We’ll start with writing some instructions in pseudo-code. What is pseudo-code? Does it mean pseudo-programming? Yes, sort of.

You want to make sure you understand how to write and understand pseudo-code because that’s what I’ll be using through the rest of this series. They’re easy, English-like statement so don’t worry too much.

Pseudo Code

Pseudo-code refers to instructions written in a structured language. That is, there are specific words to represent specific things. Like commands for e.g. You’ll understand what I mean soon. The good thing about pseudo code is that it is programming language-independent. You can write instructions in pseudo-code then hand your sheet to any programmer and he or she will be able to write a program based on that. Why? Because pseudo-code represents instructions in an independent way. The programmer will then be able to translate those in the language of his/her choice with appropriate syntax.

In short, pseudo-code are step-by-step instructions to solve problems, written in a “strict” way that can then be used as guideline when writing a program.

Algorithms are usually step-by-step instructions to solve a problem. You could say that pseudo-code is  a way to write algorithms. For e.g., some algorithm in mathematics can say, you need to square this, differentiate that. In pseudo-code, you’re just writing the things to do in a structured way. So for the purpose of this article, I’d say they mean the same things. Just step-by-step instructions.

How do programs begin? They start in the mind of a programmer as a series of steps that must be completed to solve a problem. Programmers think in terms of pseudo-code, and then use those to write programming language codes. Sometimes they write these instructions on paper or a whiteboard to make it easier for them, but for simple things, they just do it mentally. It becomes simple enough with some practice.

To get you started, let’s assume you’re telling a friend how to draw a simple house. You need to tell them instructions. What would you be telling him/her? Write down your commands.

If I were to do that, I’d probably write those lines:

Draw a square, each line being 10 cm. (walls)
At the top of the square, draw a triangle, touching the square. (roof)
Inside the square, draw two smaller squares near the top. (windows)
Near the bottom of the square, in the middle, draw a small rectangle. (Doors)

Hopefully, that should give you a decent-looking house drawn like a 5-year old. Congratulations, you just wrote some pseudo-code!

Let’s see another example. We want to have the computer ask the user for two numbers, add those two numbers and then show the result to the user. Simple enough, huh?

This example has 3 sections: an input section (asking the user), a processing section (add numbers) and an output section (show the result). Those 3 steps are the basic things that happen in programs. These 3 things occur in almost all programs, although they may not be very apparent in all programs.

So let’s see how we can write pseudo codes for this problem:

Input 2 numbers, a and b.
Result = a + b.
Output result.

Simple, yes? This is pseudo-code for addition of two numbers. If you look carefully, you will see I used “a” and “b”. These are called variables and we’ll see about those in the next part. Basically, these act as two generic numbers so whatever 2 numbers the user will tell the computer, they will be represented as a and b.

This is a simple set of instructions and a number of things could go wrong in that. It’s also fairly limited in terms of functions. What if you want something else than addition? What about multiplication? Can’t do. Actually, we can. We will do this in the lesson about conditions. What about adding more than two numbers? Can’t do. Oh yes we can, but in loops lesson!

Normally pseudo-code has a fairly strict syntax so that code written by different people. If a person writes “Input 2 numbers” and another “Enter 2 numbers”, it’s still ok. But if a 3rd writes “Shout 2 numbers”… then no. Thus, pseudo-code uses a restricted number of words in English, normally words which you will normally find in other programming languages. For e.g. “input”, “output”, “if”, “else” etc. You’ll learn about those words as we go along.

Batch Jobs

Sometimes, programs don’t ask the user for any inputs. They just take their inputs from some file or from some other place. Batch jobs, or batch programs, are those programs that run without the user having to supply any data during running. Data, as in numbers, text or other information. They run, do their processing and could do some outputs, although not all of them do.

Let’s see about two examples of batch jobs. First example will read a series of numbers from a file and add them all together. If you don’t understand some parts, don’t worry too much. I’ll cover them in next parts. So, here it is:

Open numbers file.

While there are more numbers to read in file

Add number just read to Total.

End

Output Total.

Close File

Here, we didn’t ask the user for inputs. We just get numbers from a file and add them all to a total count then show that to the user. The “inputs” are actually read automatically so the program can run fast, i.e. doesn’t have to wait for the user to supply numbers one by one. Thus we had to tell the computer to open the needed “numbers” file, read off it and finally close it when it’s done.

