Come, hear me!

I have done C++ coding before in my DDP, but that involved more of thinking various geometry related algorithms and mathematics and then coding them to see the results. I have absolutely no experience in software engineering and design as such. Now that I am slowly re-implementing the school MIS to make it more robust and very encompassing, I am finding that if I dive into C# without having a proper plan, it proves to be very messy at the end of the module and often several bugs remain. Overall, the module turns out to be non robust. In order to address these issues, I have laid down a workflow checklist for myself and any team that I incorporate in future course.

1. Clearly define the aim(s) of the module. It should be very clear (in writing) the motivation what is expected to be accomplished by the given module.
2. Plan out the general workflow (for the user) of the module.
3. Plan out User Interaction for the module.
4. Plan how to implement the given module.
5. Plan out Class Hierarchy.
6. Very clearly plan out what classes (along with member variables and functions)will be required. Make it in writing too.
7. Plan out validation rules. Think carefully and plan out what validation rules will be required.
8. Plan out what forms (windows) will be required.
9. Design the UI of these forms
10. Plan what reports and their will be required out of the module.
11. Implement class structure with all the validation rules in place.
12. Implement the forms with all the validation rules in place.
13. Implement reporting solution.
14. Plan out all regular/weird test cases and test the module.
15. Update doc for the code.
16. Write doc for the user.
17. Give training to the user.
18. See if any errors are coming up during regular/daily usage. Correct them and re-install.

As I said, I am no software engineer, though I slowly plan to read some books and get some ideas. Till then, this rough checklist ought to do the job. If any expert reading this has any suggestions, I would much appreciate and feel thankful if you could either mention them here in comments or offline to me.

Sometimes, you come across such inspiring, creative people that it becomes hard to imagine how can a person accomplish so much is so little time.

Creativity is a function of many factors. One of the most important ones is general peace of mind. In India, I feel this factor is usually missing. Any entrepreneur has to undertake an almost torturous pathway of dealing with highly corrupt government departments and has to bear with very poor infrastructure. So that peace of mind which is a prerequisite of any creative undertaking is destroyed, when that entrepreneur thinks constantly of ways of dealing with and if possible, by-passing this system.

For artists working on their own though, this factor might not be missing. Sometimes I think why can’t I find such highly talented and also at the same time, accomplished people in India. This becomes even more relevant for me, as I am in the business of finding and nurturing talent.

In my perspective, the most important reason is that we are still very very orthodox in our educational system. Even a child quite talented and interested in painting, music or other arts usually has to study Science or Commerce subjects in her higher secondary classes. I have examples in my own school. Inspite of my long counseling sessions, some students just refused to take arts for 11th class, and they are struggling with Physics and Chemistry these days. For them, understanding the difference between vector and scalar quantities is a Herculean task; on the other hand, I am sure they already have highly developed aesthetic sense, with good grasp and understanding of finer nuances of the languages.

I am still not sure what to do about this. I get many ideas at times, but implementing them would take time. And I am an individual. What is required is a more system wide change, where students are given more freedom to take up subjects and courses. Evaluation should be more spread out, instead of concentrating on a few exams, but that has got a very strong implementation issue of honesty of evaluator. Thinking of ways to overcome such issues would require a lot of creative effort, platforms for the same will have to be made. I usually discuss these issues with my friends, whenever I meet them and try to extract some ideas out of them. Developing a system which instills creativity and high motivation amongst children is the utmost aim of my life. I think I think I know the road which will take me there, but still am unable to find a proper exit from the present one.

Ok… So I have been asked recently by a long lost friend, who turned up on IM out of nowhere that why have I posted such a scary story under humour…

My answer to him was that the whole situation quickly turned from scary to humourous when we found, after a long search though,  that a pair of wet, cold cats had created the whole raucous and the school building being closed at that time, their voices had echoed throughout the building, creating the long, wailing sounds. As soon as they heard the disturbances, they went quite and we went numb with fear…

So moral of the story? Cats can create hell lot of noise. They might look cute, but all of us remember the cute cat in Shrek, don’t we ? (Now, what was his name?)

Yesterday night or rather today morning, a weird incident occured. Around quarter past three in the morning, I was jolted out of sleep by a long string of doorbells. Since I live in the school campus, this meant that there was some sort of emergency and the night guards (3 of them) had found it pressing enough to wake me up.

