Read it here.. http://imaginepeace.com/miracleapples/?p=56

I couldn’t stop reading when I started this….

Source :  I got this link from GreenLocal.org : http://greenlocal.com/miracle_apples

Its that time of the year again, where I get to look back with mixed feelings on what I did/didn’t do. No wonder, I have too many not done’s than the done’s.  It has to be that way, for I have something to chase after. Good or bad, chasing has become part of life.

Spent most of my 2010 away from home and that meant a lot of self reflection in solitude; which in-turn brought in many insights. Read many books & articles, met different people, went around places.  I am a far better person than I was at the start of 2010, which is kind of good, but I am not where I wanted to be.

Reflection has changed my perspective towards life, career and many other things. As such, from 50,000 foot above, my 2011 would be spent on (not in any particular order)

- Focused improvement on skills
- Building an online identity
- Learn more on Farming(I am from a farming community and I would be starting a new blog around it soon).
- Focused Financial investments
- Quality time with Family
- Travel to learn farming
- Help people grow

Some call this chasing – a rat race, survival of fittest and what not.  Like it or not, I am part of it- getting away from it means a lot, which is what I am going to work on this year.

“If I don’t write everyday, it becomes too difficult to start again.” (from The Hindu dated December 4, 2010 ).  Read here

Successful people are the one  who practice their craft (read profession) day in and out..

I thought of writing about my professional & personal experience during this past one year in Melbourne.  

A not-so interesting thought that runs on my mind is how the projects are planned or otherwise how the due dates were calculated.   When I came in, this project was already delayed by about six months and was expected to be completed in 3 months.  Hence it started as a three months trip.    As the due date approached, the optimism faded away and the due date was pushed by another couple of months, then another couple of months and  now the due date is getting puhsed by week(s). You guessed it right,  the project is not going to end in Nov. It is going to take a while, but the good news is that the project is very much under control  than it was 14 months back.

You could imagine the pressure on the team, the management and the client on such a project. Sitting with Client made me realize how hard it is to get funding for a project that misses deadline. It is not easy – the business manager has to convince the IT department, accounts department, strategy department and so many people to keep the project going.   It is not that easy to convince someone after a couple of times,  you loose your trust-worthiness.  Looking back there were many things that had gone wrong.  If I were asked to pick one thing that could have bettered our chances of determining the date, I would choose “Loosing the bigger Picture”.  Most of the times, the due dates were calculated based on the burning issues that is on hand. Fix the burining issues, next set of burining issues creep up and the next and the next.  And Yes, there were many things that we didnt see it coming (performance issues,  Virtual Server enviroment issues, Network issues on  VM , issues on third party tools etc.,).   It would be a very long story to write, so, I end about this subject here.

Another dangerous thing that is happening in the industry is the way in which the agile is being adopted. Well,  I am not against Agile, but the way it is being driven for adoption is really concerning me.  The client I am working with had brought in best of the breed Agile Consultants to educate its employees, prepare them to go agile for over a year. A lot of money was spent on training and education.  When the client had an understanding on the way the agile projects are run, they wanted its service providers to do the project in Agile way too.  Most of the service providers are clueless about agile.  All they *think* is Agile methodolgy is fast catching up in market and is another resume skill..  Isnt it a big bullshit? I can seet it failing big time.  Seervice providers are trying to mass – commoditize Agile, which I think isnt going to work.  I am wondering what these people would be talking about Agile after a few years.

 A lot of professional learning on software writing and project management.   The last one year has thought me more lessons than any of the years in my career. 

Personally, my perspective towards life has changed a lot.   May be I am not able to put in on writing, but there is a lot of change in my attitude and approach towards my life.  I learnt and experienced a lot moving around Melbourne.  I went around places, learnt cooking ,  went  to Australian Grand Prix,  Austrlian Open, local Footy  and a couple of cricket matches.   A good experince all together.  I gained new interests and hobbies – photography for example.   They say, Melbourne is a live city and I would recomend anyone to spent sometime in this city.
A good year so far.

http://sourcesofinsight.com/2010/04/12/dont-regret-the-path-not-taken/

http://sourcesofinsight.com/2010/04/30/apologize-with-skill/

I learnt and  still learning many things from him.  The most important of all is how to remain positive and openness to accept things and change them the way we wanted it to be.  He helped me to look into the aspects of life which I have never looked at, the aspects of work and the aspect of many a things. Being with him, I feel more energetic, more enthusiastic and much more.

It is important you should have friends whom you can wake up at middle of night to talk nonsense. Surrounding yourself with positive and good friends is very important for your health, life and work. This is not a long kept secret, but a simple thing that takes you miles.

This post is to express my thanks and gratitude.

More than any other losses, these seeming friends brought pessimism into me; against which I am fought every day.  There are many theories out there about pessimism – it feels good to read about it, but it is very hard to spend a few months / years with it.  I have been there, felt that and know what it means. Pessimism :  I call it a strange disease;  puts a filter on to your vision and the result, you see negativity in all sorts of life.  The more pain of this strange disease is- you don’t know you have it.  I thought I was more optimistic and realistic, but the reality is I had that filter on my vision without me knowing about it.

I tried many things to get out of it – To Do lists,  Not To do lists, doing three important things a day and so many other suggestions out there on web.   Nothing worked.  Thank God : I read this post of  Reg Braithwaite . The techniques in the book  -   Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life has helped me a lot in taking my pessimism out.  It took a lot of time and pain for me to come out of it,  I am now out of it.  I have re-read the book many many times.  A Great book.

Yesterday, when I logged into my blog to make my first blog of the year, my heart felt bad to learn that the last post I made was in April last year.  So many opportunities lost in last one year , but it is OK.  As the saying goes ” Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending”

As with regards to my career, I have two certification goals for this year.  One is planned by end of July and the other by end of Oct-2010.  I now feel very optimistic that the opportunity cost of my decision, the choices I make now will make me better in times to come.

It is a shame to tell laziness, procrastination, not knowing what I want / where I want to go  and many other absurd reasons and silly things  that has kept  me away from writing blogs.  Yes, it is bull**** to say so.  I am currenlty in Melbourne, Australia for past 7 months and will be back in India in next couple of months.  A lot has happened to my life and many of them – not the way I wanted it to be.  I have been toying around with many ideas, but I feel the time is not ripe to make a decision; in otherwords, as the wise say, this guy is not ready to take risks.  One thing for sure, I have to move out of so called self proclaimed IT services companies operating out of India and become an indepedant IT consultant / entrepreneur like …. (itentionally left blank).

I have so many things on my head, I have to do a lot of things and it is still a shame for me to tell that laziness and procastination has kept me away.  But I have to start somewhere and this is a new start  for a new ending which I wanted. For those of my friends out there, I wish to tell with confidence ” I am back….. and I will come out of my laziness – comfort zone and  stretch my muscles to see the new horizon.  I am going to use this blog as revival tool – a medium to express myself. “

For some reasons, the Chennai agile group meeting doesn’t happen too often.  Siddhi said he is kick-starting the group meeting again and there would be at least one meeting a month from now on.  Yes, we have to meet often for the very reason that user groups are the ways and means to share and learn among ourselves.

A few months ago an incident happened in my company, which I think is in a way related to rest of my post.  One fine morning someone in my vertical got an idea out from the blue sky  that there should be technical sessions every week, so that people can share their experiences.  Good intention & a great idea . The person being a manager found a person who would give a shape to this idea and lead it from front. He also identified a backup who would lead if the other person is not available (what  a backup strategy).  The team members were appraised of this idea through email which read “ … So, we would be having  technical sessions on Friday of every week to share our experiences and learn new stuff…. I would like to hear from you on what things you would like to discuss in these meetings”.   No one responded with ideas and meetings never  happened.  The result; the idea was shelved.  Looking back on why this failed

• The idea of meeting once a week was good, but either the leaders / team members didn’t know what to talk / discuss.
• Team members are not interested in learning/sharing experience.  In corporate you will find those 9AM- 5PM kind of persons, who not only will put forward their ideas, but will spoil the brains of others too.

As of now, I think the above holds true for the Chennai Agile group meetings. Don’t get me wrong in this. My intention is that we should get started again , move forward and establish ourselves.  I am also the one to be blamed. I want user group meetings to happen, but I never contribute. Nor do  I have a idea of what I want out of these meetings.   I thought having an idea of what to expect from Agile group meetings would greatly help me to contribute.  The following are my expectations and I will work on contributing the same to the group.

• Should have more hands on. I am into Microsoft tech (I know, this is not the way I wish to identify myself).   We can talk about NUnit, NHibernate, Cruise Control.Net etc
• My thoughts on Agile are influenced by  book Object Thinking.  This is the book that says how to equip oneself before diving into Agile. This book says what should one know to get deeply involved in Agile. Watch this video : XP: After 10 years why are we still talking about it  by Robert C. Martin to know the importance of technical knowledge .  In that line I would like to hear / talk about Design patterns, Enterprise Architectural patterns etc
• Refactoring Sessions
• Code Kata sessions.
• XP Games
• Acceptance Testing
• Should help us to become Software Craftsman.
• etc.

I think I have set a direction. I would like to contribute. I will pick up one of the above and shall present to the group soon.  Lets see what’s in store for Chennai Agile Group meetings in 2009.

The following inspired me to write this post.  Read it and I call it Passion.  Oneday, I will be doing this..

http://lizkeogh.com/2009/04/17/goodbye-thoughtworks-hello-worlds/

Looking back, I wasn’t lazy. I was working hard both in office and at home. What I missed was “Focus”; laser sharp Focus on my goals. I have put my legs in too many things – things that doesn’t jell with each other. I hate to talk about these in detail and I hate to make yet another promise that I will be updating this blog often.

I am now determined to Focus and Focus on things important and leave out the rest. You would see more updates coming.