Note one thing: the “Add number just read to Total” is a bit off-sided as compared to the rest. This is called “indentation” and it makes reading code blocks easier. At a glance, we can know that this line falls under the control of the “While block”.

Which do you prefer in terms of clarity:

While there are more numbers to read in file
Add number just read to Total.
End

Or:

While there are more numbers to read in file

Add number just read to Total.

End

Guess I already know the answer.

Code blocks are important in programming since they normally do different things as the program is running. So seeing what code is running under the control of which blocks is very important and I encourage you to properly indent your code when you are writing inside blocks. You will learn what this particular block of code does if you read the “Loops” part of this series.

Let’s see another example. This time, no inputs, no outputs. Just processing. The “output” is actually writing to a file. We’ll do the same thing as above: read numbers in a file and find their total. But we’ll then write this number in another file.

Open numbers file

While there are more numbers to read in file

Add number just read to Total

End

Open results file

Write Total to results file

Close results file

Close numbers file

This time, we don’t show the user anything. We just read from one file and write to another. Basically, if this program was ran, the user would just see the program start and exit, and nothing else happen. They will have to open the results file to see something had happened.

That’s it for this part. I hope you enjoyed it and learnt something interesting. If you have questions, just ask in the comments below. Again, I ask programmers out there to please provide suggestions and comments. Thank you for reading and see you in Part 3.

In the same series:

• Fundamentals of Programming: Part 2 - Pseudo Code and Batch Jobs (This post)
• Fundamentals of Programming: Part 1 - Introduction

This article comes from GeekScribes

Fundamentals of Programming: Part 2 – Pseudo Code and Batch Jobs

I don’t know how many parts there will be and I don’t know if I’ll have time to write about everything I can think of at the moment.

Here is what I intend to cover. I may add other things afterwards:

1. What is programming? Questions and IDEs
2. Algorithms, Pseudo Code, Batch Jobs
3. Style, Indentation and Comments
4. Variables and Arrays
5. Conditions
6. Loops
7. Errors and Bugs
8. Functions
9. Classes
10. Libraries and Plugins
11. Syntax and Programming Languages

So please stick around and I hope you will enjoy reading my series of posts. Of course, your comments, questions and suggestions are welcome. I’d really like if my programmer friends, contacts and anonymous readers out there would provide some inputs in these posts to help beginners.

Without further delays, let’s start.

What is programming?

That.

Ugh! What are all those brackets?! What are those awful colors! Public WHAT?! My brain is melting!

Keep calm! Breath in. Breath out. Are you alright? Fine. Don’t worry about this at the moment. You’ll understand more as we go along so just be patient. At least, be positive! It’s in English!

Programming is basically giving instructions to a computer so that knows how to accomplish some task. Why would you need that? Well, everything you do on your computer, you’re doing it through programs. You’re currently viewing this page through a program that allows you to view webpages. You are using a program that gives you an environment to run other programs. Everything is a program. You are in the Matrix. Haha.

Well yes, programs are everywhere. And guess what? Each of these programs were written in some programming language. That thing you just saw above? That was a programming language. That’s what is used to make programs. That is, the “Firefox” or “Internet Explorer” or “Safari” or “Chrome” etc you are using to view this page at the moment? It was written in a language that resembles that one above.

Programming is writing programs in some language. There you have it.

Why do we need programming?

Simple! To make your computer understand what to do or what you want it to do. There’s a difference in that and we’ll see about it a bit later.

Computers are generally dumb machines of metal, silicon, plastic and lots of tiny little stuff that beep, light up and do other wonderful things. But they don’t really understand English. They only work with 2 numbers: zeroes and ones.

Programming is you telling it instructions, but you have to tell the instructions in some language the computer understands. If you think you have to write in zeroes and ones, you’d be correct but not completely.

Programming in zeroes and ones was done at the very start. It was hard as hell because, well, do you think something like 01001100 is meaningful to a human? Nope.

Some person thought it would be a good idea to translate some of those codes into meaningful words and have the computer translate this language into its zeroes and ones.

That person hence created a program that converts English words like “if” into computer-meaningful things like 01001100. Nowadays, you write English and your computer figures the rest out for you after you click a few buttons here and there. Then you see your shiny new program running and you’re happy.

This translation process, if you wish to know, is called “compilation”. There’s also “interpretation”. Both are basically translations, but compilation is done all-at-once while interpretation is done as-you-go.

How many languages are there?

Too many. Estimate? Above 4500. Be scared.