I tried to get my coordinates right and in still in a haze, reached my door and asked shouting, what the matter was. I could hear faint sound of what seemed like, someone wailing loudly. That sound sent shivers down my spine. I couldn’t comprehend what could have happened. When I didn’t get any reply from my guards, I opened a window and asked them again, what had happened.

Now they heard me, and their reply was something which made me think that this sure was a nightmare. They said that it seemed some child has been locked in one of the rooms and he/she is crying loudly.

Suddenly many things rushed into my mind. Firstly, all cleaning, dusting etc is done in the school in the afternoon after the children leave. So if some student was really left inside a room, then the cleaner would definitely might have seen him/her.

But then I thought what if the student had fainted or drifted off to sleep during school hours in some hidden corner and had been missed by the cleaner.
I immediately did a mental scan of all the class rooms to realize that there *are* two or three places where this could happen.

However, this possibility was still really remote. If a child, for whatever reason, is late in reaching home by ten minutes or so, usually parents call up school, his friends, their friends, all relatives and so on, to enquire about its whereabouts. Also after cleaning, all windows and doors are bolted or locked and hence, another, albeit, quick scan is done.

So I felt there was absolutely zero chance that a child might have been locked inside a class room.
Then I thought of another possibility. It might be possible that some homeless family of sorts has made its shelter in the school at night. Maybe, they get in the school premises when it is still unlocked, keep themselves hidden and then stay in for the night. Now their child is hungry and wailing uncontrollably for milk or food.

My mind was racing thinking all these things, while my hands fumbled around to find a flash light, switch on all external lights and finally open the door.

As I was moving down the stairs, the wailing became all the more louder and clear but I was still unable to fathom its source. By the time, I reached my outer channel gate, where the guards were standing I was really scared and was on the verge of shivering, as it was also quite a cool night, having rained heavily the evening before. But I thought that if the guards feel my fear, it was sure that none of them would turn up the next night. Getting good night guards who stay awake for some part of the night is really a tough job, so I didn’t want to lose my present team. So with as much confidence I could muster, I asked loudly over the loud wailing, “What the hell is going on? What’s this sound?” I could see the fear in the eyes of all three guards. One of them was almost crying. They again repeated what they had said. I told them that it is impossible for a child to get locked inside school building. I immediately regretted saying this, seeing the expression on the faces of the guards. Now, their suspicions about the source of that voice became even more sinister, maybe, even supernatural.

Then something happened. In a blink, the voice stopped completely. Dead silence. Just the silent voice of the breeze passing through trees nearby. Wow, I have lived alone and in remote, dark places many times in my life. I am very confident and proud of the fact that I am not afraid of the dark or of anything which is not living ( I am afraid of dogs and used to be afraid of jokers (Yeah, that’s another story. My friends made a lot of fun of that in college.)) But at that moment, I felt that I should be in a studio room with full lights on, rather than under this external dim light and that there is seriously something wrong.

(To be contd…)

When I appeared for the IIT-JEE in 1999, many coaching classes in Kota and Delhi already had built up quite a strong reputation for preparing students for this exam. However, I did not attend any coaching class, in its popular class room form, but did take a correspondence course from Brilliant Tutorials. This course helped me to set targets for myself, and provided me feedback through all country test series. I was also in a small town in those days and classroom coaching facilities were really not available.

Once I reached IIT, however I found that there were numerous batch mates of mine, who had attended some or the other coaching. There used to be many discussions whether coaching is really necessary? The people who supported the idea of coaching were of the opinion that coaching classes provide a focus and an environment for students. I agree to this point whole-heartedly, but in my opinion, this “strength” of the coaching classes is really their greatest drawback.

I found that many(of course, not all) such “focussed” students lacked the depth in their subjects, because of inherent structure of these coaching classes which tell the “concepts” to students only to solve particular type of questions. A very simple example I witnessed was that not many had read Resnick and Halliday’s or H.C. Verma’s Physics, which I used to read with interest and excitement of a good thrilling fiction..

Also there is another problem, which I am finding with the students these days, is that, they are not at all in habit of “living with doubts”. This negative sounding phrase, actually implies that the students usually have a mentor with them always, who is more than ready to solve any doubt the student might have, no matter how trivial. And the mentor, in this process, feels great that he is helping the student. However, the student is becoming too dependent on the mentor and that killing spirit to solve any problem thrown on the student is reduced.

IMO, students should develop interest in and try to learn subjects. Subjects like Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics instead of IIT Physics, IIT Chemistry and IIT Mathematics.