Attitude

This post discusses the most vital virtue needed for almost every human being in this world. That virtue is none other than, "attitude". The education that we acquire at schools and colleges will give you an insight into what our forerunners have done exploring this nature. There is yet another feature unique to every individual in this earth and that is "talent". Whatever endevour we undertake, talent and education lend us a helping hand in tasting success. But, the noblest quality that takes us even beyond is our attitude
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There may be people who might haven't had a formal education. Those people would not know how to go about in life in earning money and to rise high in their lives. But, there would be some urge inside their hearts that keeps on telling them that they need to surge ahead, that they need to prove their worth! Thats none other than their attitude. This positive attitude of theirs will keep their efforts going on, will keep their optimism evergreen and finally take them atop the victory podium in their life.



Attitude not only helps us in tasting success, but also helps us in making a better living. Looking at things with a positive attitude gives us a peace of mind and motivates us to do things that are beyond our capacity! Many of us would have experienced this phenomenon. When you lack this positive attitude towards life, everything looks unwanted and everyone will look fiendish to our eyes. We tend to hate others and lose hope in ourselves and finally fall into a wistful life, longing for sympathy and mental calmness!



Right attitude at the work place is also a key to earn better positions in an organisation and also will motivate our colleagues. Always try to do the best out of available resources and don't grumble on the nonavailability of suitable materials to achieve a task. If at all we aren't capable of doing a job, its better not to comment on people who do the job with fullest dedication. This kind of teasing will not only harm the doers but also instill a negative attitude into our minds thereby our mind gets rusted, refusing to take up any innovative jobs! I have seen people who just sit back and comment on people who try to turn the tide. So, to conclude keep your mind free of unwanted thoughts, keep your optimism high and always wish to rise in life along with others rather than rising alone!

Concept Vs Syntax

Having done 3 1/2 years of engineering, it looks very obvious to me that many of us concentrate on getting the syntax right rather than absorbing the concepts. Concepts are implemented using programming language syntax, which are of course necessary. But, students tend to give more importance to syntax rather than the concepts that these syntax statements emphasize. This is not the consequence of the students' interest. The laboratory examinations of engineering colleges focus mainly on programs that are strongly syntax oriented. In the earlier years, lab examinations were conducted with the questions being provided on the spot. This made the students' mind to do some brainstorming and get the problem solved. The case is entirely different in our colleges, where the same programs would be provided and the one with the best memory passes out clean!



Many of us would have heard of state-of-the-art software products like Linux and Face book which are nothing but projects that were done by two engineering students in their colleges. These two software, obvious enough, are ruling their own domains of implementation. What made these people to develop such innovative software? The primary reason that I would give is that the educational system there demands students to produce such a project to get their course completion certificate. The students would naturally put their grey cells to work and come out with a novel solution that will naturally act as a trend setter for future projects.


To sum up, unless we revert back to the method of the past, where lab questions for the end examinations would be provided on the spot, we can never expect students to do extremely great innovations in the software field. The lighter side of this issue is that, since the lab exercises are syntax oriented students pay very little heed to the instructor's words and spend the hour gleefully chit-chatting! I had been the victim of those "Don't talk!" people who eargerly await to see someone talking in the lab and hand them over to higher authority! If we have a challenging task at hand, why do we think of whiling away the time?? We can't blame the system as a whole to take responsibility for this poor situation but its also on the students' part to get the better half. This situation should change, else computer engineers will become idiot-boxes, repeating the syntax alone rather than climbing up the innovation ladder!

Infrastructure & Mathematical Libraries

India is country that has produced mind blowing Mathematicians since time immemorial who took this world on their stride. Their theorems on number theory were something that no one could imagine of! Computer Science is an applied field of mathematics, where the mathematical principles are applied to solve the problem rapidly. When this is the case, why is that we don't produce efficient computer scientists as we produced Mathematicians, when its just an application of those glorious mathematical principles? The European and American countries hold the lead in fields of Computing Sciences. Its time for us to sit back and do a little brainstorming so as to find out where the problem lies.

Colleges are places where the young Engineers are groomed for the industry. Its the place where students are being made employable. An ideal ground where the scientific principles are put into action. Ironically, most of the college labs, particularly computer science labs lack infrastructure needed for high speed computing. The fault is not only on the infrastructure but also on the care taken in keeping the software library updated with the latest in the market. Computing sciences require high end software mathematical libraries as the normal compilers do not support high speed operation on large numbers. Most colleges are not even aware of these packages and therefore the onus on the students who have to search and collect these software themselves.



Onus here refers to not only the effort taken in locating Mathematical libraries but also to the fact that most of these libraries are not freewares and therefore require an amount after which the software unlocks. The institutions must take efforts at least to fund these amounts to purchase these software on students' requests. Its a pity that most colleges lack such software where the Internet-Superhighway is extremely pervasive and information is omnipresent. This calls for an urgent improvement in the infrastructure of colleges and will also help the colleges themselves to raise to the ranks of premier institutes like the IITs.



The students have a burning passion to do high end projects in computing sciences , for which high quality software is needed. The institution on its part is required to pay heed to student requirements and provide them wit adequate facilities rather than just iterating the derogatory statements like "finish the projects within deadline". Statements like these will drive students to frustration leading to sub-optimal projects, which are projects only for name sake. I hope, in the near future a sea change in infrastructure will occur and an era in which the computer scientists from India will soon begin. I can hear some of you referring to those top positions in foreign institutes being held by Indian Engineers, but those people are from top notch colleges like IIT. The solution is as simple as this. Satisfy the students' needs and they will rise to glory!