Waaait what?! How can I learn all that?!

You’re not supposed to. You’ll probably be fine learning one of them and you can write nice little programs. But why do we need so many languages? That’s because languages are created for specific tasks. For e.g. PHP is used to create dynamic web sites. That is, the web pages react to things you do, instead of being just boring, static, non-changing pages.

Other languages are for other things for e.g. C++ is used when there’s need for high speed of execution i.e. the program should run fast.

So how do I get started?

Well, you could read books on some language you want to learn. But if you don’t understand programming itself, it’s pretty much pointless to do that. Did you learn English by reading Shakespeare? OMG FOR REAL?!

Nah you probably started by learning letters. And made a mess on walls everywhere. Then you learnt words. Swear words I bet. Then you created sentences. Then you wrote your first paragraph etc etc until at the end, you can finally understand English pretty well.

Programming is like that too. You have to start from the start. What is the start? Letters.

Not really. Programming languages are mostly in English. Mostly. There are some truly weird things out there. But yes, mostly English. So you already have a head start. What you need to learn are the words actually. And that’s what this series of posts will try to teach you about.

You’re not expected to be able to write codes at the end of the series. That will probably be for another series some time later. But at the end, I hope you’ll be able to read a program and able to think about how to write your own program.

I’ll make sure to use plenty of examples while writing so you get to know how programmers think when they are confronted with a solution.

Is there any special equipment I need?

Not really. All you need is a working, powered-on computer, keyboard, mouse, screen and an Internet connection. Since you’re here reading this, you’re all fine.

Ironically, you’ll be using programs to write programs. Interesting huh? First programs were actually “written” using punch cards so these were not really programs. Then after a whole lot of troubles and annoyances, we arrived at the languages we use today. Be happy you don’t have to program in binary. Zeroes and Ones, if you didn’t know what binary (2 numbers) means.

Programmers do use a number of tools to facilitate their task. You can use “Notepad”, that simple text-writing program in Windows that nobody likes. Love it, it’s a nice program. If you’re  using Mac or Linux or some other operating system, just find a text editor and use it.

When you become more familiar and get more powerful (HAR!), you’ll want to use more capable tools. We call these “Integrated Development Environments” (IDEs). Fancy term for “big program that allows me to write big programs”. It’s still a sort of Notepad. Just one on steroids.

You don’t need to bother about any of these for the moment, although you may want to check out Notepad since it makes writing the basic codes I’ll show you WAY easier.

Alright, that’s it for part 1, the Introduction. In the next part, we’ll move on to how programs are born. See you! If you have questions and comments, use the form below.

In the same series:

• Fundamentals of Programming: Part 2 - Pseudo Code and Batch Jobs
• Fundamentals of Programming: Part 1 - Introduction (This post)

Sources:

Picture

This article comes from GeekScribes

Fundamentals of Programming: Part 1 – Introduction

Let’s start.

Online Shopping

I know a few of you will say that Mauritius has a few online shopping sites now. For example, the multishop is considered Mauritian. But you have to agree, there are not so many Mauritian online shopping sites online yet, despite many shopping malls opening in the country.

Sadly, even the big names in shopping don’t have websites. For example, none of our well-known bookstores have websites where you can check their catalogue! Come’on people, it’s 2011. Even if you don’t have online-shopping facilities, an online catalogue is a must! But nope, not even that.

Don’t bother trying to buy furniture online. Clothes? Hardly any local sites. I’d even say, no local sites as far as I know. Electronics? Same. Most other things? Nope.

Why?!

I say, we don’t  have local online shopping for 3 reasons:

Firstly, buyers will not have a method for safely paying online while sellers are unable to accept electronic money. Remember, Paypal does not accept Mauritian account holders to receive money. I don’t think any of the other payment processors let Mauritians accept money too. Local banks could have done something about that by implementing our own, local payment processor. Some effort is being done, such as paying by mobile phone. But those are not applicable online yet. For now, there is no method to buy online, short of putting your credit card online directly – something few Mauritians want to do. The fear that “people will steal my credit card number if I put it on the Internet” is very much present.

Second reason: lack of customers. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I think not many people know how to shop online yet. At least in Mauritius, they don’t. Even if we had local shops selling stuff online, not many people would know how to buy. Granted, we can teach them easily but the distrust of online shopping will remain present for quite a long time. Considering the few customers wanting the convenience of online shopping, I doubt many stores will want to invest in creating shopping websites. Although, that does not explain why they don’t even have online catalogues.

