Prabhu's Literature

Every man's memory is his private literature. ~Aldous Huxley


The Development Process

Steve Maguire's book Debugging the Development Process is an indispensable one to any engineer who is involved in software development task in any ways. Reading through the book, I was enlightened about the mistakes that I do and the wrong practices that software developers/leads and managers in general follow. I have resolved to put in practice his suggestions. And also its time that I dust Steve's other fine book Writing Solid Code from my book shelf and have it in my work desk for constant reference.

Bijapur











Thanks to my friend's wedding in Bijapur last week, I had the opportunity to visit the historic city.Gol Gumbaz and Ibrahim Rouza are the most prominent monuments in Bijapur.

More images can be found in my flickr page .


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Aramane

Aramane was disappointing. In the initial moments the crux of the story is revealed and I found it quite interesting and was expecting a good watch. Ganesh is a photographer who tries to get the separated family of Ananth Nag together again. But the screen play falters in presenting the story convincingly. Ganesh tries to shoulder the movie by his wit and timed dialogues. His quips most of the time are no doubt humorous, but that alone cannot engage the audience. Gurukiran’s score is average. Aramane can be watched only to get few genuine laughs, thanks to Ganesh’s witticism a la Tamil’s Parthiban. Otherwise it can safely be skipped.

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Coding and Testing

Code is not ready for release until unit test cases are run and verified. It is always recommended that this rule is religiously followed no matter how little changes that the programmer might have done. Recently I had to relearn this rule the hard way. Confident that nothing would have got broken with the kind of changes that I did, I merged the changes to mainline with out complete testing. The code was released to the test team. And when I attend the office the next day and check my mail, there is a high severity bug reported. A bug so severe it had blocked a huge chunk of test cases of the test team. I had to resubmit the code with the fix sooner. The fix was trivial, thanks to Rational clearcase, I could diff the versions of code and find the cause for the issue. The lessons learnt are, always do complete analysis of the difference b/w the mainline code which has been thoroughly tested and the changed version before merging the codes. And do exhaustive testing before release of the code to avoid the test team report embarrassing issues. The time for testing might be greater than the time invested for writing code but still DO the testing. Lastly I would say that I have fallen in love with the Rational clearcase. I haven’t had experience on any other but I say any amount that might be quoted for the license of the tool is highly justifiable!

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IPL

The IPL cricket has begun. But somehow I am not finding it a least bit interesting. The first thing that puts me off with IPL is the names of the teams in the tournament. A huge amount of money has been thrown in, still no creative thought given in naming the teams! I am not an avid fan of cricket. But if at all I watch it on TV is just when players like Sachin and Lara are in their flow. The T20 is just going to display mediocre cricketing skills and one would not get to see graceful cricket.

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The Divide

Extract from Arundhati Roy 's article "Listening To Grasshoppers" in Outlook:


..the era of the free market has led to the most successful secessionist struggle ever waged in India the secession of the middle and upper classes to a country of their own, somewhere up in the stratosphere where they merge with the rest of the world's elite. This Kingdom in the Sky is a complete universe in itself, hermetically sealed from the rest of India. It has its own newspapers, films, television programmes, morality plays, transport systems, malls and intellectuals. its own class struggles. An organisation called Youth for Equality, for example, has taken up the issue of Reservations, because it feels Upper Castes are discriminated against by India's pulverised Lower Castes. It has its own People's Movements and candle-light vigils (Justice for Jessica, the model who was shot in a bar) and even its own People's Car (the Wagon for the Volks launched by the Tata Group recently). It even has its own dreams that take the form of TV advertisements in which Indian CEOs (smeared with Fair & Lovely Face Cream, Men's) buy over international corporations, including an imaginary East India Company. They are ushered into their plush new offices by fawning white women (who look as though they're longing to be laid, the final prize of conquest) and applauding white men, ready to make way for the new kings. Meanwhile, the crowd in the stadium roars to its feet (with credit cards in its pockets) chanting 'India! India!'


Many might dismiss her as just being mere rhetoric, but give it a thought, you would agree with the crux of her arguments. And I do.

Jack The Ripper

When History Channel on cable TV announced that the film Jack the Ripper would be screened in the weekend that passed I recalled reading long back an article on the film in Deccan herald. The author had said that the film was a masterpiece worth seeing many times. I didn't want to miss the movie and I watched it. The author had got it right. The film is indeed a masterpiece. The movie is based on the true events that occurred in London in the year 1888.Wikipedia quotes -"Jack the Ripper is an alias given to an unidentified serial killer (or killers) active in the largely impoverished Whitechapel area and adjacent districts of London, England in the latter half of 1888"

Everything was done to perfection in the movie. The story telling and the background score were excellent. What impressed me most was the performance by each actor in the movie, particularly Sir Michael Caine in the role of Detective Inspector Frederick Abberline. Each had done their best. There certainly would be repeat telecast of the movie. Do watch it. To quote from the article mentioned earlier -for the subtleties and complexities in movie are truly worth savoring.

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Nodi Swamy Navirode Heege!

What an irony! In the month in which Karnataka should be celebrating it’s Rajyosthava it is under President’s rule. It is a shameful political drama that Karnataka is witnessing presently. Amidst all the noise a particular message from the political class is clear - nodi swamy navirode heege!

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