Finally, if you are in Comfort Zone, get out of it immediately. For one reason, you are not growing. Period.

As I write this post, I am stuck with Writers block. I wanted to write something, but don’t know what to write.  I thought  writing a blog post a day is easy, but when it comes to reality, its hard.  I am not going to let this stop me from writing.  To overcome this writers block,  I have to write more.  Yes, the more I write, the more ideas I am going to get.

Honestly, I dont have any role models (which I know is very bad).  But however, I get inspirtation from many and here are a few

 Bill Gates
 Steve Jobs
 Paul Graham
 Joel Spolsky
 Jeff Atwood
 Martin Fowler
 Craig Larman
 Robert C. Martin
 Scott W Ambler
 Ravi Mohan
 Rajesh Babu
 Charles Petzold
 Jean-Paul S. Boodhoo
 Narayana Murthy
 Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala
 etc.,

All the above are clear winners / achievers in their fields. When I get to read about them through blogs, magazines etc; I would be inspiried, but this inspiration is short lived. For the inspiration to be long lived, I think I should have a role model; who is a guru/expert in the field  I am into and look at his/her achivements and try to achive them. The biggest problem here is to choose the right role model. I will update once I have one.

So, who is your role model?

And at the end of the day, worrying about not doing things is not going to take me to places where I want to be.  I have to follow my action plans. At least, by the end of the year I should achieve some of my goals I set in the beginning of the year.  I will have something more to update  by the end of the year…..

Normal Interview process

1. Candidate gets to know about a job opening in the company through his friends working in that company / news paper ad/ job sites etc.
2. Candidate sends his resume to the HR.
3. HR sends the resume to the interviewer/panel for first round for screening.
4. Interviewer/panel either rejects  or asks the HR to schedule the interview with the candidate
5. Interview is conducted

Effectiveness

1. Everything is planned.
2. Interviewer goes through the resume before going for the interview
3. Weed out the unfit resume before calling the candidate for interview
4. Better chances of getting good candidates
5. HR sees to that an interviewer is not overloaded with too many interviews in a day.  This is very important because the state of the Interviewer’s mind is very important during the interview.

Walkin Interview process

1. Candidates gets to know about the job opening through news paper ads / chain mails generally of type – Walk-in with your resume and walk out with a job
2. Candidates come with their copies of resumes to the company.
3. The company collects the resume and asks the candidate to wait.  I have heard of instances of  candidate waiting for 4-5 hours.
4. Interviewer gets to see the candidate’s resume for the first time.  He would have been advised not to spend more time with the candidate. So, the interviewers in walk in interview have a general set  of questions to be asked. They ask the questions from their list, if the candidate fails to answer one / two from their standard questions, they candidate  is rejected.
5. The time taken for the interview would range for 10 mins to 20 mins.

Effectiveness

1. Many a  times interviewer doesn’t have time to go through the interview
2. After a couple of interviews, the interviewer either gets tired
3. Resumes are not screened / most of the time doesn’t get read.
4. Experienced and skilled candidates don’t turn up for the walk in interviews
5. You get to see a lot of people turning out for this interview , but the hit ratio would normally be low
6. Interviewer is overloaded.

There is another kind of interview – Job fairs.  They are good to get the entry level graduates but not the experienced.

Does anyone have experience to share on the interview process.

1. Write more frequently
2. Switch my job and work for an exciting company
3. Take Control of my Financial matters
4. Buy a home in my hometown

Lets see how things turn up.

We started our discussion with “How to make people talk” in meetings. Making someone to talk is really difficult. I face this daily in my work. For people who dont understand the value of Agile meetings, its always a pain. Sury was mentioning an example on how people talk about Standups or Scrum Meetings ( with sad face, they used to say ” I have to attend a stand up meeting @ hh:mm … ” as if it were a punishment ). Motivating the developers who are sloppy and convincing them that certain processes ; like daily stand ups, unit testing etc; are essential is a big challenge in Agile Adoption. There may be ways to get around this. For example slide 6 in this ppt talks about “How can a process be founded on people and promote self-motivation & self-organisation“.

Siddh explained us about Mock objects. He walked through a demo on Mock objects starting with a simple situation and moving to more complex situations. It was an interesting discussion.

We also discussed how to publicize Chennai Agile User Group. This time around we discussed about the venue, how to bring more people to the meeting etc. We discussed about running a newsletter, asking people to contribute etc.

I have not completed reading A Practical Guide to Feature-Driven Development which Siddh shared in last meeting. I have borrowed it again. I will complete reading before our net meeting on 12-Jan-2008 at 3 PM at Gaea Global

First I would like to thank Sury for providing space and Siddh for organizing meet. It was a very good and effective meeting. Siddh showed us how to use Selenium for testing web applications. Sury’s company is using Fit for testing in his projects. He showed us how they are doing it. We discussed about continuous integration. Sury is using CruiseControl and Siddh is using a tool called Hudson . We discussed about it.

We also discussed how to publicize Chennai Agile User Group. We thought of doing some hands on in the next session.

Siddh shared his book : A Practical Guide to Feature-Driven Development. I have already read about 5 chapters in it. Its really a good book. I am planning to complete reading this book before our next meet-up.

Our next meet-up will be on Dec 1 2007 at 3 PM at  Gaea Global

1. I prepare my Action Items(To Do list) with priorities the previous night. I try to accomplish everything on the list. Initially, I was having too many action items in the list for every day (inexperience). Now a days I see to that I have only important tasks that should be done for the day. If something new comes up, I add it to the list and prioritize.
2. I follow the STING method more often now a days. I am finding it very useful.
3. Starting this week, I decided to spent less (no) time on my personal work during office hours. By personal work, I mean – checking personal email, reading blogs etc. Even I am making a practice of looking at my official emails only 2 /3 times a day. I have disabled all those silly new mail reminders and keep my outlook closed most of the time.
4. I am maintaining a time Journal as suggested by Dr. Randy Pausch..
   From this journal I identified that I was spending time without any specific objectives in my mind. For example, I had an RSS Reader installed on my office computer and have subscribed to quite a lot of RSS feeds. I used to open the reader atleast 2-3 times a day – just to mark all the entries as read Gosh.. I was maintaining the RSS Reader like my Inbox. I didn’t want to see any unread items there. Crazy way to spend my time…. Now , one of my low priority task is to clean up the RSS reader and have it subscribe to only ** selected** feeds. (At one point of time I decided to uninstall it completely. But then, blogs are one of the effective ways to learn; so decided to keep)My time journal is a simple XL file which contains 3 columns – Time (15 mins interval), What I did, Whether its productive Time / Unproductive time. I update this sheet every 30 mins. Try this and its an excellent method
5. We are now doing kind of Pair Programming in office. No, not to the extend specified in XP. But its just a start. My team mate and myself are finding it very useful. We alternate (drive) the key board every 1.5 hours. We start with a specific goal in our mind for each session and continue until the goal (task) is accomplished. Benefits : Effective use of time, no distractions, learn from each other.

• Matthew Cornell
• Dr. Randy Pausch’s  Time Management Video

I have already started implementing the idea of Time Journal.  The results are showing off on my productivity for the past couple of days. I have to keep this going. I am planning to publish the summary of my time journal every day in this blog.  I would also be implementing some other ideas I learnt from my reading about this subject.  Before I put them here, I want to try it first.  Let me see how it goes.

• The Tao Of Programming
•  The psychology of learning – perfection-oriented and performance-oriented.
• Real Programmer
• Becoming A Real Programmer (thinking about thinking…)
• The Magic in the Box

Ultimately, my goal in life is to become of A Real Programmer. I  know the  journey is very long, but I am confident that I will get there one day.

• TestFixture Attribute

This attribute is to specify the class that contains the test case. This attribute is placed before the classes that contain test code.
using System;
using NUnit.Framework;
namespace NUnitCoreConcepts
{
[TestFixture]
public class CoreConcepts()
{
…
}
}

• [TEST] Attribute

The [Test] attribute specifies the Test Methods inside the Test Class. The Test Methods are the methods that contains code for testing.

using System;
using NUnit.Framework;
namespace NUnitCoreConcepts
{
[TestFixture]
public class CoreConcepts
{
[Test]
public void AdditionTest()
{
int num1 = 3;
int num2 = 4;
Assert.AreEqual(7, num1 + num2);
}
}
}

• Assertions

In NUnit, Assertions are the way to determine whether the TestCode in the Test method passed or failed. In the above example Assert.AreEqual() method verifies the actual and expected and says whether the test passed or not. There are many static methods in Assert class. Some of them are
Assert.AreEqual()
Assert.IsTrue()
Assert.IsNull() …

• [Setup] Attribute [TearDown] Attribute

The [Setup] attribute specifies the method that has to be executed before every Test method is executed. It normally contains initialization code.
The [TearDown] attribute specifies the method that has to be executed after the Test method is executed. Its normally contains code to release the resources.
using System;
using NUnit.Framework;
namespace NUnitCoreConcepts
{
[TestFixture]
public class CoreConcepts
{
private int num1 ;
private int num2 ;
[SetUp]
public void Init()
{
num1 = 3;
num2 = 4;
}
[Test]
public void AdditionTest()
{
Assert.AreEqual(7, num1 + num2);
}
}
}

• ExpectedException Attribute

ExpectedException attribtue specifies that executing the test code would raise an exception. See the example below

using System;
using NUnit.Framework;
namespace NUnitCoreConcepts
{
[TestFixture]
public class CoreConcepts
{
[Test]
[ExpectedException(typeof(DivideByZeroException))]
public void DivideByZeroExceptionTest ()
{
int zero = 0;
int num = 100;
int result = num / zero;
Assert.Fail(“We are failing the test if it doesn’t raise an divide by zero exception”);
}
}
}

Write some test code using NUnit and you can start using it in your projects right away.

