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Software Engineering

Should you use Interface Builder?

Ever since I started out with iPhone development, I have seen a lot of debate online about the pros and cons of using the Interface Builder tool that comes as a part of the developer toolkit for Mac and iPhone development. For a lot of people, the tool comes across as basic, limited in scope, and sometimes entirely useless. For the developers at the other extreme, IB is an invincible tool without which there is no app development.

This Wednesday, I got the chance to debate just this with the CTO of an iPhone startup here in Washington, DC. While I am short on the person’s technical background, he did mention that his previous programming experience was doing website development using Flash and Dreamweaver.

Continue reading “Should you use Interface Builder?”
Categories
Software Engineering

iPhone development

Since 2008, I have been trying to find enough off time to get heavily involved in developing applications and services for the best phone I have ever used. This is a new category that, starting today, would be a reflection of my learnings and experiences.

Categories
Life and Personal

It’s been a while…

…and how times have changed. The last time I blogged, I was on a train, commuting to DC on a daily basis for a federal project that everyone was in just to rake in utilization hours (bonuses) and bide time. I was single. I had a roommate. And, I was careless.

Now for the exciting part. I am married, drive a hybrid, don’t have roommates, and no longer commute 2.5 hours to and from the client site to work on some of the most technologically backward and ill-designed projects ever. I am now a more serious iPhone and Mac developer, thanks to the commute time saved, and have actually gained enough experience to put out apps (albeit small ones for now) on the App store.

I have gained more understanding of how small business in America works. I have seen the economy take one of the worst nosedives in my lifetime, and seen desperate efforts to bring it back on track. I have seen people responsible for the mess make it big, and I have seen people suffer. I have been humbled. I have come out stronger.

For those wondering what I am up to now, I am still the good old me, although with the wisdom of two. I am still diffident, so much so that I sometimes sell myself short, but it doesn’t matter. The people who are smart enough to realize my strengths are the ones that mean something. I am now, however, spending a lot of time pursuing my passion – learning to become a diligent software engineer, working on mobile services, next generation entertainment and communication software, and of course ECM. You can teach a violinist how to use their long fingers to type fast, but you can’t teach them how to compose poetry with their keyboards. Being able to do just that is something I am proud of. Thank you, school!

I am back, and hope to make this blog mine once again. Thanks for being a reader.

Categories
Life and Personal

Eat, Pray, Love

Riding the Metro to work and I see two females just in my car reading the book. I wonder what makes it so popular even after so much time.

Categories
Economy India Life and Personal Tech and Culture

Dad’s Interview on BBC World

My dad’s very brief interview on the competency of the State owned BSNL in the face of increasing competition from newer private telecom operators was featured on BBC World’s weekly ‘India Business Report’ program.

Fast forward to the 40 second marker for the actual interview.

Of course, since it was meant to be only a segment in the 30 minute program, the entire half an hour long interview could not be included, but was used as a build-up for the story.

Next goal – Me on CNN Business!

Categories
Life and Personal

A very disquieting scene

I consider myself to be a relatively compassionate and generous person, which is why it doesn’t take a whole lot for me to lose faith in humanity, occasionally.

Last week, on my way back from work, I witnessed two young women feeding birds right outside the homeless shelter, with the desolate watching them hopelessly, unable to digest the mockery. The pigeons were being fed fresh crackers as every other human, even the ones in their cars, just watched the girls frolic around, unaware of their surroundings. It was possibly the happiest moment in one of their lives, too, as could be concluded from her cheery laughter and exclamations.

Were they just suffering from disconnection with reality?

Categories
Life and Personal

Randy Pausch did not die today

No, Randy Pausch did not die today. He’s still alive and breathing in the hearts and minds of millions of people all over the world who suddenly stopped and took time to reconsider the purpose of their lives, after watching his ‘Last Lecture’.

He will continue to live for a long time. Maybe even more so than the average human.

I am sure you have already watched his lecture online, and read the other hundreds of articles about him, but I just want to say what these other articles/critiques fail to mention. What Randy did was not anything complex; he did not prophesize something deeply philosophical, nor did he even remotely aim at radically changing values.

Instead, through his lecture and the subsequent book, Randy actually trivialized what most leaders teach. It isn’t about working hard or making sacrifices. It’s about just doing what you enjoy, and keeping your dreams and hopes alive during the journey. Randy taught the distraught youth that it is easy and possible to get what you want. You don’t have to do anything more than just want something, really bad. There is no point in making sacrifices.