For the third reason, you only have to look at our postal service. It’s not that fast, not that reliable and worst of all, does not make an effort to encourage people to use its services. It’s not completely at fault here: there is just not enough reason to use the postal service for shopping at the moment – there are so few online shopping sites anyway! Let’s hope that in the future, the postal service standard increases in the country, as the number of shopping sites increase.

Auction Site

I’m not saying we should have a local Ebay.co.mu or something, but we could at least have a functional auction site by now.

I remember we had a few, but as far as I know, they’re all dead. Due to lack of interest? Probably  not. Some even ran quite successful advertising campaigns, using bill-boards etc. But? They didn’t have the variety of products people were expecting.

Above all else, they were not very user-friendly. Most looked like pages filled with pictures and text, but not a simple, guided page on how to use the site to buy stuff.

We had a few but they all died I think. Due to lack of interest? Probably not. I’d say they went off quite well, but they didn’t

Why?!

They were not real auction sites anyway. There were merely catalogues where people posted what they had to sell and others searched through. To buy stuff, you’d have to contact the seller manually, arrange for payment and collection offline. Not very secure, huh? And, no warranties!

Secondly, Orange.mu’s Classifieds site is king in this domain. It’ll not be easy to dislodge it and take its place as “auction catalogue”. You’d have to come up with a really creative solution. We’ve not reached there yet.

Finally, no online payment facilities. Again!

A portal / Discussion Forum

Strangely enough, Mauritius does not even have an “official” discussion forum! I mean, a place where people just sign in to have a chat and discuss country issues. Don’t tell me Facebook has completely obliterated forums – it has not.

Facebook is good for keeping track of what friends are doing but it’s not that good for discussions with people you don’t know personally.

Most countries have specialized forums for discussing specialist topics – such as, lowyat.net for Malaysia’s Tech Community to discuss about technology and buy/sell/trade computer or electronic parts.

We did have a few forums, such as Nubaz. I was a member there for a long time but finally, the discussions died down as people got more interested in Facebook and spam-bots overran the site.

Why?!

Facebook mainly. It was much easier to use than a forum. You could have your own profile, stalk people’s pictures etc…, things which you cannot do when using a forum – most people use avatars and nicknames anyway. Posting on forums is relatively tedious and disorganized as compared to Facebook. Can Facebook pages replace a forum? Nope. Your discussions will get lost too quickly on the page walls. You’d also need one page per discussion topic.

I wish someone would spawn a Mauritian forum again, where we can discuss with fellow Mauritians about day-to-day topics, the news but also, buy and sell second-hand stuff. That at least would attenuate the need for an online auction site. One can run auctions quite easily using a forum.

I have one question: how come none of the private radios have forums? Are they THAT hard to moderate?!

Bus Route Planning

Update: Carrotmadman points me to this site: mauritius-buses.com. The site allows you to plan your journey by bus.

What I had in mind was a site, where you can set your current location on a map, and type in your destination, or again click on a map, and it’ll give you all possible bus routes to this destination, schedules, estimated travel times etc. But mauritius-buses certainly does the job. The presentation needs some work e.g. the map, and the prices need reviewing: “Total price: 19 / 9 / 10 MUR” from Port Louis (victoria) to Curepipe is only Rs. 19? But at least, that’s one more service we have. Thanks Carrotmadman.

A major annoyance to me. I never know which bus to take and where to find them in bus stations! I’d just ask friends if they know which bus to take then wander through bus stations trying to look for that bus, and if all else fail, ask around until I finally find it. So much for tourist-friendly!

Why can’t we have a simple journey planner in Mauritius? You enter your starting point and your destination and it gives you the potential bus routes you can take, the route numbers, where the buses are found at which bus stations and their schedules.

Why?!

Too many bus companies! How can one expect to have a site that regroups all those companies and plan their routes, give their fares, schedules etc…?

Turns out you can. Ever heard of crowd-sourcing?

You just need to have a website, maybe powered by Google Maps. Then leave it to regular travelers or even the companies themselves to add their details and maintain it. That should be easier than having one entity maintain the whole thing. If a company doesn’t want to maintain their routes, too bad. That’s lost money for them.

I can’t imagine why a service like that doesn’t exist when almost every year, computer science students at the University of Mauritius are given projects that often contain route-planning and geo-location. I’m pretty sure it’s the same for University of Technology students too.