Author emphasizes that one should understand the core values and principles of XP first. A good read. I feel that this book only gives you an idea about what Extreme programming is. Each principle, value and practice by themselves are topic of exploration and learning.

I definitely did had inspiration from reading this book. Here are some of the inspirations from the book translated into my own words.

I have to work on things what experts call simple and obvious. Read this sentence 10 times and you will understand its importance.

Don’t wait for the perfect moment to start. Start immediately and you can always make change to the plan by doing a reflection ( This one disease of mine is the one that holds me back from doing many things. Tonight I plan that I should wakeup at 5 AM and start reading the book. Tomorrow, I would wake up at 5.30 AM. My mind tells, its not a perfect start.. Start reading from tomorrow., Heck.. How did the author read my mind..)

One cannot improve anything without first improving himself.

Probably this the first book, I read cover to cover after a long time. I feel refreshed and energized after reading this book.

Well, I am going to start another book tomorrow..

04-Oct -2007

It all started with welcome address by Dr. P. Narayanasamy HOD Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DCSE),Anna University and an inaugural talk by Dr K Jayaraman, registrar, Anna University. Dr K Jayaraman gave an overall view about Agile Development methodologies and some statistics; like 80% of the features in software remains unused etc. What surprised me was; a man whose primary work is not Software development was able to speak about Agile. Its evident he has done his homework and It was a good speech. Then Dr. Appa Rao from CTS spoke. He quoted a survey result from Forrester that some XX % of CTO’s and CIO’s wanted to switch to Agile Development. Well, will switching to Agile Development will ensure success of project??.. I dont know.. Dr. T V Gopal, professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DCSE),Anna University ; the man behind organizing this event in Anna University thanked the speakers. I was inspired by Dr. T V Gopal. He is simply great. The way he spoke in the conference showed that he is very informative and well educated. He gave some anecdotes in between the conference talks. Here are some of them

Estimate yourself whether you are in a position to estimate project. He quoted some facts from Dr. Parnas paper. It was very interesting.

As a student one has to excel individually and at work he/she has to excel as a team.

One dark night, a man was searching something around the lamp post for a long time. A passer by stopped and asked him what he was searching? The man replied -he lost his keys and light is available only near the lamp post and he is trying to find his key there. Likewise we are trying to solve all the problems with the limited knowledge we have..

Overview of Agile by Siddharta Govindaraj, Silver Stripe Software and Balachander Swaminathan, ThoughtWorks US

Bala gave a breif overview of Agile. He started of with a definition for Software Engineering from IEEE. He explained that the software development as an Engineering principle worked in NASA and the cost for it is very high which cannot be applied in business software. He spoke about lean thinking, eliminating waste and The Toyota Production System and how to apply lean thinking in software development. He spoke about the agile practices at Team level, Individual level and Organizational level. A good talk and a presentation.

Siddharta spoke about the importance of understanding the Agile Values before practicing them. He gave some examples of how the practices may go wrong without proper understanding of values. Here are some of them

• Retrospective : when done without understanding the value, it will become a blame game
• Standup : The value of standup meeting is to let know others what one is doing and what bottlenecks he faces. without understanding the value, it may become a status report meeting
• Agile is not a set of practices, but a set of values

A good talk by both Bala and Siddharta.

Introduction to XP and Scrum : Pradyumn Sharma, Pragati Software

Pradyumn gave a breif introduction about XP and Scrum. He explained what stories are, what are the various testing in Agile. He gave a small introduction to Scrum, role of scrum master etc. Pradyumn had a very natural flow and gave a good talk.

Introduction to Agile Testing : Narendra Parihar, Microsoft

Narendra spoke about his experience of implementing Agile testing in Honeywell. He had contradictions with the previous speakers like – they had 40 members in the standup meeting etc. He said he has used Yahoo widgets for the dashboard.. Got to explore how to use it in my project. He also said that they were using StarUML in their project. So, finally I found an opensource UML tool.. Honestly, I think this presentation could have been avoided.

Ashok : Elsevier

Ashok was a participant and was very enthusiastic. He volunteered to give a speech on how Agile is practiced in his company. He works from London office and he attended this conference while he is on vacation. Here is what he talked about

Kick off Meeting

1. Business owners give the high level overview of the project
2. Development teams, stakeholders attend the meeting
3. Master story list is identified
4. Story card contains the requirement and the acceptance test
5. Story cards are given to developers for estimation
6. Iteration planning is done

XP Game :

The day ended with XP game to illustrate various activities of XP. A nice program.

Overall the day was very good.

04-Oct -2007

Day -2 started with a keynote by Jeff Patton. He spoke about Blending User Experience and Analysis in the Agile Customer Role. I would say it was a great speech. He told that people learn skills in a 3-stage progression

Level 1 : Following (shu) .

Learn a technique that works. At this stage people feel that success == following a technique

Level 2: breaking away (ha) .

Learn the limits of the technique, learn to shift between technique ( shu, ha , ri are the japanese terms used in martial arts)

Level 3: fluent (ri)

Shift technique at any moment

He used Jesse James Garrett’s (the person who coined the word AJAX) user experience model in his presentation. He also spoke about usability by showing many examples.

Case study 1: Fixed Price Offshore Agile projects. Marco Jansen. ThoughtWorks UK

Jansen spoke about his experience of handling an insurance project from India. The client is UK based. He spoke about how the team was split, how the stand up meetings were held when the team grew etc. A very nice talk. It gave an idea of how the agile project will be executed in a distributed environment

Case study 2 : Effective Product Development using Agile Methods. Bapiraju Nandury, Curam Software

He spoke about how he introduced Agile into the product development. A good talk. They use J2EE and he shared about his experiences. He showed some screenshots of how they are effectively using Microsoft Sharepoint for their project. He talked about his experience of introducing Pair Programming in his project

Lab Session: An Introduction to Pair Programming
Bhavin Javia & Naresh Jain, ThoughtWorks India

This is one of the wonderful sessions. If at all, I was asked to pick up one session I liked the most from this conference, I would pick up this. I should thank Anna University for allowing us to use their labs for this hands on session. Naresh and Bhavin showed us how to do TDD. They did a stack implementation. Then we were asked to pair among ourselves and do a sorting algorithm. It during this time I found a wonderful person Balaji Sowmyanarayanan (Read his blog and achivements and you will understand why I call him wonderful person). I paired with him for the first part of the session and Marco Jansen paired with me during the second part. A great experience. I got a feel of what Pair programming is and also how to do TDD. Note that I dont know how to do Unit testing. But I learnt from this session. A wonderful session which I will not forget..

Retrospective

The conference ended with a Retrospective. We talked about what went on well, what has to be improved and what are the things should be avoided.

A great conference.

I know, to achieve my goal, I have to work hard; work more hours; read more and above all write more programs. In short, I should have plans. Of course, I have plans; and here they are with its retrospect.

1. Plan: Health – Play Basketball

Retrospect: Heck, there are no basketball courts near my home. So I went for swimming for a week. Then I went to Gym for a week. Now I don’t do anything

2. Plan: Read books.

Retrospect: I have a long list of books to be read. But I hardly concentrate on reading.  I don’t read them cover to cover.. I read N pages in one book and then jump to another book; read N pages and jump to another book..

3. Plan: Explore Opensource projects

Retrospect: I have sofar installed two open source projects. I didn’t spend time to read the code and for that matter, make it work.

4. Plan: share what I learn. In other words, write at least two/three blog entries a week; speak at local user groups etc

Retrospect: I hardly write blogs.  This blog is standing proof . I haven’t sofar spoken in any conferences.

5. Plan: Learn New Language

Retrospect: No action sofar

Looking back, I have a plan – a good plan to make myself better.  What I am missing is “Motivation” and  the killer instinct to achieve my goal. I don’t know why I am not having them. I know I am failing to make improvements and will regret for it later, I know it will hurt my future.  I know I have to bring back my motivation.  Here is my attempt to bring back my motivation. I feel that if I get rid of my bad habits and bring in a DISIPLINE in my life, Motivation will come in. So here it is

1. Concentrate on only the important things

Heck, I read hell a lot of blogs every morning (6AM – 8AM). That eats almost all of my early morning hours. From now on, I am not going to read those blogs every single day and will read it during weekends. My priorities are my goals and not what everyone  does everyday.

2. Stop Procrastinating

Ask my wife and she would say how I procrastinate. I never do things immediately – either its writing blog when an idea strikes or taking care of family chores. Hey…. Reward comes after Labor in dictionary and real life.  Stop procrastinating. Procrastination is my worst kind of attitude for a long time. I have to get that out of me.

 3. No TV..

Someone once told me “People who watch Television(TV) doesn’t come on TV”.  “TV stands for Time Virus and it eats your time” Of course TV is the worst virus next to procrastination I am infected with. TV eats almost all of my time during weekends.  I am going to force myself for NO TV. 

4. Rome was not built in a day

I wanted to achieve so many things in a day. I have to understand that I can’t do everything in a single day and become a better programmer the next day. My To-Do lists gets bigger and bigger every single day – the reason – I  procrastinate. I feel that if I stop procrastinating and do things, I will be ok.

5. Google is good Friend and Worst Enemy. 

Yes, Google is good friend when I wanted to find information. At the same time, it’s my worst enemy.  It makes me lazy: If I want a piece of code, I search and find the code.. Heck, I am so lazy to figure it myself.  So, less of Google on stuff that I work on in my office. Try to reduce Google as much as possible in my programming job. I am only a half Google Driven Programmer. I can live without Google (For my future recruiter)

6.  Get rid of the Thinking that I should do everything perfectly.

This is what “de-motivates” me all the time when I wanted to do something.  I wanted to do everything perfectly or dont do it..   I do the later more often and never do anything.  From now on, I am going to do a little something instead of not doing.  It will give me sense of progress..

