My pink iPod!

My pink iPod! 

How can somebody afford anything than just loving it! :)
It is so cute... I am sure that Apple has got one of the best creative designers in the world! (may be the best after google :), have to say this after using picasa and hello for posting this picture...)

But it is so good. It's cool! It just rocks!

So, let me see, here is a list of my most loved possessions:
- my pink mini iPod!
- my newly bought silver Honda Activa! (though the bank half-owns it yet)
- my nice and loved black Sony headphones
- my red "Easies" bag
- my LG-reliance mobile (just added it, don't love it that much though)

Hey, the thieves out there! don't take the alert!

Why do you hate Windows?

Ok, so once again I face this question. Actually I have never given a
concrete answer to this to anyone. So let me attempt so.

First of all I do not "hate" Windows. Windows is all so pretty and
useful. And, I have all the due respect for the great brilliant
Microsoft guys who made it so :) And, for my father, say, I would ask
him to please stay away from linux, get his work done fast and happily
in Windows.
But for myself am irritated using Windows. And, it is mainly because I
have no use of most of what it offers. And, it does not offer many of
what I need and like.

Why I mainly login to computer
1. to work
2. to mail and browse
3. to listen to songs and maybe watch a movie.
I find linux and windows both pretty good for 2 and 3. (I don't play
computer games, if I did I would prefer Windows).

Now comes "work". And for that I need
1. A good command shell
2. A good editor (which I do not have to change for every language I work in)
3. Compilers and debuggers for the languages I work in.

And, for these I find only workarounds in windows but "the nice
solution" in linux. Lets say I want to do some C programming. Oh, I
will have to bring somehow and install Visual studio!
And, in Linux, gcc will be mostly there, or can be installed in few
minutes without much overhead. I can use my old practiced VI, no need
to learn a new editor! Similarly for perl, for python, anything that I
can think of, windows makes you buy (or pirate) for each and every
small thing you need. On Linux, it is just available!

OK, one thing that I may need is MS powerpoint or MS word. That is the
only thing for which I might go to windows. But I am not ready to
compromise on above fronts for document editing which is not so often
for me. I am ready to use workarounds for that!

And, above all I do not want to be dependent on a thing which I cannot
buy for my personal use, (or say do not want to buy) but only pirate!

Hmm, may be I missed some points, but anyway was not a bad attempt,
and totally my personal opinion and choices. There might be people,
who do not want a command shell, and who are happy learning and
installing a new editor/compiler for every language, and pirating as
long as it goes!

HTML docs and Tables :(

splurr, splurr, splurr
doc, doc, doc
table, table, table...

I have become a document generating machine. Am writing a new document almost every day, and that too in html :((. Escaped from Word, and resorted to use VI.
And, how much the managers love tables! Was forced to search around to find a right CSS format to define a table, and came to know how horrible and frustrating it can be. Even after years of standardization of HTML and CSS stuff, there is no good way to define or say freeze a table format. Added to it the discrepancies between different browsers. There are always some properties that have to be written in the table tag itself, if you want a pleasent (or better said as expected) look in IE as well as firefox :(

I had a very simple requirement 1px solid borders, some cellspacing, cellpadding, align and width.... Did it very badly. Sharing it here only in hope somebody would tell me a better way :).

#tbsolid {
border: solid 1px; }
#tbsolid td{
border: solid 1px; }
#tbsolid th{
border: solid 1px; }

table style="border:solid 1px" id="tbsolid" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=5
align=center width=90%

If it doesn't get better, I may revolt and to dismay of my managers and reviewers, start floating around pdfs written in LaTeX :))

Current mood: Nostalgic

Software Code is Design

http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/reeves_design.html

Came accross this interesting article which says that "programming is not about building software, but about designing software". The author compares the software development process with a manufacturing process saying that the programmers are not the manufacture workers. That work is done by the compilers and linkers, and we rightly call it a "build" in a typical software development. The build in a software project, unlike a manufacturing process is pretty inexpensive. Most of the software project is "Design", and the ultimate design is the software code that we write. Testing as well as debugging is a part of design.

The idea is pretty controversial, but I tend to agree with him. What we typically call a "Design" in a software development process always seemed to me unsatisfying, incomplete, and the continuous pester of so called good software engineers to freeze it before coding, very unrealistic. The Software engineering Gurus seem to take pride in making the "Coding" the most unimportant and short part of the whole project.

I guess many have now realized that it is inconvenient and inefficient to make a design independent of a pogramming language. Languages like C++, Java etc support this trend. And, probably that is why we see the software development process moving from waterfall to spiral etc all evidences of slowaly making coding a part of design.