What made the ‘Last Lecture’ a phenomenon wasn’t the depth of this person’s message, rather the simplicity of it. Here was a man who admits to failing at almost everything his first time around, but never gives up hope. Almost all of us associate ourselves with these kind of experiences in life. Failure is just fate’s way of making sure that it doesn’t favor someone who doesn’t deserve it.

I read his book before I watched the lecture of his video, and it makes me sad yet happy every time I recall the video. I am happy that I still have time to pursue my goals.

Rest in peace, Randy. You compressed more than a century’s worth of wonderful experiences and achievements into a life smaller than 50 years.

See you tomorrow.

Categories
Economy India Life and Personal Politics Tech and Culture Travel

WordPress iPhone app

Writing this on my iPhone using the just-released WordPress app. I am impressed!

Categories
Economy India Life and Personal Tech and Culture

Age and Competition

It’s not uncommon to run into a blog belonging to a very young software whizz these days and just not being amazed at how kids these days are able to get up to speed with what took us ages. Of course, this sort of generational gap is always going to exist. As we advance our knowledge of science and technology, the baseline for mere awareness is only going to keep rising. For example, a few decades ago, calculus was an advanced topic, but now it is a staple ingredient in the Mathematics curriculum of an average middle school student.

The point of this post is to mull over how age and experience really play a role in how you look at these things. For example, I saw this site today. It belongs to a passionate 18 year old open source software developer who is most probably a college student. From a technical standpoint, he is definitely more than qualified to do the jobs of some very experienced people I have met. He is on the cutting edge of his technical spectrum, so to speak. When I was growing up and in college, I was like that, too. I used to work on websites as a hobby, write interesting C programs in my summers, and just generally mess around with a lot of software code. With the rise of the Internet, though, it has become all too easy, and sometimes expected of you, to showcase your passion and talent for the rest of the world. This is an example of the raised threshold/baseline I mentioned earlier. So, is the kid exceptional? In comparison to some other peers in college, sure, but being on the cutting edge and passionate is expected from you. When you are grown up, this is how you look at it.

When you’re 18 years old, you just want to do things because they’re fun, and not because you realize that being passionate is ultimately going to help your overall perception of your future career. Youngsters these days have this wonderful opportunity to be taken seriously, to be able to start open source projects that have the potential to be used by a lot of people, to be able to contribute in the same vein as other more experienced people, thanks to the Internet. So, for someone like me, while it was considered exceptional to just be passionate about programming languages or writing hobby programs, I think the bar has been raised quite a bit in the last two decades.

So, do you compete with these youngsters? Feel threatened? No.

These are just signs that the technology landscape is changing so quickly, and that is very good. What we could do, though, is align our passion with theirs and create synergies that would ultimately advance future technologies.

Categories
Featured Tech and Culture

The Apple Hype Machine™

Today, Apple introduced the next version of the iPhone, labeled ‘iPhone 3G’. As always, the fanboys were intrepidly forecasting the new set of features and capabilities that this new gadget would include. For the most part, they got what they wanted, and coming from Apple, I think it is a good deal.

A list of what’s ‘new’ – 3G support, cheaper, built in assisted GPS.

Every other new feature is a software feature that would be provided free of cost to the people who already bought the first version a year ago. I am currently beta testing the new firmware, and it is a step up, definitely.

What amazes me though, is the blind trust some people have for Apple. Steve Jobs compared the browser on the iPhone with browsers on phones that were at least 2 years old. He completely side-stepped the modern browsers on Windows Mobile, or even BlackBerry devices. For the intelligent consumer, it doesn’t mean a thing, but for the average dumb/brainwashed consumer, Jobs’ word is gospel. The Safari browser on the iPhone is NOT at all the fastest mobile browser.

Another example – as is the case with all things Apple, there were rumors floating around just before the keynote about the new model having various features like MMS (which has been a staple feature of all phones since the early 2000’s), video conferencing, higher resolution camera, better Bluetooth support, etc. But, ultimately, nothing of that sort came even close to being announced. People are happy, nonetheless, or rather the fanboys are.

On top of this ludicrousness, ATT thought it would be a good time to bump the rate of the data plan from $20 a month to $30 a month. This makes an entry level plan for the iPhone cost approximately $70 a month before taxes. And I thought that communications was getting cheaper everyday.

I love Apple’s products just because they tend to be minimalist, but I have a major grudge against their false, unethical, inaccurate marketing. I also abhor fanboys who have every possible justification for skipped basic functionality.

That said, I am going to create an interesting app one day for the iPhone 🙂