7. Retrospect your progress every week and write a blog

You can find more about this conference in http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/agileindia/message/919

This is targeted towards beginners. So, if you are interested in Agile, do plan to attend this conference.

Bottom line, go, read books, learn skills, write programs, programs and programs to become a better developer. Nothing, but a disciplined and focused hard work can make you a better developer.

Book : Object Thinking by David West

“The destination is easy—to become a better software developer. Or maybe not so easy since “better” requires more than the addition of yet another skill or technique to one’s repertoire. Techniques, tools, skills, and facts are part of becoming better but are insufficient in themselves. Integration with existing skills, the transformation of facts into knowledge (even wisdom), and the ability to base one’s future actions on principles and ideas instead of rote procedures are all essential to becoming better.”

“The process of learning a culture—enculturation—is partly explicit but mostly implicit. The explicit part can be put into books and taught in seminars or classrooms. Most of culture is acquired by a process of absorption—by living and practicing the culture with those who already share it. “

Read the entire preface of the book here

Book : Designing Object-Oriented Software by by Rebecca Wirfs-Brock , Brian Wilkerson , Lauren Wiener

“Like any other human endeavor, software design is an art: discipline, hard work, inspiration and sound technique all play their parts.”

1. Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Programming Step By Step
2. Programming Microsoft Visual C# 2005: The Language
3. Object Design: Roles, Responsibilities, and Collaborations
4. My Job Went to India: 52 Ways to Save Your Job

I know its bit too ambitious.  But,  I am going to take this up a  monthly goal and review it at the end of Aug.  One of my objective is to read almost all the books that are on my bookshelf.   I buy books , read a couple of chapters and jump to another book.   I am not going to do that this time.

That being said, Justice Gray blogged on “How I am becoming a better developer, part 1 of infinity -” by posting his goals to the public. This blog entry is based on simple idea – have your goals written and share it with someone. Cool.

I was not tagged by anyone (read Justice Gray blog ) , but am greatly inspired by the above blog entry. I am trying to experiment  myself by writing my goals and sharing with you.  This, in a way is kind of self motivator.  Here goes what I am planning to do for the rest of the year.

1. Health
   Yes, I am a programmer and I spent most of my day sitting. I also have a bad eating habits. I am putting Health as my first priority for obvious reasons. . I am planning to join a Basketball Club. At the least, I will be jogging every day. If anyone of you live in Chennai and would like to play basketball, do drop me a mail.
2. Read Two books every month
   I would be reading two books a month. I have a very long list of books to read. Each month, I will post an entry on what books I am planning to read and at the end of the month do a retrospect about my reading.
3. Learn Agile Methodologies.
   Agile Methodologies….. Of course, Agile is my Favorite subject. The more I read about it, the more I feel ignorant about it. So, a more disciplined approach is required to acquire the skills to become a better developer. I will be learning about these
   1. Unit Testing
   2. Continuous Integration
   3. Build Automation
   4. TDD
   5. and the list will go on
4. Share What I learn
   Here comes the part which shows/proves the public that I am really pursuing my goals. I will be blogging about what I learn very often. This blog is going to have more code like Algorithms, Data Structures etc under Code Kata.
   I will also be building some “Breakable Toys” To start off, I will be building an ASP.NET AJAX oriented CallTaxi System. My Breakable Toys would be kind of workable systems that are developed for the sake of learning. If you have any better ideas on projects, please do drop a mail. I would like to join with you or you can join with me to develop Breakable Toys.This year, I would also be speaking in any of the USER groups. I want to bring back life to Chennai Agile User Group which had only one meeting so far.
5. Read & Understand code of an Open Source
   I will be spending time to read code filed under CodePlex. I will be also spending time to read & understand code from Castle Project
6. Learn a new Language
   A low priority, but definitely on list is to read a new language this year. This could be Ruby and Rails.
7. Make New Friends.
   Make some new friends this year who share the same passion as I have. Do drop a mail and we shall meet and network

Abstraction is the process of identifying the relevant details (and ignoring the irrelevant details) of a concept for a particular purpose.

What do we mean by relevant details of a concept? Well, layers of details of a concept is really endless. For example, details about the person (concept) can go on and on. Name, date of birth, sex, education,color of eyes, color of hair, height, weigh, employer, driving license, medical history, employment history, work experience, nationality, ethnic background, .. (you can keep going ) are some of the details of a person. But not all of this details are required for a software system (particular purpose). The relevant details of a person when abstracted as student would be name,age, address etc (work experience or driving license details etc are not relevant here). The relevant details of a person when abstracted as Employee would be name,age, address, education, previous employment history etc (ethnic background , color of hair, eyes are irrelevant details here). So, abstraction is the process of identifying relevant details about a concept.

Abstraction is a natural mental process. People understand the world by constructing mental models of portions of it. People try to understand things so that they can interact with them. A mental model is a simplified view of how something works so that you can interact with it.

Mental models are usually simpler than the system(concept) it mimics. For example, a map is the model of a territory. The map is simpler than territory (it doesn’t include all the details thats on territory). In otherwords, a map abstracts only the relevant details of a territory. A road map will contain the details about locations and driving directions. A topographical map will contain details about landscape.

Some more information about abstraction can be found on my blog entry What is Data Abstraction?

A very detailed information can be found here -Abstraction, Encapsulation, and Information Hiding

I have been searching for someone to help me learn OOAD. My search ended on Adaptive Learning Solutions. and there are many reasons, I choose to go with Adaptive Learning Solutions.

1. The author is well experienced in OOAD. He knows that OO is an important skill that an developer should acquire.
2. I am really impressed with his technical capabilities. This is evident from his blog. All his technical articles are very detailed and are very interesting to read.
3. He has a good Course Content.
4. The way the course is modeled is excellent. Its kind of self learning. I will be writing what I learnt in the blog and he will comment on my understanding of the concepts.
5. Above all, I was impressed by his concepts about learning. Click Here to learn more.

I am planning to utilize this learning opportunity to the fullest. I am confident that I will gain more from this course.

1. WindowsLive Writer
2. BlogDesk

Sofar, I feel that BlogDesk  is more customized for wordpress.  It can download the categories and allows you to make posts on certain categories.  On the other hand, WindowsLive Writer has a better Spell checker than BlogDesk (Update : WindowsLive Writer also has wordpress categories on the top right hand corner).   So, kind of confused which one to go with.  I will be using WindowsLive Writer for sometime and see how it goes. 

I am joining a webbased course on OO. I will post about this in my next post.

Good that the internet connections are getting in-expensive in India. Thanks to the communication minister. More and more people are getting connected to Internet now a days.  

 Now that I have my net connection in home, I will be posting regularly on this blog.  Lets see how things go …

• http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/practicing-programming
• http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/being-the-averagest 
• http://www.devblog3000.com/archives/2-Practicing-Programming.html
• http://blogs.pragprog.com/cgi-bin/pragdave.cgi/Practices/Kata
• http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/what-you-need-to-know

1. Onsite Opportunities
2. Employee Recognition. 
3. Career Growth in Current Job
4. Money
5. Work on Newer Technologies
6. Poor Leadership.  

Of the above only in the first case, people leave the company happily.  For all other reasons, people quit with frustration.  Market and company policies play a major role in this attrition game.  Take for example -  “Career Building  by Job – Hopping”.  If some X is accepted in some Y designation  by a prospective Employer,  what prevents the current employer  from giving his employee the same designation and work environment ( here I am talking about talented people.. I am not talking about people who make careers with false information).   Take an example with  Money.  Some Z quits his current company O to join a new company N to get 30% more money.  To replace  Z, the company O has to pay 30% more than what he pays for Z.  Why not pay 30% more to Z and retain him?

As you know, thinking about this makes you go mad.  You can come up with examples like this. I was wondering where things are going wrong?  Is it the Employee or the Employer?.  A kind of difficult question to answer.  Employee and Employer have their own reasons to speak up. As always, Google is the right place to find the answers.  Here is what I found from Google.  No wonder, people have already thought about this.  But then there is no solution for this until otherwise companies have a strong policies of retaining employees.

Combating high attrition  (Source : Express Computer)

10 reasons why organizations are not able to retain employees . You will find more in this blog
Sharing Best Retention Practices Curbs High Attrition Rates in India

Share your comments

If you happen to read a couple of bloggers whom you feel are good at programminig, You will be  interested to know how people set targets and work towards it. I believe that’s the difference between people who really succeed and people who think to become successful.  The first kind of people doesn’t make much noise. They set targets, achive them with passion and simply move on to the next.   The second kind of people makes huge noise about their plans, their targets. But at the end of the year, they have nothing to say that makes them proud or brings them pride. 

Try to be one of the first kind. Set goals,  push your confidence level up, push your limits

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=238321 

My mind is determined to learn more things and to become a better person/software developer.  May be I will be missing something in the near future but, I am confident that my efforts will make me a better programmer and in the long run will pay off.   I know that the journey is long; it may take several years to reach my destination.  I am determined to work.

In my journey of making myself a better programmer, I am learning many things. I feel very bad for missing these things so many years.  My professor on the very first day in my college told me that I should be learning for life to be in this field. It took me 6 years to understand the real meaning of it.  I call this journey as “Back to School”.

From this month on, I will blog what I will be reading for this month.  At the end of the month, I will update what really happened to my planning.

I spent quite a lot of time before picking up a book for reading.   The only problem is that I will read half and leave the other for some other time.  I have so many books that are half read and are waiting to be finished.   This month, I am planning to complete a couple of half read books.