Learn How to find things....

We are living in an era in which information is freely available. Whatever may be the area, whatever may be the subject, you get the answer in a second. The trend in problem solving nowadays is to figure out where to find the information rather than building an application from scratch. We want to solve the problem quickly rather than proving our technical expertise, when it comes to pure problem solving. We need to sacrifice our personal ambitions while trying to solve problems. Searching for an information not only requires special skills but also sufficient training in handling the information source, say the Internet.


Once given with a problem, the first thing to look for is the essential steps required to solve the problem. The second one will be look for the tools to implement them. The next step would be not to start working with the application but rather looking for an already existing tool. This not only saves us time, but gives us a confidence that the problem is half solved. Later, try to modify the tool according to your application, which is possible in most of the open source tools. This is the basic principle used with the Object Oriented System Design Methodology to write softwares.


There is yet another crisis with this Object Oriented Systems Methodology. When programmers use an already existing object in their application, their Manager often questions their skill sets!! Because, he feels that they don't have a brain of their own! This problem is somewhat difficult to tackle, because it deals with the psychology of the Manager. The programmer needs to convince his Manager of his skill and expertise. So, a sufficient trade off is required between using an existing object and writing your own applications and a clever programmer always find the fine thread connecting these two.

Educate thru interest not thru force!

Hello ppl! Back again, this time with a more controversial topic to discuss. Education and how it is being handled in India. Education is a virtue, a precious commodity and this must not become an object of business! The second aspect regarding education is, how its being brought into student minds. Its a pity that education is being imposed into young minds rather allowing them to enjoy a lovely feeling called "education". Yes, education is a lovely feeling, it has a gentle breeze in it, a feeling called "awareness". The pleasure of knowing something can only be felt!


Today's plight of education is, particularly in India, we are forced into a rigorous course called "education". Forced tests, punishments and other unpleasant treatments. Why it is being stuffed into our minds? Why is that we are not allowed to think a moment and enjoy what we learn? Why is that examination still remains as the student evaluation criterion? These remain a billion dollar question in India forever! This is not the first time a student like me is feeling for this miserable happening. Many educationists have written columns of articles and many speakers spoke volumes about this issue. But in vain.


The solution is simple. People who are really interested in educating the masses must run the institutions. Education as a business object must be a punishable crime. No rule can impose the two above said principles. Its purely subjective. One has to be true to oneself and must look upon education as a way of making people realise what the world is and make the young minds feel at ease while learning.

Sizzling Schumi

Gone are the days when F1 was a one man show with the German maestro who with this dexterous hands drove the red-machine to victory every other time. The driver, who had fans almost equal to Michael Jackson, made people frantic about this racy sport at least for a decade. Ferrari was its career best when schumi was its driver along with Barrichello. Both these men made sure that victory was the only result for the Ferrari, whatever circuit may it be, Silverstone, Magny Cours or Sepang. It was akin to the wave of the magician's wand when Schumi waves to the crowd atop the podium.

But then, every good run must come to a halt and so did Schumi. Fortunately, not for Ferrari. The Massa-Raikkonen duo seem to be doing a better job in retaining the name that the red-machine had during the tenure of Schumi. On the other side, the podium seem to enjoy this season with winners changing from circuit to circuit and this variety in the race results have also made F1 fans happy. The dominance of Schumi also yielded a boring sensation from other F1 patrons who felt that the sport had become one sided. But now, each race brings in different adventures, neck to neck podium finishes ( which was a rare phenomenon during Schumi's period when the German lead the race by more than a minute). In all, though the retirement of the flying German made F1 fans heavy hearted, it has also sparked a new phenomena of variety and surprising minutes in the world of F1 sport.

Trust

Trust goes a long way in maintaining almost every kind of relationships. An employer must trust his employee that he will produce best results. This trust gives the motivation to the worker and he ultimately gives his best. A father must trust his son/daughter that he/she will come out with flying colors. The trust of his/her father will naturally induce the much needed responsibility to achieve the goals. The trust of a father is the best motivation a child needs to progress. In team games, the Captain needs to trust his players so that there exists a cordial relationship among the players and also between the players and the Captain. Lack of trust from the Captain will induce negative thoughts into the minds of the players.

When it comes to friendship, trust means a lot. One must trust their friends always. This trust does not come in just a matter of days' acquaintance. It takes a much longer time to build this trust. The situations during which you don't let down your friends are the basic building blocks of trust. The real show of trust is exposed when you support your friend(s) when the whole society is against him/her/them, when there is nothing wrong on his/her/their part. Trust helps in building strong relationship. Lack of this trust among friends will lead to superficial relationships that may break down at any time.

The most important trust, which I believe is to "trust yourself". You need to trust yourself that you are capable. Trust yourself that you are born to win. Trust yourself that you will bring glory to your nation, to your parents, to your family and all your well wishers. Have the trust in yourself that whatever job you undertake, will surely end in success. This trust in yourself is the first step to victory. This trust will put you miles ahead of your competitors and will surely help you scale greater heights. Failing to trust yourself will bring all your skills to nonentity. So, understand how vital it is this "trust" and try to incorporate this virtue into your life as soon as possible. Once you do this, you will have better relationships and success will become a habit!