Could Frodo have destroyed the One Ring about Sam ? May be. May be not. But he sure couldn't have done it without Gandalf. Yeah, "Fly, you fools" !
To start with, I have been working as a software developer professionally for almost 4 years now. To know about the virtual machine, how a Hello World program is just the start, how a Cat IS-A type of Animal , how the Objects of the Real World can be seen in some few lines of code, the Java Language in particular and the modern holy grail of Web application development, have especially been a roller-coaster ride so far. Of course, what we poor developers would have done without Java, or for that matter, C or even C++ and then there are so many on the block, Python, Scala, Ruby On Rails and the many potential others in the gang. But like many and unlike many too, I chose to be a "Java developer" at the end of the day. Interchangeably, most of my relatives call me, "A Software Engineer", "Someone who sits in front of the computer 15 hours a day", "Someone who can almost speak with the computer". Yeah. And I can't even deny they are right in every way in this matter.
The life of a software developer is sometimes handsomely interesting and sometimes excruciatingly boring too , depending upon who he/she is and how he/she thinks. For me, however, it has been a mix of both.
I passed out from college with Electronics and Communication as my major and today when I am working for some corporate tech giant, debugging 1500 lines code to fix a P1 technical production issue, things look entirely different to most people who are outside of this realm. They think a hardware guy is now doing a software job. Not so cool.
But for me, someway, it is. The main motivation being that I loved both Electronics and Programming, be it programming a micro-controller or sorting a List of Songs in my favorite playlist. Truth be told, I loved programming, but cut back to around 14 years from now, I almost hated it. Programming simply didn't happen to me when it was in my 8th standard syllabus. Worse, I used to mug up those simple programs for the exam and bump, I failed. And we had to code in C. Even those programs that required simple nested for loops to print a pattern of stars, heck, I used to mug them up too.
There was this guy in my class with those thick specs, whom I chanced to meet up one day in the break and trust me, it was the first time I tried to understand how a program works. I hated this whole thing till now as it just didn't happen when I saw folks scoring 90+ out of 100 and I had to sit down for a paltry 40 until that time, when my friend explained to me how a nested for loop works, how a do-while is different from a while loop, why an if-else is not a loop but are conditional statements, what are actually pointers and all the other cool and not-so-cool stuffs about programming. I don't know how, but call it a miracle or a magic, that very day turned my perspective on this subject, when almost I gave up. There was the Samwise Gamgee helping me out on programming. That really opened it for me. Even better, I started loving Boolean Algebra. Oh, yeah !
In high school, my computer teacher helped me a lot. And there he was, the Gandalf for me. In many ways, he was one of the many teachers I respect and love so much. And without you Sir, trust me, I wouldn't have been the Java developer or whoever I am, today.
14 years to today, I am here, working as a Software Developer, a Java Engineer and possibly everything that can be made as a permutation of these two jobs. But today, I love programming, I love what I do, I feel like opening a bottle of champagne, when I come up with a fully working code, I feel a challenge when my code gets reported for bugs and I try to solve them and after that I grab a can of Coke and think about ways for improving it and myself too in the process. It's been a continuous process and a great learning curve for me till now about not only knowing the language but actually the steps of the solution to a problem, the algorithm !
Phew, that's a lot of stuff, but when I contemplate on what I am today and what I was 14 years ago, the person inside me laughs . Programming since then has been more fun, challenging and engaging for me. And all in all, it has been a brilliant journey so far and the most important part is that I am still learning ! :)
To start with, I have been working as a software developer professionally for almost 4 years now. To know about the virtual machine, how a Hello World program is just the start, how a Cat IS-A type of Animal , how the Objects of the Real World can be seen in some few lines of code, the Java Language in particular and the modern holy grail of Web application development, have especially been a roller-coaster ride so far. Of course, what we poor developers would have done without Java, or for that matter, C or even C++ and then there are so many on the block, Python, Scala, Ruby On Rails and the many potential others in the gang. But like many and unlike many too, I chose to be a "Java developer" at the end of the day. Interchangeably, most of my relatives call me, "A Software Engineer", "Someone who sits in front of the computer 15 hours a day", "Someone who can almost speak with the computer". Yeah. And I can't even deny they are right in every way in this matter.
The life of a software developer is sometimes handsomely interesting and sometimes excruciatingly boring too , depending upon who he/she is and how he/she thinks. For me, however, it has been a mix of both.
I passed out from college with Electronics and Communication as my major and today when I am working for some corporate tech giant, debugging 1500 lines code to fix a P1 technical production issue, things look entirely different to most people who are outside of this realm. They think a hardware guy is now doing a software job. Not so cool.
But for me, someway, it is. The main motivation being that I loved both Electronics and Programming, be it programming a micro-controller or sorting a List of Songs in my favorite playlist. Truth be told, I loved programming, but cut back to around 14 years from now, I almost hated it. Programming simply didn't happen to me when it was in my 8th standard syllabus. Worse, I used to mug up those simple programs for the exam and bump, I failed. And we had to code in C. Even those programs that required simple nested for loops to print a pattern of stars, heck, I used to mug them up too.
There was this guy in my class with those thick specs, whom I chanced to meet up one day in the break and trust me, it was the first time I tried to understand how a program works. I hated this whole thing till now as it just didn't happen when I saw folks scoring 90+ out of 100 and I had to sit down for a paltry 40 until that time, when my friend explained to me how a nested for loop works, how a do-while is different from a while loop, why an if-else is not a loop but are conditional statements, what are actually pointers and all the other cool and not-so-cool stuffs about programming. I don't know how, but call it a miracle or a magic, that very day turned my perspective on this subject, when almost I gave up. There was the Samwise Gamgee helping me out on programming. That really opened it for me. Even better, I started loving Boolean Algebra. Oh, yeah !
In high school, my computer teacher helped me a lot. And there he was, the Gandalf for me. In many ways, he was one of the many teachers I respect and love so much. And without you Sir, trust me, I wouldn't have been the Java developer or whoever I am, today.
14 years to today, I am here, working as a Software Developer, a Java Engineer and possibly everything that can be made as a permutation of these two jobs. But today, I love programming, I love what I do, I feel like opening a bottle of champagne, when I come up with a fully working code, I feel a challenge when my code gets reported for bugs and I try to solve them and after that I grab a can of Coke and think about ways for improving it and myself too in the process. It's been a continuous process and a great learning curve for me till now about not only knowing the language but actually the steps of the solution to a problem, the algorithm !
Phew, that's a lot of stuff, but when I contemplate on what I am today and what I was 14 years ago, the person inside me laughs . Programming since then has been more fun, challenging and engaging for me. And all in all, it has been a brilliant journey so far and the most important part is that I am still learning ! :)
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