1. Programming in the Key of C#  - Charles Petzold ( Half complete.  1 Week)

2. Beginning C# Objects   (Half Complete So far 2  Weeks) 

3. Object Thinking  - David West ( 1/4^th Complete  - 2 weeks).

Optional

1. Practices of an Agile Developer.  I have already completed this book.  I have planned to re-read it once in a month or two months so that I can follow a couple of practices in my  work.

2.I also have  Interface Oriented Design that’s halfway through. I will  try to read a couple of chapters in this month.

It will be great if Incomplete the 3 books and read a couple of chapters in the optional category.   

I will also be posting regularly on ChennaiAgileUserGroup and my blog.    An Ambitious September.  

A couple of our friends still remembered our anniversary and called up to wish us. Thank you for wishes gentlemen.  Thanks for remembering.

I don’t know if I can mention their names on my blog without their prior consent.  Since I am only writing my observation about them (and all of them are positive),  I choose to carry on…

I would like to take the examples of three people (ofcourse, I have a couple of others too )

Vamsee  (blog.viamentis.com)
Rajesh Babu (http://learningjourney.co.in/)
Ravi Mohan (http://ravimohan.blogspot.com/).

When you closely observe these guys blog,  their thinking and thoughts will be totally different from that of the main stream software developers.   (By main stream software developers, I mean – those are the software developers or engineers or managers who read one or two un-cooked books and hail themselves as experts in XYZ and are fighting to claim up the co-orporate ladder…. ).    I was wondering what might have shapped up their thoughts and thinking.  According to  me, fundamentally, ones thought is shaped by Culture (ie associating themselves to a winning and happy culture), Reading and Just do it attitude.

Let me first talk about Reading.

By reading, I don’t mean reading a book or two about the subject and making noise.   In one of the blogs Ravi has mentioned that he has given away some 300 books on Java sometime back ( he is currently not into Java related Technology).  I am very sure that 300 should be a rare collection of a Java programmer.  One of Rajesh Babu’s venture- learningjoureny is help readers to get books that are not available in India.  Successful people read a lot.  They spend lot of time reading books.  In my experience, before hearing about Agile Methodologies, most of my reading would be technology based books.  They didnt shape up my thoughts.  Just syntax reading and basic concepts.  But for the past couple of months, I am preparing myself to become a better developer.   Agile methodologies showed me many directions in this regard. My reading  expanded too many different books. Book after book, I feel that I need to learn more and more about it. After reading a book, I feel confident, but at the same time, I feel that I haven’t read much. So, I keep reading…   One right book will  ignite you.  That one book will make you to look for another and another.   For the first time in my life, I read two books in month of Aug and am reading the third one. I have many in my to buy list. 

Second Culture.   Here I am not talking about culture that has normal meaning.  Successful people create their culture of their own.  They  have their own displicines.They stick to their disciplines.  They know how to make negatives positive.    They do what ever it takes to achieve things.  They are not bothered about this and that daily routine.  They will create an environment for their success. Vamsee moved from Hyderabad to Chennai,  Rajesh moved from Banagalore to Chennai, Ravi is planning to move from Bangalore to USA.  Successful people move to places where they love to be.  They don’t get stuck with the culture where everyone knowingly get caught and refuse to come out. If the place is not good, they move, if the company they work for is not good they move to another, if they don’t find any satisfied company, the plan to start their own.  Creating a culture is very difficult. Its easier said than done.  This is the one which I will be moving towards in the next  year.  

Just Do it Attitude…

Attitude plays an important role in shaping up ones life.  All these successful people have Just do it attitude. They do the most important things in their life and leave other things back.   If they feel that their thoughts and directions are right, they move on.. They don’t wait asking others for their suggestions.  They just keep doing things and move on.  They learn new things, they do new things and they just do it.
And finally yes, I am working towards becoming one of successful.  My metric for measuring Success is very high. I know it will take a lot of time to achieve it.  But I am confident that I will at one point in my life achieve it and continue doing it.

Personally, Its all about freedom for the development community.  Today, Microsoft has money to re-build software that is popular in market and bundle it with its product and sell it to customers, there by forcing many companies out of business.  Is it a fair game.. I dont know..

My personal view point is – “One should know internal working of computer atleast to a minimum”. But then, minimum is a subjective term. We have lot many subjective terms floating – like Health, Quality, Performance, Security etc. For some health means running 10 miles at a stretch and for some, health means walking a few steps. For some Quality Software means bug free software and for some Quality  may be different. For some Service means devlierying something in a day and for some , service means delivering something in a week. So, the subjective terms can only be quantified by you. As such, the minimum knowledge can only be quantified by you.

I wish you atleast read a couple of books a year (set this your minimum).

Ok, lets answer the question. Should I care. Take a look at this program.

using System;
class InternalWorking
{
     static void Main()
     {
          int i = 2;
         for (int j= 0;j<10;j++)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(” {0} * {0} = {1}”,i, i*=i);
        }
   }
}

If you compile and run the above program, you will see the following output

2 * 2 = 4
4 * 4 = 16 
16 * 16 = 256 
256 * 256 = 65536 
65536 * 65536 = 0 
0 * 0 = 0 
0 * 0 = 0 
0 * 0 = 0 
0 * 0 = 0 
0 * 0 = 0

Why is that “i” became zero after some point of time.

Now, I am going to initialize i to 3 in the above program and see what happens using

using System; 
class InternalWorking 
{ 
     static void Main()
    {
         int i = 3;
         for(int j= 0;j<10;j++)
         {
             Console.WriteLine(” {0} * {0} = {1}”,i, i*=i);
          }
      }
}

The output is as follows  
3 * 3 = 9 
9 * 9 = 81 
81 * 81 = 6561 
6561 * 6561 = 43046721 
43046721 * 43046721 = -501334399 
-501334399 * -501334399 = 2038349057 
2038349057 * 2038349057 = -1970898431 
-1970898431 * -1970898431 = 120648705 
120648705 * 120648705 = 1995565057 
1995565057 * 1995565057 = -1876701183

Oops.. why is that results are getting negative after some point of time. Well, definitely my computer is not mis-behavinig.

Ok.. here goes the explanation of why it gets to negative after some point of time. All integers in C# occupy 32 bits. Of this, Most Signigicant Digit (MSB) is Sign bit. The sign bit for positive numbers is 0 and negative numbers, its 1. So effectively 31 bits are used to represent the number. In the above program, we get the correct results as long as the result can be represented with 31 bits. When the numebr gets larger, it takes up additional bits. We know int uses only 32 bits and so, the remaining bits are ignored. The above program, after a few iterations, sets the 32nd bit ( which is sign bit). Thus it becomes negative. It gets into a kind of circular loop.

May be the following code will help you understand more 

using System;
class zip
{
     static void Main()
     {
          int iMaxValue= Int32.MaxValue, iMinValue = Int32.MinValue;
          Console.WriteLine(” Int Max Value is {0} and Int Min Value is {1} “, iMaxValue ,iMinValue);
          iMaxValue++;
          iMinValue –;
          Console.WriteLine(” Incremented Int Max Value is  {0} and Decremented Int Min Value is {1}  “, iMaxValue , iMinValue);
          Console.WriteLine(“Is Incremented Int Max Value equals Int MinValue? (True/False) : {0}”, iMaxValue == Int32.MinValue  );
          Console.WriteLine(“Is Decremented Int Min Value equals Int MaxValue? (True/False) : {0}”, iMinValue == Int32.MaxValue  );
     }
}

The output is 

Int Max Value is 2147483647 and Int Min Value is -2147483648
Incremented Int Max Value is  -2147483648 and Decremented Int Min Value is 2147483647  
Is Incremented Int Max Value equals Int MinValue? (True/False) : True
Is Decremented Int Min Value equals Int MaxValue? (True/False) : True

Negative numbers are represented using 2s complement. Well, I am not going to get into the details of 2s complement here. Do write your feedback..

The linux distro now has everthing in it.  The look and feel of user interface is similar to that of Windows, the open office is similar to Microsoft Office.  From open office you can even open an ms word file.   Great.

Raman spoke about FOSS -  Free Open Source Software.  Off all the advantages he mentioned about FOSS, the following got my attention

1. FOSS is about Freedom – Free as in Free – Speech and NOT Free as in Free-lunch.   Its not about cost, its about Freedom.
2.  Cost of commercial software.   This is the one which I am experiencing in my real life.  Being in M$ for about 7 years, every time a new tech is released, I need to depend on my Employeer to get the license to learn it.   That means, I cannot do anything in  my  home to try out something..  But on the other hand, there are quite a lot of things happening in JAVA world.  Like ANT, JUNIT, Curise Control etc.  Though alternatives like NANT, NUNIT  are available,    most companies use MS Visual Studio in their development environment (that’s not free)…  May be I am not able to put it correctly, you understand what I am saying
3. A few years back,  I read an article that Chineese Govt is standardising on Linux for govt offices.. I then thought it was a bad idea.. but now I feel how important it is.  Most of the govt departments in Tamil Nadu are getting computerized and the cost associated with commericial software is going up. They are now standardizing on Open office.  True, govt saves a lot of money in it.

A great introduction.  Next week, they have a session on basic commands.   I have to get a computer and have linux set up.   But, one of my goal is to go to ……  But its not getting materialized.. I need to do somehting about my learning and moving to Linux and open source.

