and then for the mere sake of courtesy asked about his job. This fellow said "I am a typist". It was strange and hard to digest; you don't leave your home country to become a typist. However, I did not want to offend him so I said "ok". He thought for a moment and correctly observed that I did not get the joke (read: sarcasm) hence he then clarified that he is not a "typist" as in a real "typist" instead he types programs. That was something insightful now. I have myself worked in corporate world and I knew exactly what he meant. When you code whole day and at quitting time, called EOD in corporate world look back at things you accomplished/coded, you don't feel proud for a day's work. You realize that you were not programming but rather vomiting some letters legible to a compiler. To summarize, When you do not feel that you did something extra-ordinary, something that makes you sleep well when you go home or something that makes your inner self satisfied, that is the clear hint that you are a typist. Don't feel bad as there are enormously large number of people who live with this illusion that they are what their respective designations say.
Now, the big question! what should/would/must/could this blog contain? Obviously I face challenges in my day to day life and then I fix them somehow. Moreover, I get to learn new things sometimes which I find very interesting (recent example is DNA Computing to attack a n NP-Complete problem "Hamiltonian Path"). This blog will be an abode for all such happenings. in my routine life. I can promise one thing that there will be nothing that suits only a typist and not a programmer. I might post some code samples but they will be an aid in learning something new. I am currently deep into Parallel and Distributed Computing so you can expect next few blogs dedicated to such things. Have a nice week and weekend ahead.
I stop typing this post now. See you soon here. BTW visit my other blog at http://indiacallsfree.blogspot.com and see if you can notice any SEO techniques ;)

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