Can’t one of the companies take one of these projects as a prototype, have it refined and implemented? Can’t UoM / UTM themselves run one of these projects on their infrastructure and maintain it? What’s the point of Universities if none of their research ever gets used?

You want even more features? How about the service letting you buy and print your ticket in advance? How about buying long-term tickets for e.g. a ticket which you can use for a whole week?

Oh I forget… payment facilities. AGAIN!

Movie Renting service

Piracy is high in Mauritius. Why? Because we don’t have good things to watch on TV, buying original media is ridiculously expensive (Rs. 2000 for a recent DVD, are you kidding me?) and you can’t rent legal media to watch / listen. Video on Demand, while available, is not great.

What I want is a Netflix-like service. I understand that our local Internet speeds may prevent streaming HD content without Orange complaining that everyone’s leeching off its bandwidth. And I can tell you, if we did have a streaming service, Orange will probably charge you additional just to watch stuff. You’d be a “heavy downloader” or whatnot and therefore, must pay more.

So what can we have? A site that allows you to rent movies / music online. You pay a monthly fee, just like you’d pay a monthly utility bill. You then access your account on their site and they post what you’ve chosen to you.

Think of it like an online video club. Instead of going there in person, you choose what you want in person and they post it to you. After that, you just post it back to them. Posting charges are paid by the company and included in your monthly bill.

Not a critical service, but it’d be interesting to have.

Why?!

Our postal service. First, it’s relatively slow. A letter takes around 3 days to come from Mahebourg to Port-Louis. Second, there’s a big risk of breakage. Third, it’s quite expensive to post small parcels, even locally. Fourth… it’s easier to just pirate the damn thing if you want it so much. But hey, I was trying to suggest a legal alternative here!

SME marketplace

Do we have a Business-to-Business marketplace for SMEs and handicrafts in Mauritius? Nope. What if I wanted to say, buy 1000 mini-dodos to give as gift? Where do I go to find that? I’d have to contact SMEDA probably, then get the address of a few artisans. Then contact each of them individually and see if they can match my order of 1000 dodos. Etc etc… Basically, a long process.

If they had an online B2B market place, I’d just browse through, find who makes dodos and what size of order they can take. The site would list their contact details, pictures of their products etc…

I’d like a site like Etsy or Alibaba but for Mauritius. I don’t think there is such a site yet. In what way would this help? Boost our SMEs and startups of course! If no one knows what they’re doing, how can they hope to secure clients? A site like this may even help them reach an international market, who knows.

You can even extend the site to make it into a business directory with an SME corner, so that the site is able to help Mauritian businesses in general. For example, if I ask you to find me all the resellers of Logitech in Mauritus, how would you go about it? Open the Yellow Pages directory and go through the “Computer” sections? How about all the website hosting providers in Mauritius that can offer unmetered bandwidth and hosting space? Good luck searching!

Why?!

Lack of will. I can’t imagine any other reason such a site doesn’t exist. There is simply no will to invest effort in implementing such a service.

Local knowledge / Search service

Ever tried Orange.mu’s site? It is supposed to search the Mauritian webspace. Do try it and you’ll notice that it never returns anything Mauritian.

We need a local knowledge site, sort of like a Wiki for Mauritius or something similar. Say I want to find a mechanic in Quatre Bornes. Where do I search for that? Google? You won’t get meaningful results. There are no good places to search for local info about Mauritius.

Another example: You’re in the south and want to find a good restaurant to have lunch with some friends, especially Chinese food. How do you search for that? Would Google tell you that there’s a good restaurant, with good user reviews, found on the 2nd floor of some building that sells awesome noodles? Nah, I doubt it. You’d need local knowledge for that. Even better, searchable local knowledge. With pictures and user reviews if possible.

Here’s another example of where crowd-sourcing could help: just create the service and allow users to add their own local knowledge to it.

Why?!

No one wants to invest in such a service? I don’t really know why Orange.mu doesn’t offer this service. One could think local knowledge would be important, but I guess, not enough for Mauritius.

P.s. for fun: Orange.mu search just searches Google for you anyway! So much for local search! Is our local web space so meaningless?

So there you have it. My list of online services Mauritius ought to have but sadly, doesn’t. Can you think of other online services that would be good to have in Mauritius? Are there other reasons why we don’t already have these services? Is there one particular serivce you know of and want to recommend to others? Comment below!