Well, the main reason for me taking up an offer with my current employer four and a half years before is because, I was promised that I will be sent Onsite ( the word – Onsite mesmerized me).  Many things happened – the project for which I was selected didn’t get through and so am forefully pushed in to project that uses technology which is not current.   Though the technology was not current, I learnt a lot of things in this company.  I learnt about Data Modelling ,  got exposed to DBA activities,  got exposed to the workings of a department and above all its my first coroprate experience..  So good so far…

Over the period of four and a half years,  I failed to keep myself current on the technology. I wouldn’t say that I didn’t read/study new technology.  Infact I learnt but I didn’t put them in to use (because of the project constratint).  Me keeping myself not updated on technology let to many dis-appointing moments.   The very first being – my manager who so far claimed that I was doing an excellent job, told me a couple of days before that I don’t have any of that super thing on my skillset ( I don’t know what the super thing he has.. anyway that’s none of my business.  He has the authority called MANAGER and he can talk right at my face, but I cannot do that – not a computer logic).  I was dis-appointed to the core. But then he is true. Introspecting where things went wrong, I found that my laziness and procastination were the reasons.   So many times I planned for studying ( buy books.. believe me I have enough books on the technology on which I wish to equip and they sleep well in my book shelf), but all the times I failed to execute the plan.  But now, after this incident, something has went into my head and heart (something more emontional).  Now, I have a solid plan to get myself equiped.

I did a search on web and I found that there are many people who has been in this situation and many have overcome that.  I get to read their blogs, read their articles and get valuable information from them.  Thanks for all of them. 

I am confident that I can get back and add that Super thing back into me.  Thanks for stopping me and saying that you don’t have that super thing in your ….

Why I write this in an open Blog.. I don’t know.. After all this is a place where I can  my thoughts rather spill my random thoughts….  

SELECT jobs.job_DESC
 ,count(*)
FROM JOBS
LEFT JOIN EMPLOYEE
       ON JOBS.JOB_ID = EMPLOYEE.JOB_ID
GROUP BY JOBS.JOB_DESC
ORDER BY 2

The records returned by above query

Business Operations Manager                        1
Chief Executive Officer                            1
Chief Financial Officier                           1
New Hire – Job not specified                       1
Designer                                           3
Editor                                             3
Sales Representative                               3
Acquisitions Manager                               4
Managing Editor                                    4
Marketing Manager                                  4
Operations Manager                                 4
Productions Manager                                4
Public Relations Manager                           4
Publisher                                          7

But in database, the job "New Hire – Job not specified" has no records in employee.  So, it should zero.

After doing some research, I found how silly I am.  The correct query will be
SELECT jobs.job_DESC
 ,count(EMPLOYEE.JOB_ID)
FROM JOBS
LEFT JOIN EMPLOYEE
       ON JOBS.JOB_ID = EMPLOYEE.JOB_ID
GROUP BY JOBS.JOB_DESC
ORDER BY 2

The results of this query is

New Hire – Job not specified                       0
Business Operations Manager                        1
Chief Executive Officer                            1
Chief Financial Officier                           1
Designer                                           3
Editor                                             3
Sales Representative                               3
Acquisitions Manager                               4
Managing Editor                                    4
Marketing Manager                                  4
Operations Manager                                 4
Productions Manager                                4
Public Relations Manager                           4
Publisher                                          7

Then, I went to books online and checked the argument list for COUT… it clearly states how the COUNT works..

COUNT(*) returns the number of items in a group, including NULL values and duplicates.

COUNT(ALL expression) evaluates expression for each row in a group and returns the number of nonnull values.

COUNT(DISTINCT expression) evaluates expression for each row in a group and returns the number of unique, nonnull values.

A simple thing, but today it took me sometime to figure this out.  Good that I learnt this atleast now.  I then thought how else can I achieve the above results by giving * as the argument to COUNT (but then, these are only possibilities and not efficient ways).   It can be achieved by using Correlated sub queries and Union operation.

Correlated subquery

SELECT job_Desc
 ,(select count(*) from employee where employee.job_id = jobs.job_id) as count
FROM Jobs
ORDER BY 2

UNION operation

SELECT jobs.job_DESC
 ,count(EMPLOYEE.JOB_ID)
FROM JOBS
JOIN EMPLOYEE
       ON JOBS.JOB_ID = EMPLOYEE.JOB_ID
GROUP BY JOBS.JOB_DESC
UNION
SELECT job_desc, 0
FROM jobs
WHERE job_id NOT in (select job_id from EMPLOYEE)
ORDER BY 2

Three different (may be more) ways to achieve a result. Certainly one is better than other two.  No wonder why we programmers write bad code…     

Session 1:  Windows Power Shell : The next generation of Scripting  

 A good session on introduction to power shell.  The concept is very good.  Its built up on alias concept.   Now you can use unix like commands on powershell. The Microsoft says  its for administrators to switch between windows and other operating systems easily and they can use the same commands to achieve the tasks.  Power scritping is based on .NET2.0.  Powershell is based on OO concept.  Power scripts view File system as objects, registry as objects, process as object.  This means that you can use “dir” on file system, “dir” on process, “dir” on registry.  The speaker introduced to powershell was really good.

Session 2:  Introduction to Windows Workflow Foundation – WWF

A good session.  Its about workflow.  Basics of workflow was covered.  A good session.

Session 3:  Sharepoint 2007 for developers.

 A disappointing session. Speaker was late.  He rushed in just browsed through a few pages. I don’t know why they had this session in their itenary.  A flash demo on website is enough to cover this… 

 Session 4:  Developer Productivity with VSTS: Automated Unit testing

A good seesion. The speaker covered about unit testing, code coverage etc. Though they werent deep enough, it was a good introduction.  The speaker spent a few minutes on VSTS features and focused on unit testing.  Microsoft has now realized they cannot get away from agile.  The speaker even touched about TDD and Agile.

Session 5:  BizTalk 2006 Whats in for a Developer.

 An Excellent session. The speaker gave introduction go Biztalk taking a case study. He talked  about

• EAI  -Enterprise Application Integration
• B2B – Business to Business
• Business Work flow and porcess control

He touched about the following

• Orchestration
• Pipeline
• Adapter
• Business Rules Engine.

 Finally we had some entertainment session.  They conducted a session called  “15 seconds to Fame” in the afternoon. The eight people who entered the finals were contesting for a smart phone and one guy walked away with samrt phone.

To sum up,  given the experience, I will attend the next TechEd.  Even if the company doesn’t pay me, I am planning to go for it.   But the next time,I need to be very selective in the sessions to attend. A good eye opener.  

 We are having a Kick off meeting on 8th July 2006 with a presentation by Sanjiv Augustine.  We are in the process of finalizing the venue.  I will post another message once the venue is fixed.

I attended the Developer track.  Its fairly a good day.  Of  the five I attended today, I didnt like 2.   I feel that two were more towards marketing the product and so not very informative.   Here are the details

Session 1:  Extending the ASP.NET Provider Model  

The speaker spoke about Membership provider model.  Though the concept is good one, I am not sure how it will be applied for building Enterprise applications.   The speaker was signing the marketing song.. “We didnt even write a single line of code.. we have done so many things..”.   In my 7 years of experience,  I havent written a full fledged application  using the tool features as trumpeted by MS.   I dont wish to go in detail in this.

Session 2:  Ajax for ASP.NET Developers – Atlas.net

A good session. The speaker covered the various programming models in Atlas – Server Side and Client Side.  She had some interesting demos.  She also showed how to write Ajax based application using xml and how its taken care of by Atlas java scripts.  She spoke about various server side Ajax based extenders / controls.   This is the second or third time, I am listening to the ATLAS seminar conducted by Microsoft.   It was informative.

Session 3:  Using CLR inside SQL Server: Best PracticesA good session. 

The speaker touched about the various topics on where should C# code to be used and where not to be used.  How CLR memory is loaded.  What the security aspects.   He described the various scenarios where the CLR code should be used. Basically, he is suggesting that C# code should be used where TSQL cannot achieve things.  Example would be to access a webservice from database, to write user defined functions etc.  Speaker was very knowledgeable and a good session.

Session 4:  A peep at the Future .NET LAnguages : LINQ

This is the best presentation of the day and I liked it very much.  A great presentation.  The speaker went into every minute details of the LINQ.  Other speakers, if you read my blog, take a note of this.  We look for this kind of presentations.  We pay  money to hear from experts like the guy who presented this.   Definitely we not interested in your marketing stuff – ” we did this with one line of code .. we did this with 3 lines of code” etc.   An excellent presentation.  The way he presented showed his experience in LING.  A great show.

Session 5:  Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Enterprise Class Source Control.

This didnt influence me.  I am currently using a Borland product which has features more than what speaker spoke about.   Another session similar in the lines of first session. No comments.  Teched guys, please stop this kind of marketing stuff.
Disclaimer : The thoughts expressed here are purely of mine.  This doesnt reflect the thoughts of any one.

 Finally we had Demo shoot out.  They asked audience to come and present the demo.  A couple of them were really very informative. 

 An overall good day. Lets see how tomorrow is going to be.

 There are many object modelling methodologies.  Typically a modelling methodology consists of following three components
1.  Process  :  The how to steps for gathering requirements and determining the abstraction to be modelled.  There are many proceses out there. The one which has wider acceptance is Rational Unified Process – RUP.  RUP is  a software development methodology that contains analysis, design, project management, configuration & change management.
2. Notation :   A graphical language to represent the model.  There are many standards available for representing the model in graphical notations. A couple of them are 
                            OMT – Object Modelling Technique (James Rumbaugh)
                            Booch Method – Grady Booch
                            Use Case as means for finalizing Requirements - Ivar Jabcobson.
                            UML – Industry Standard. (The above three guys contributed                      much to this standard)
3. Tool :  A tool to help us to build the model.

Requirement Analysis using – "Use Case Modelling".

USE CASE  is a narrative or graphical represenetation of a particular goal of a system.  ie, the representation of
(1) who are all the users of the system,
(2) what services should the system provide 
(3)  when teh user(s) interacts with the system for a particular purpose, what is the desired outcome.

Note:
1. Use Cases capture only the functional requirements (like purpose of the system, users, look and feel  etc.) of the system. ie goals of the system. They dont capture the technical requirements  (like how the system should be implemented, whether it will use a particular technology etc).

