When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

This beautiful Buddhist proverb is a true declaration of an open mind, a mind of a learner. Ever since I heard this proverb, I often wondered if it reflected more than what meets the eye.

A few years ago, I discussed with some friends about our quest for a “teacher”. In our individual lives, our hive-less minds, we need a teacher to guide us. We deliberated, we concurred. But we could never find the real answer. I always considered this proverb on Prima facie, until today, when I realized that I’ve been looking at it differently all along.

After reading Rands’ words on challenging oneself, the proverb made more sense:

You’re in a hurry

Maybe you’re waiting for validation. You’re waiting for that someone you respect to say, “Yes, you bright person, you should do that thing.” It was your parents when you were you kid and then it was your first boss, but now it simply needs to be you.

What you need to understand about these people that support you is that they’re not here to slow you down, they’re here to get the hell out of your way so you can brilliant. You need discover the moment when you actually know better than everyone around you — when you make the first move without asking permission.

We all long for a validation. A validation, that we are taking the right decision, the right choice, at the right time, in the right place, around the right people, and for the right cause (or effect). But we wait. We wait for the teacher to appear and validate our thought. We are spoon-fed to the teacher’s nod, or rejection.

But, the real teacher is within. The real student is within. What we seek is within. What must grow is within.

Validate yourself.

Duct tape programmers are pragmatic. Zawinski popularized Richard Gabriel’s precept of Worse is Better. A 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it’s in your lab where you’re endlessly polishing the damn thing. Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.

Joel’s views triggered a series of rants and responses on the pros and cons of the “release early, release often” pattern and the “analysis paralysis” anti-pattern, a phrase that describes exceedingly long timeframe to solution delivery. While I personally prefer the “quick ship” approach, I do utilize the benefits of iterating analysis. Maybe it makes me a diplomatic drone, but I care more about an uncomplicated outcome.

The debacle around the “duct tape” approach to programming led me to a different question. What if the duct tape is red, or more precisely, how does patent-driven red-tapism affect software and technology development? Essentially, why do some programmers patent their work?

Kas Thomas described the concept of a role-based favicon, and why Novell patented it:

I was granted a patent (U.S. Patent No. 7,594,193, “Visual indication of user role in an address bar”) on something that I whimsically call the rolicon.

Okay, but why do this patent? The answer is simpler than you think (and will brand me as a whore in some people’s eyes). I did it for the money. Novell has a liberal bonus program for employees who contribute patent ideas. We’re not talking a few hundreds bucks. We’re talking contribute ten patents, put a child through one year of college.

I have two kids, by the way. One is in college, using my patent bonuses to buy pepperoni pizzas as we speak.

It was a bit unsettling for me, because Novell has been continually contributing to open source projects, and most marginally good programmers I know don’t believe in patents.

Undoubtedly, Michael Jackson was a great performer. He had actually invented and patented the shoe design used as part of his famous Moonwalk.

It makes him a “hacker“, but his “method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion” could have had wider benefits if he would have not patented the design so that other innovators could make the most of it. I can already think how this could have improved the condition of people with arthritis for example.

An anticipated social benefit of patent law is that it creates an incentive to innovate. Ironically, the patent law severely restricts innovation and healthy competition. Patents stimulate monopolies, like Microsoft and many other self-indulgent technology companies. We need to acknowledge that patents should not be a marketing strategy, but unfortunately they are so in consumerism.

Some may suggest that we should abolish the patent system altogether, but I don’t think the big fishes would ever let that happen; otherwise they’ll lose competitive advantage in a lot of lucrative areas. But what if patents were self-expiring? A patent would auto-expire if isn’t used within a certain timeframe less than the default 20 year term of the patent. This should hopefully satisfy the corporate schemers, and all programmers regardless of the colour of their duct tape.

Just a few days before the interview, a team of representatives from the same company met with the business executive from the government organization, at their high-rise conference room overlooking the pier. RFP’s and RFQ’s were already out of the way, and so were the product specifications. The company won the tender because they already had a base solution in the form of a customizable product, and the industry-specific expertise to go with it. It was just a matter of signing the dotted line, with fingers crossed.

What my acquaintance, and the large government organization didn’t know was that there was no such flagship product in existence, at-least in a functional form. The whole proposal was a farce, filled with enough fluff to have lasted as a year’s stock of toilet-paper. In a sense of over-estimation the company did have the technical capability to develop the solution from surface, but realistically it was impossible. The fact of the matter is, almost always — things take longer than they seem, and money lasts shorter than you plan.

Fearful, but not rare. This mechanism, how so ever unethical, is not uncommon in the Enterprise landscape. Garbage-disposal giant Waste Management is still embroiled in a $100 million legal battle with SAP over an 18-month installation of its “fake” ERP software. Waste Management claimed SAP executives participated in a fraudulent sales scheme that resulted in the massive failure. What did a $400 million upgrade to Nike’s supply chain get the world-renowned shoe and athletic gear-maker? Well, for starters, $100 million in lost sales, a 20 percent stock dip and a collection of class-action lawsuits.

The problem lies in three broad facets: people, perspective, and process.