This article comes from GeekScribes

Online Services Mauritius Does Not Have And Why

So solution to prevent this overlapping of menus:

Go to Tools → Options → Content → Click on Advanced button (opposite Javascript) → Check “Disable or Replace Context Menus” checkbox.

That’s it. Problem solved. This was tested on the new Youtube and a few other sites. The solution worked fine. Let me know if it works for you.

(source)

This article comes from GeekScribes

[Solved] Firefox’s Right-Click Menu Overlaps Flash/Javascript Menu

Merriam-webster says something about “the culture of computers”. It must be a joke: I hardly see any kind of “culture of computers” in Mauritius.

We are far, VERY FAR from deserving being called a cyber island yet. Why? Lots of reasons actually…

Stuck in Slow Lane, in 1st gear with a broken clutch

What’s the fastest Internet speed in Mauritius? I guess that’d be around 40Mbps that the Government has I think. For home users? That’d be around 4Mbps. That’s LAME! You don’t consider yourself cyber with speeds like that!

Cloud services? HD Streaming? Online desktop? E-working? What, you mad? None of this would work on low-megabit speeds like that. A service like Dropbox loses its attraction. Streaming? Forget it. Ask Carrotmadman about football streams! We can’t have our own BBC iPlayer because of the slowness.

The good thing is, Orange has been doubling the speed quite consistently over recent years. If this trend continues, we may get 8Mbps in what, 4 years or so? Too slow!

Another good news: Some ISP, Bharat Telecommunications Ltd, has applied for an ISP license to ICTA. Funny thing is, I can only find the license. I think I saw that in L’Express but I cannot find the original news again. They promised 10Mbps before 2012 ends or something like that. I’ll believe it when I see it.

For now, you’re stuck watching your lolcat videos on Youtube but with everything going in stop-motion. Very fun.

Education is either expensive or lacking

We have like, 5 Universities now, all of them offering a range of IT courses, most of them should just be called “Systems Engineering and Coding” instead of fancy names like “Bsc. Computer Applications”. It’s just that: we do tons of programming and very little of what remains.

Networking? Databases? Security? Mere modules in a Bsc. Show me one Bsc. course in Mauritius that focuses only on Game Development? Only on mobile technologies and development? Nah, we don’t have that kind of specialization.

We don’t need them. Or, to be more precise, our BPOs don’t need them. Maybe they’d need a few of those mobile tech guys, but Game Developers? Nope. BSc. in Security etc are not required because companies want their Sec people to have CCSPs and Microsoft Security Whatevers and Ethical Hacker something! They don’t care about your old-time BSc that still teaches how Ping of Death works. Nooo, they want you to be able to configure an IPS, not how to understand how it works!

Why’s that? Why aren’t non-programming Bsc or other university courses not in demand? We don’t have research. UoM calls itself a University but as far as I know, doesn’t do much research. Sure, we have people doing their PhDs and stuff, but most of the things they do are either just stuffed in a library somewhere, or cannot be put into practice in the country. That’s it for the demand, so there’s no supply as well.

On the other hand, there is immense demand for professional-level certificates like CCNA, CCNP, MCITP and whatever fancy acronyms you can think of. Those courses are really cool and do teach you quite a lot of practical stuff that Universities won’t teach you, or more precisely, cannot teach you because they don’t have the latest and shiny toys.

For those wanting professional certificates, they have to go to private training centres? What’s wrong? Those courses are ridiculously expensive! CCNA is a “mere” Rs. 30,000 at best. MCITP? Rs. 150,000 or so. And people DO shell out the cash to do those because it’s easy to get jobs when you got yourself a shiny new MCITP Virtualization certification (or not, employers are starting to see the tricks and do more hands-on interviews now).

Government, instead of trying to invent Cyber-names, should instead create a regulatory body for training centres. Like a Price Observatory for professional certificates. Also, we need loan schemes to be able to afford the high cost. This has to be sustainable: if you resort to this scheme, you need to get a letter from your employer to show that your newly-acquired skills would be useful to them and you will have to refund the cost of your training + interests over the next 2 years or something. There’s no point in 13-year old kids getting CCIEs when they won’t use it and just waste money. Unless you know, they’re genius 13-year-olds or something.

Where are the startups??

90% of University IT graduates join a BPO less than 6 months after completing their studies. That’s not an official fact, just my personal observation. Most of my IT-related friends are currently in BPOs. As far as I know, none of them started their own company. That is, none of them created a startup.