Actors :  Actors are the users of the system after its build.  They can be end users, a computer system or anything.   Note that a particular user can play multiple roles- example John can be a regular user of the system and can also be administartor of the system. In this case, there are two actors – regular user and administartive user. So, dont confuse actors with physical person.  You need to identify all users(and roles) of the system.  Once its identified, it can be represented in a graphical format using UML like below.  Actors are represented as a sticky figure, the use case by an oval and the system boundry is represented  by a rectange.

Note that there can be arrow heads in the line that connects the actor and the system.  An Actor can provide information to the system, can consume information from the system or do both.

A use case represents a logical series of events begining with Actor's first contact with the System and ending with the achivement of actors goal of using the system.  In a Use Case, an actor always initiates the process.The use case shown above is a highlevel one.  It can be decomposed based on the system. For smaller systems, there can be usecase for each module, a larger system there can be an usecase for each functionality. 

Class Diagrams

Classes identified can be classified like
1. Domain Classes – That represent the system
2. Implementation Classes – These classes are doesnt represent the system, but are required for implementation. For example collection class is an implementation class
3. Association Class – A class used to associate two classes.  For example if there is a many to many relationship between two classe, then a third class called association class is introduced to make the relationship. (just like data modelling, we introduce a third table to refer a many to many relationship) 

SEQUENCE DIAGRAM

Sequence diagrams are UML diagrams for representing various scenarios of the system.

Graphical representation of how message should flow  from one object to another in carring out a given scenario.

Example
public interface IBankAcccount
{
    double AccountBalance();
    bool  IsActive();
}

Note that we havent declared if a method is public or  private.  In an interface all the methods are public and abstract. So, we need not specify the accessibility type in an interface.

Implementing an Interface (not inheriting an interface)Example
public Class SavingsAccount : IBankAcccount
{
   public double AccountBalance()
   {
       Console.WriteLine (“The business logic for the account balance goes here “);
    }
    bool  IsActive()
    {
           Console.WriteLine (“The business logic for the ISACTIVE goes here “);
    }
}

Abstract Class Vs Interfaces

Note: 
Interfaces cannot be intatiated.
Interfaces dosent have constructors

A method with only method header and with no method body is called as Abstract Method.   A method with a method header and a method body is called as Concrete Method.

In abstract Class you can specify the method with only method header like in the following example

public abstract class BankAccount
{
      private string name;

     public void PrintName()  // Concrete Method
    {
          Console.WriteLine(name);
    }
    public  abstract void printAccountType(); // Abstract Method

}

In the above class, note that the class is also declared abstract.  Whenever a class contains one or more abstract methods, then the class should be declared Abstract.  It is not necessary that an abstract class should only contain abstract methods.  It can also contain Concrete methods.

The methods which donot have a definintion (or method body) is defined using the keyword abstract as in the above example.

The derived class of abstract class should have a method implementation that are declared abstract in base class.  For exampe

public class SavingsAccount : BankAccount
{
         public  override void printAccountType()
         {
              Console.WriteLine(" This is a savings account ");
         }
}

Note : If the derived class does not provide concrete implementation of all the abstract methods that it  inherited from the abstract class,  the derived class will still be an abstract class. Only when the derived class provides concrete implementation of all the methods from the abstract class, can it be intantiated.

Note : If you search the web for polymorphism, you will find many many definitions. I even read somewhere that overloading is also a kind of polymorphism.  But  a majority of the sites say the definition similar to the above.  So, I am sticking to it.  Remember there is no hard core definition for any of the object oriented concepts.  That is the problem why people run away from basics.

Example :   I would like to give two real time examples for polymorphism. 

1. School Bell.  Lets say that the final bell rings in a school/college.  What happens - a group of students go home, a group of students go to play ground, a group of students go to library and a group of stundents go to special classes.  What do professors do. A group of professors go home, a group of professors proceed to lab to continue their research, a group of professors do admin work etc.  The message ( ie school final bell) is same for all the objects (students & professors. note that professors and students are two different types of objects), but the way they respond depends on the object.   This is a very good example of polymorphsim

2. If you give an instruction "cut' to three different people – a hair stylist, a doctor and a movie actor. How do they respond.  The hair stylist cuts the hair.  A doctor will cut your body for surgery, a movie actor will stop acting. The message (cut) is same to all three objects ( actor, hair stylist and a doctor), but they threee respond in three different ways. This is called as polymorphism.

Inheritance with overriding facilitates polymorphism.  

Lets say that we have a base class called Class A and it has a overridable method called print which prints all the attributes.  Then by inheritance concept, all the dervied class will inherit this print method. The derived classes can either override the print method or use the print method from base class.  So, all the objects of base class and derived class have a method called print and they respond differently to a message based on its class implementation.

How is polymorphism implemented ?
 The fundamental idea of polymorphism is that a compiler doesnt know which method (ie base class implementation or derived class implementation of a method)  to call during  the compile time.  It only knows during run time ( based on the  object).   This is called as latebinding.  This type of polymorphism is called as "polymorphism by inheritance"

Polymorphism can also be achived through method overloading.  During the compile time itself the compiler knows which method to execute. This is known as early binding. 

• Array -  In C# arrays are objects.
• Ordered lists  – similar to array. elements placed in a particular order and retrieved in same order
• SortedList  - similar to ordered list. The elements are sorted when added to collection
• Sets – unordered collection. (like throwing the marbles into bag. we dont know which will come out when we pick one.. order of retrival is not known). Important aspect of set is duplicates are not allowed.
• Dictionaries (in C# HashTable) – provides a way for storing elements with a unique lookup key for the element.

User defined Collections :  You can create user defined collections using the inbuilt collection types.  Just like you use basic datatypes to create a user defined data type, you can use the inbuilt collections to build user defined collections.

Collections of SuperTypes :    Array is sequence of memory locations where elements of same type are stored.  This is true for an array of string, int or some other primitive datatypes.  But for storing the references of the objects (instances of classes), the rules are bit different.  The rules are different because  of the power of inheritance.   It turns out that if we create an array of baseclass (lets call it Class A), then the array can store the references of objects of base class (ie Class A) and all the derived class of the base class. 

In C# only arrays allow us to specify the type of class (ie type of array)  . All other collection types dosent  allow us to  specify the type. Most collections in C# are designed to hold the type System.Object (which is the base class for all the collections for both user defined and in-built datatypes) . So you can put any type of  objects into collections in any order.

Example.  Lets say that we need to model a bank account.  Lets say that the bank has only two types of account  – Savings Account and Current Account.  Both of these accounts have some charateristics in common.  So, we define a class based on common charateristics called BankAccount.   Now to create a class called for SavingsAccount / CurrentAccount, we can derive/inherit the fetaures of BankAccount. This is known as inhertitance.   BankAccount is called base class/ super class.  SavingsAccount/CurrentAccount is called as derived class / sub class

Inheritance can be single (only one base class) or multiple (two or more base class)).   C# supports only single Inheritance.  Multiple  inheritance is not support in C#.  To achieve multiple inheritance in C# we need to use Interfaces. 

Inheritance in C# is indicated by the following syntax

<access modifier><classname> : <baseClassName>

Example : public class SavingsAccount : BankAccount { // declare the additional info needed for savings account}

In Inheritance, what ever is true for BaseClass is also true for derived class.  For example, all the attributes and member functions in baseclass  – BankAccount  is also true for derived class -SavingsAccount .

Since derived classes are special category of base class, its called as specialization.  In otherwords, specialization is the process of defining a new class based on definition of existing class.  Generalization  is the term used to refer the baseclass (ie recognizing the common features of several existing classes and creating a common base class for all of them) . 

Inheritacne is based on accessibility of the baseclass.  All public members are inherited to derived class. But there is some complexities in inheriting other accessibility types.  We will discuss them later. 

Inheritance is also called as relationship between classes.  It is different from that of Aggregation and Association.  It differs at the object level.  While Association and aggregation is between individual objects,  Inheritance on the other hand is the way of describing a single object.  ie with Inheritance, an object is simultaneously an instance of derived class and all of its base classe(s).

Note : In C# System.Object class serves as the base class for both user-defined and in-built datatypes.  We will discuss about Object class in seperate post.

The single most important advantage of Inheritance is Reusability. There are many other advantages like creating a new derived class as and when required with out affecting the base class (which will be of great benifit in software development where requirements keepi changing every now and then).

If we want the derived class to have a different implementation of a method than that of base class, then we use a concept called as Overriding.  In otherwords customizing the way that a derived class performs a service—that is, how it responds to a given message—as compared with the way that its base class would have responded to the same message, is accomplished via a technique known as overriding

Overriding  means changing the methods implementation in derived class without changing the interface or method signature.  In order to override a method in C#, the method to be overridden has to be declared virtual  in the base class using the virtual keyword.  Declaring a method a virtual means, it may be (but its not necessary) overriden in the derived class.   The derived class has to then override the method using override keyword in the derived class method implementation.  The overriddent method in the dervided class should have the same return type and method signature.

Example
public class BankAccount   // this is the base class in our example
{
 private string firstName;
 private string lastName;
 public virtual string getFullName()
 {
  return  lastName + firstName;
 }
}

public Class SavingsAccount: BankAccount  // this is the derived class in our example
{

 public override string getFullName()
 {
  return lastName + ", " + firstNAme;
 }
}

 Overloading  :  Overloading allows two or more methods in the same class to have a same name with different parameter list.
Example
public void Draw(int x, int y);
public void Draw(int x, int y, int z);

Note : Constructors are overloaded and they are NOT OVERRIDDEN.