People, at all levels in an organization (large or small) need to rationally answer a question: if I were a business owner, would I invest gazillion dollars on bloated software that takes years to implement, then years to fine-tune, by when it doesn’t solve the ever-transforming problems. Perspective, in terms of the scope and scalability of a solution. “We want to build more features than our competitor”, is a very common notion. Keeping the feature-set minimal may sound like a joke to many corporate vendors and business executives. But, minimalism really promotes iterated execution; which eventually saves money, time and efforts. And finally, process — the end-to-end software engineering approach, which I think is a big factor for so many spectacular failures and huge spending nightmares. Software engineering is relatively young, hardly a few decades old. Compare it with dwelling construction, which originated from the era of the cave man, and you’ll probably understand what I mean.

So you overheard from the cubicle next to yours, “it’s not that simple“. Well, that’s right. Complex ideas result in complex software. The bigger an object, the more energy is required to change its direction. In order to finish a project on time and on budget, without reducing the level of quality, we should ideally implement less and iterate more often. Under-do, and you will make successful software that is lean and opinionated.

Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare (best known for developing Quicksort in 1960) said:

There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

“You see this goblet?” asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master.

“For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’

When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.

Intriguingly, _why’s online persona disappeared on 19th August 2009. The person behind the pseudonym has simply decided to erase his online presence, along with all his projects.

In a post-modern culture, an author (programmer) has the right to do whatever they want with their work (code). Many artists have a tendency to whimsically create a world of fiction around them, then tear it down when they get bored with it. But, when a programmer, of _why’s calibre, just vanishes hastily, with his open source projects removed (repo mirror), it raises questions around the motivation and reliability of the community and the individual.

Never-the-less, it’s a loss for the Ruby community, and for many other enthusiasts like me who have considered code to be an art-form, as it was reflected by _why’s work. I think John Resig has put it very eloquently:

If there’s any analogy that I can make about _why, his online persona, and all the works that he’s produced over the years it’s to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of the sand mandala.

Sand mandalas are incredibly intricate works of art that take many people many days to construct. They’re very expressive, but fragile, works of art.

After a mandala has been constructed – and displayed – it is ceremoniously deconstructed – which is meant “to symbolize the Buddhist doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life.”

_why’s entire online presence and code was presented in the sand mandala that was ‘_why’. The person behind ‘_why’ simply decided to move on and close that portion of his life.

Reading through _why’s old blog, I came across several interesting posts, some poignant, and a few eccentric. It gave me a slight glimpse into the person’s mind. Programming aside, I wish I could write as well.

i love working on an obscure book. people cling to ideas, because they’re supposed to be vouchers for a million dollars. no, write an obscure book. build something outside all that pressure. i guess treehouses for kids qualify.

The first person to live to be 1,000 years old is certainly alive today … whether they realize it or not, barring accidents and suicide, most people now 40 years or younger can expect to live for centuries.

Sounds overly optimistic? A Cambridge University geneticist, and many other researchers, think it’s possible.

Immortality is one of humanity’s oldest dreams. We seem to think of life as being on a conveyor belt. You get on, travel to the end, then get off. The phenomenon we refer to as aging, has been researched extensively — both medically and psychologically.

A few months ago, I watched a documentary titled ‘How To Live To 101 Without Trying‘. It explores the towns where people live the longest:

In Okinawa (Japan), the residents actually age more slowly than almost anyone else on earth.

It’s what they don’t eat that may be at the heart of their exceptionally long lives. The Okinawan’s most significant cultural tradition is known as hara hachi bu, which translated means eat until you’re only 80% full.

Scientists call it Caloric Restriction (CR), but don’t entirely understand why it works. They think it sends a signal to the body that there is going to be a impending famine, sending it into a protective, self-preservation mode.

Eating less, does have huge merits. Some may argue, but I feel that living to 100 years, or 1000 years for that matter, may be possible through natural mechanisms such as CR. Such a diet can put the body into survival mode, causing cells to be extremely efficient, boosting the process by which cells remove damage. Research has shown that these unrecycled or damaged cellular components can lead to age-related decline.

If at all, we do end up living to 1000 years, what will be the implications? One significant transformation I expect to see is how the risk of living itself will increase with a longer lifespan. Mundane tasks like driving a vehicle or swimming in the ocean will suddenly become dangerous.

Is aging really a disease, for which we need to find a cure? Is eating less the perfect cure? Will extending the human lifespan result in social betterment? I guess it’s questions like these, and their answers, which will unravel in the near future.

After reading an article titled ‘Signs that you’re a bad programmer‘, I thought hard at what makes a good programmer. No wait, let me rephrase that, for the reason that everyone (including yours truly) is marginally horrible at programming. It’s a craft that takes decades to excel, if not to perfection. So the real question then is, what makes a programmer less horrible?

I have been interviewed for job roles, and I have interviewed other people on occasions. I’ve also been gracefully delegated the awkward task of firing a programmer. To my comprehension, following all these years as a programmer, the most reasonable sign that you are a less horrible programmer is your ability to build stuff during your spare time that serves a utility or solves a problem (maybe your own). When programming becomes a hobby, and as side-projects start taking shape, you’ll start getting marginally less horrible. Even better if those side-projects are collaborative.