Worse is, a few of them are really good at what they do, and their undergrad dissertation, with a bit of polishing could be a viable commercial product. But no, they just join BPOs like herded sheep. I understand them: Rs. 23,000 for fresh graduate is a lot of money.

The downside is that without Startups, our local IT industry is stifled. We don’t have big name players here because they don’t have anything to invest in here: they just shift out their boring work and maintenance to be done here by undergrad grunts. Not fun, but at least it brings money.

That and a boatload of call-centres. I remember the beginnings of Ebene Cyber City… I used to call it Call Centre City. Because that’s what it was filled with. That and Government bodies.

In my opinion, call centres are not IT. Yes, they use IT. Yes, they employ IT people. No, they don’t contribute anything new to the IT sector in general. They are just services, some of them existing only to annoy people into buying crap.

I do wish there were more startups. The market in Mauritius is small but that doesn’t mean you can’t sell your services to international folks. There are a good number of success stories with local companies mainly working with foreign ones, so there is hope for startups, only if people are willing to take the risk. Yes, startups do fail. A lot of them do. A few of them turn into giants like Google.

The void called Online Services

Try buying a cinema ticket online. Or try ordering a few computer parts or electronics stuff to be delivered to your doorstep. Ok, forget buying. You got a call from some number on your mobile but don’t know who that is. You want to do a reverse phone lookup. Or, you want to do a normal phone lookup, why not?

Tried any of those? Of course not! Why? Because the services are NOT available! You can’t do anything online! No services, no checking up bus time-tables, no booking a taxi, barely any online shopping, nothing! Cyber-island? More like, mall-island! You’re supposed to do all your shopping in big-ass malls that sell expensive junk. Yes, funny.

Why don’t we have any of those anyway? No one’s investing in them, that’s why! Secondly, but more importantly, we don’t have a local payment systems. Banks are more interested in getting you to shift your money from under your mattress to their vaults, that’s it. They’re not interested in investing a ton of cash in creating a local payment system!

And they’re wrong. They’d have made a ton of cash in return. People would have signed up for paid services just to get access to this payment service. They’d pay for security. They’d pay for convenience. They’d pay for being lazy. I’d pay for being lazy!

Who wouldn’t want to book their Harry Potter ticket online instead of standing like a pole in a long queue at Star Cinemas? Or check at what time and where they can get a bus to Quatre Cocos or wherever? Those services would be popular. If only they existed.

Oh, and it’d also help with that “culture of computers” thing. When someone’s told that they can avoid standing for 2 hours in a queue by using this computer-thing-service, they’d want to learn how to do that. They’d want to learn what else they can do. They’d develop a culture of computers. We’d become a Cyber Island! Yay!

We also need a more developed web-space. For now, we only have lots of Mauritian blogs but if that were to change with say, Chapeau La Paille having their webpage, Rose-Hill transport having theirs (instead of a crappy old un-updated website), we’d be better off.

Missing the cool stuff

Finally, I come to the point that grieves me most. I can’t find the computer parts I want! I can’t find that shiny gadget I want. Or if I can, it’s just too expensive!

I should probably do a comparison between Mauritian and Malaysian prices when it comes to computer parts. Just for the lulz, although I know their market is much bigger than ours. It’d be fun, probably.

I mean, really, how many good computer shops are there in Mauritius? I can name like, 5.

The main problem is not that parts are missing, but that there is no competition, or not enough competition. And not enough market. And not enough culture of computers.

Monopolies. Ah, monopolies. Am looking at you, Orange. You too, 5 computer shops. You are seriously ruining the fun. Not much to say here. It’s just that we’re stuck with drooling over parts online, parts that we cannot find in Mauritius. Too bad.

Ok forget that. We also lack specialized services. The craze is for smartphones lately and those things EAT data. Try finding a big data package from one of our… two operators. None exists. Sure, you can get a 1GB a month for a huge price but there’s no all-rounder packages to be had. Like, I’d like 200 mins of calls, 100Mb of data and say, 300 SMS for around Rs. 300. Nope, can’t have. Market too small. Need. More. Profits! PROOOFITS!

I’ll just stop here. If you’ve read all text above, you’d now know why I think Mauritius is no cyber island yet. I also offered a few suggestions about what I think could improve the situation. There is hope! All is left in the hands of our leaders, companies and corporates to decide if we could really earn that title afterwards. The future is not bright, is it?

This article comes from GeekScribes

Mauritius is not a cyber island yet. Here’s why.