Bhabishya Kumar

Or so stupid I can't keep my eyes open while posing for a photograph! (fun photo session at office)

I can't believe we have been together for one whole year! It was this very month last year that I started this blog. It was supposed to be a medium to share my experiences during my journey in Ruby on Rails & JavaScript hacking.

Of Course, I hadn't met you yet!

All I wanted to do was create a super-simple website using Rails & JavaScript. But I couldn't do that after meeting you. You were always there luring me with things which were much easier & fun then starting a project from scratch. You gave me the instant gratification which is so tempting. I was always looking for excuses to meet you even though it made me feel guilty afterwards. Whenever I faced some obstacle, you took me in your loving embrace and made me forget everything.

To be honest, I haven't been totally loyal to you this whole time. I have been sneaking out to meet other people like Gadgets & GreaseMonkey scripts. They make me feel good about myself. I don't feel miserable afterwards as I do after spending time with you. But those occasional dates never materialized into anything meaningful like a full website. Its about time that I change that. Its going to take a lot of commitment, effort from my side but I have to bite the bullet.

I am so sorry to say this but I think we should break-up.

I was wondering what's more important in life. I guess being happy would be everyone's ultimate goal. I used to think that being happy & successful are linked together but it doesn't seem so. I find a lot of people who I wouldn't consider successful, quite content in their life. I guess it has do with how much expectations they have from themselves. And I think that depends on the company they keep. That's a topic of another article altogether.

Now, how do you define - Successful? Is it being successful in profession or family life or something else? Its a weighted average of everything. And this is where it becomes interesting. Everyone decides whether they are successful or not based on whatever weightage they have given to each aspect of life. So, maybe there is in fact a link between being successful & happy. Its just that my formula for success doesn't match theirs.

So, what do I give more weightage? I will have to say profession because that's what we are. First we are a School Student, then a College Student, then a Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer, Businessman, whatever. I have yet to meet a person who introduced himself as

"Hi, I am John. I am a Weekend-Poker-Player", or

"Hi, I am Charles. I am a After-Work-Bar-Goer", or

"Hi, I am Michael. I am Every-Weekend-Orlando-With-Kids-Visitor"!

Even if they are unemployed, that's the first thing they will say about themselves and then all this. Also, we spend 5 days of our week in our job. If you don't care what you do during the weekdays and are happy living the other 2/7th of your life, good for you.

Let me quote something from my article To Geek Or Not To Geek I wrote a few months back.

the amount of money that one can demand and, more importantly, get is inversely proportional to how many people can do his/her job.

The figure that you come up for yourself as compared to the market average for your job & experience should give you a pretty good idea of how you are doing in your profession.

So, what about me? I am happy to be unhappy! I am happy to be aware that unless I am successful in my life, I can't he happy. There is an old adage - "To fix a problem, you have to first admit that there is one". There are a lot of people who live in denial all their lives about their happiness or success or both. At least, I am not one of them.

I just read his latest rant Code's Worst Enemy. These two paragraphs from his latest rant are exactly my thoughts.

"...I think that his "something bad" may well have been the act of creating the book Refactoring, which showed Java programmers how to make their closets bigger and more organized, while showing Martin that he really wanted more stuff in a nice, comfortable, closet-sized closet......."

".....Tragically, the only GoF pattern that can help code get smaller (Interpreter) is utterly ignored by programmers who otherwise have the names of Design Patterns tattooed on their various body parts......"

I too believe that each and every line of code that we add to our project brings with it some kind of entropy (disorder). It adds to the clutter making it difficult for us to see what exactly is going on. And that's why I like attr_accessor in Ruby over "Alt+Insert" shortcut for Java in IntelliJ IDea, even though both will require the same effort.

It gives me an itch looking at the ROI (Return on Investment) in Java Projects. The ratio of the amount of code that we write to the functionality that we get out of it is really embarrassing.

I think the authors of the mentioned books should have put a Statutory Warning on the back of their books.

Using these patterns/refactorings just for the heck of it may be injurious to your project. Use at your own discretion.

I just finished watching Boiler Room. Amazing movie! No wonder, the Brokerage firms make all the new recruits watch this movie along with Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross. In fact, there is a scene of "Wall Street" played in the movie and all the Brokers watching it repeat the dialogues word by word!

The best scenes are when Ben Affleck gives speeches to new recruits. I loved this Group Interview scene.

There is something exciting about the Stock Market. Especially the Trading part. Its like Gambling. Very Addictive. I guess if I was not a Software Engineer, I might have have tried my hands at Trading full-time. Or, may be I can mix the two and build some software for Stock Market.

Anyway, can't wait to see "Glengarry Glen Ross" now. Its next in my Netflix queue.