This inherent trait shows that such programmers are passionate about the craft as they indulge in “extra-curricular” problem solving. An ad-hoc practice with a variety of small projects also improves the quality of work and estimation accuracy. This skill of utilizing time for 20% of the causes is what makes a (talented) programmer less horrible. Moreover, when you are both the teacher and the student, you’ll find it easier to surpass any illusory superiority. Programmers who strive for a process of continuous learning through self-teaching can be distinguished much easily than with conventional steps of recruitment.

Brian Clapper recently wrote why C# is now a better programming language than Java, and yet, why he still prefers the JVM to CLR:

Sun and the Java community have allowed Java, the language, to stagnate to the point where, compared to C# and Scala, it is almost painful to use.

Brian’s viewpoint is a sign of the times. A lot of Java programmers consider(ed) C# to be an inferior replica of Java, and hiked Java to be enterprise-centric and cross-platform as opposed to C#. In fact, C# (like Java, and other object-oriented languages) is based on C++. For the past 8 years, I’ve been programming exclusively in C#. I’ve consulted in Java solutions before, but sooner than later I realized that C# is abundant and flexible enough. Back then, many Java developers sighted it as sheer marketing by Microsoft to lure developers. I agreed, it was, more so because Microsoft did a better job at designing a modern OO language and a decent IDE to go with it.

Behind the C# versus Java debate, also lies a ludicrous assumption for a programming language to serve enterprise application software in a cross-platform environment. It has to be the most common notion I’ve heard time and again from Java developers and evangelists. However, the lore in reality is quite different.

Let me ask you, have you ever developed a business application with the purpose of it being deployed in a multi-platform environment? How often do you think an enterprise application software is required to be implemented across platforms? Rarely, maybe less than 1% of the times, unless it’s a niche system for disparate platforms or legacy components. In context of an average enterprise application software, the fact is that cross-platform support is not a requisite. In a very large organization, the stakeholders don’t really care about the cross-platform aspect of an average software solution. With a few hundred or thousand seats in their dispersed infrastructure, enterprises formulate strict guidelines for their base software installations across the globe. Workstations and servers in these giant corporations run a rigid set of base software (including OS, database, Web etc.), so they already know their target platform. And, if you have a single base platform to support, whether it’s Windows or Linux, enterprise application software gets a bit easier. It’s a perplexed undertaking to build a cross-platform enterprise application, due to the complex nature of technical disparity across systems, and issues associated with cost, maintainability, testing, training, and of-course time.

Google released its new Chrome Web browser, but only for the Windows platform. For the past few months, they have been working on an “identical” version for Mac and Linux, but it hasn’t been a straight-forward approach. It’s just a Web browser. Think about a much more intricate supply-chain management system that must deal with external hardware interfaces, system API’s etc. In 99% of the cases, it’s just not feasible to build a cross-platform software solution in the enterprise. So, when cross-platform support is not an issue for enterprise developers, the architecture choices are suddenly simplified. For everything else, Web applications and SaaS model have already opened doors for business solutions to be ‘hosted once and run everywhere’.

Java is a mature language. Enterprise solutions in the yesteryear’s relied largely on Java and J2EE. Enterprise solutions today are increasingly being built on C# and the .NET Framework (or Mono). The whole idea of interoperability in enterprise apps is irrelevant in my opinion. What really matters in a programming language or technology stack is not its feature set, but its ability to produce results with minimum efforts.

If you wish to retain a customer and provide better service, then don’t act shady, take responsibility for your acts, and apologize to your customers when it’s due.

Across many different cultures, meditation has been practised for centuries. Whether you are religious or not, whether you’ve had a spiritual experience or not; new research suggests that spiritual thoughts and prayers have an enormous effect on a person’s ability to heal (or stave off disease).

Last year, a distant relative (whom I respect a lot) was diagnosed with cancer. When I spoke to her at that time, I didn’t really know what to tell her, or how to even comfort her. But I was amazed by her resilience when she said to me, “my prayers to God will heal me.” I truely wondered, if prayer can have an effect on sculpting the brain?

“Neurotheologians” – researchers who are studying the brain science of spiritual experience — think so. They have found that the brains of those who pray or meditate, whether it’s Carmelite nuns or Buddhist monks, operate differently from normal brains. Dr. Andrew Newberg at the University of Pennsylvania has found that those who meditate have increased activity in the frontal lobe — the part of the brain involved in concentration — and decreased activity in the parietal lobe, which gives people a sense of orientation in time and space.

Freud declared God to be a delusion, but I’m not an atheist. Hence, if praying can help you heal and reshape your brain, what does science say about the divine? Is an encounter with God merely a chemical reaction?

At Johns Hopkins University, research suggests that chemicals that act on the serotonin system trigger mystical experiences that are life-altering. Serotonin is a chemical messenger that helps regulate mood and sleep. Now those neurologists — and others — are replicating studies from the 1960s in which patients with end-stage cancer were given LSD to see if they were convinced that life exists beyond death.

The research raises the question, is God a delusion created by brain chemistry, or is brain chemistry a necessary conduit for people to reach God?