We programmers are no different than blind men.  We learn one aspect of the technology ( even if you know how to write a "Hello World" program, you call yourself a techologist in that area) and think that we are professionals without understanding the important aspect of the technology (or software development for that matter) .  I am now trying to get a feel of complete software development.  I know its really a tough job. But, I have taken a step and am confident that I will be a better developer than I am now in sometime . I am working on it and if you read my blog,  you will notice that I am doing something to understand the technology rather software development starting ground up.

For a given association between object A and object B,  there can be three possible categories (the following are called mutiplicity).

1. One to One.  Exactly one instance of Class A is associated with exactly one instance of Class B and vice versa.  Example: A department has exactly one Head and One Head can lead only one departmet
2. One to Many : One instance of Class A can have many instance of Class B.  From perspective of Class B, there can be only one Class A  Example : A department employees many Professors, but a professor works only for one department
3. Many to Many :  For a given instance of Class A there can be many instance of Class B and From Class B perspective there can be many instances of Class A.  Example : A student enrolls in many courses and a course has many students

Link is the relationship between two objects. There are no multiplicity concepts in links.  Links always exists between two objects.

Example

Link :  Azagu works for Company-xxx

Aggregation : Aggregation is a special type of association or otherwise called as "Consists of " or " has a " or " is composed of " relationship.   Like an association, aggregation is used to reprsent relationship between two classes.  But with Aggregation we are representing to more number of relationship.  Example,  A car is composed of engine, gear, wheels etc.

Student s = new Student();

In the above line, C# compiler actually calls the constructor of Student class to create an instance.  The constructor allocates the required memory and returns the reference of the memory.

Strictly speaking constructors are not methods (you cannot invoke a constructor with a dot notation). Constructors are executed when the object is instantiated.  If there are no constructors specified in the class, then C# by definition automatically provides a parameterless constructor to the class which initializes the data members to zero-equivalent values.  There can be any number of constructors in a class (but the parameter list should vary).

Points to Remember when you are writing a constructor

• Constructors dont have return type
• Constructor name should be same as the class name
• Constructor cannot be invoked by dot notation. 
• A class with only private constructors cannot be instantiated

There is something called as "Class Constructor" (also known as static constructors)  in .NET. We will discuss this in a seperate post.

A good article on Constructor can be found at Constructors

In a well designed object oriented  model, an object publicizes what it can do, ie what services  it can provide.  It will hide  the internal details like how its implemented,  how it performs the service etc.

In OO terminology, this is achieved through the concept called Accessibility. Accessibility determines if  the attribute/method is accessible outside of the class.  In  C#, the accessibility is achived by using the access modifier keyword  at the begining of the declaration. 

ex private int age; public string Name; public string GetFullName(); etc.

C# defines five tyes of accessibility. We will only list what they are.   We will discuss them in future

The accees modifier keywords in C# are

1. private (attributes and methods are private by default)
2. public
3. protected
4. internal
5. protected internal

Methods of a class are typically declared public (there can also be private methods in a class).  The reason is that the class should publicize its service. On the other hand, the attributes of a calss are declared private (so that the object will have control over data) and give access to private attributes through public methods.  There are two ways of providing access to private attributes through pubilic methods.

1. Get/Set methods
2. Properties. C# prefers to go with properties way.  A property defines whats called as get accessor and set accessor.  Note that get and set accessors are not methods.

Get/Set are public methods that access the private variable.

Properites or get/set methods are called as Accessors.  ie, they are the methods that give access to objects private members.

Example
public int GetAge(){
return age;
}
public int SetAge(int myAge){
age = myAge;
}

Property in C# behaves like accessing the public attributes.

Example
public int Age{
       set { 
             age = value; // note that value  is implicitly declared variable.
        }
       get{
          return age;
      }
}

In client code,  we will access like 
         <objectName>.Age = 12;
      Console.WriteLine(<objectName>.Age);

The power of Encapsulation

We sofar have discussed that letting attribute values to  be accessed through public method is the best way of implementation.  It has the following advantages

• Authorizied access to attributes – Some attributes are only accessible by the object itself, some are accessible to outside world
• Data Integrity. you can have logics in get/set method that prevent aribitary setting of attributes. For example, if you have a date attribute inside your class, you can have logic inside get/set methods, that prevents any other values other than date to be set to the attribute
• Hiding the implementation details.  Your method implenetation details are always hidden from the users of the service.  This means that you can change the method logic without affecting the users of the service.

Lets take a realworld example of getting  a service and compare it with the objects.  Lets say that you are going to Railway booking counter.  In order to get the service you will / should do the following

1. First and foremost you should know what services are provided in railway booking counter.  Examples of services are a) An option to check the ticket availability in automattic teller machine, b) To book / Cancel a Ticket c) General Enquiry etc.  You cannot expect your favoirte dish to be served in Railway booking counters.   Similary, to get the services from an object, another object should know what are the services provided by the object.  
2. You should speak the language of the ticket booking clerk. ie, if you want to book ticket, you got to fill in the application form (fill in your name, source and desingation of travel, your seat choice, train number, train name etc) and give it to the clerk.  You cannot go and ask the clerk "give me a ticket" (you know what response you get in railway booking counters) . Similarily, one shouuld communicate with objects by providing information in the way object expects in-order to get its service.
3. The railway ticket clerk will issue a ticket if there is a seat available, else she will say "no tickets for mentioned train".  Similary, objects will perform the service and may or may not pass on the information back to the requestor.

 To summarize, object should publicize their service, the requestor should communicate with the object to get its service by providing additional information if required and finally the object will peform the service and may or many not notify the requestor.

In OO terminology these three aspects of an object's behaviour are taken care by defining a method header.  A method header is the formal specification of a behaviour of a object.  It gives information on how to invoke the object.  Its these methods that implements business logic of a system.

Note :  Before reading a couple of books on OO, I used to say "calling a method".  Its not the correct way to say. One should say as "invoking a method".  Its not a such a big thing but for me it is..

Ok, back to method headers.  A method header contains the following

• Method Return type
• Mehods accessibility modifiers  (We will discuss about this future)
• Methods Name
• An optional list of formal parameters seperated by comma ( specifying the type and name of parameter) enclosed in parenthesis

Example :

public                                 bool             IsEligibleForVoting     (  int iAge  )

Access modifier               return type   MethodName          Parameters            

Note : Methods need not always contain paramters. In such case the parathesis are left empty     

Method Signatures :  Method Headers with out return type, names of parameters are called as Method signature.  A method signature contains method name, order, types and number of parameters being passed to the method.

Example  Method Header   : long  AddTwoNumbers (int a, int b)

               Method Signature :  AddTwoNumbers(int, int)

What are Arugments and Parametes ?

The purpose of the arguments is to pass information to methods.

1. A tangible and visible entity. ie. physical objects
2. Something mental or physical towards which thought, feeling or action is directed. ie conceptual objects

So examples of objects with respect to a college

Physical Objects : buildings, chairs, tables, classrooms

Conceptual Objects :  course, department etc.

The definition of objects can be used to define what  software object is.  A software object is the idea of combining together state (data) and behaviour (operations), that when taken together represents the abstractions of realworld (physical or conceptual) objects .

What is this state and behaviour ?  We will look at them right now.

State :  To capture information about an object, we would require something called data eletements. Lets say that we need to capture information about an employee of an organization.   We would capture information like employee name, address, sex, date of birth, department, designation, salary, educational qualifications etc.   The employee name, address, sex etc are called data elements.  In object oriented terminology, these data elements are called attributes.  This attributes are called as fields in .NET.  These attribute values when taken together determines state or condition of the object. For example, if we want to determine if an employee is eligible for promotion, we need to look a the employees current designation, educational qualifications etc.

Behaviour :  In object oriented terminology, behaviour is something (action) an object does to access the attributes and to modify/maintain the attribute. For example, to know the salary of the employee, the ojbect need to access its salary attribute. When an attribute value is changed, it means that the objects state is changed.  For example, if we change the value of designation attribute to manager, then the state of employee is changed from current state.  Behaviour can also be servicing a request. For example a department object shall ask all the employee object the salary.  

In C# terminology, the behaviour is called as method

What are Classes?

A class is an abstraction describing of common features of all objects in a group of similar objects.  For example, a class called Employee describes the Employee object.

The class describes the following about an object

1. Attributes and their datatypes
2. The methods

An object can do only the t hings (methods) that are defined in the class. Similary, an object can only set and access the attributes defined in the class.

Classes can also be viewed as Templates from which an oject is created.  Some even call class as user defined datatype (I am not sure if I will call it like that).

From a class we can create many objects.  The process of creating an object from a class is called as Instantiating.  Since objects are created from a class, objects are also called as Instance of a particular class  

Difference between Class and Object

Encapsulation

Encapsulation is the formal term given in Object terminology to mechanisim of bundling attributes and methods together.

Composition

Composition is the technique of having attribute as reference variable.  That is, an attribute with in a class can hold reference to antoher object.  We normally do this in our class design.  But we dont know what OO calls it.  I am mentioning it here so that I remember it in future as well

So, we see that abstraction is the basis for object oriented programming.  Abstraction serves as the foundation for determining the classes for a particular system (which is called object model).   But be advised, there is no acid test to decide if the abstraction for a given system is right or wrong. A "person" abstraction for a hospital information system would be different from a person abstraction for a library information system and even with hospital information system, person abstraction may be different for different projects.

Once you have abstracted an object, it can be re-used.  It can be modified to suit other situations.   As a child you learnt Tri-cycle. You used the experience of learning tri-cycle (handle bar control, pedaling) to learn bicycling.  What actually you do to learn bicycling is that you only learn to balance the bicycle while you use the experience of tricycle to use handlebar and pedaling.  The same case applies to abstraction as well.

Though abstraction seems to be a simple concept, it’s a challenging task.  The reasons are

1.  There are un-limited numbers of possibilities to define an abstraction for a situation. 
2.  As mentioned earlier, there is no acid test to determine if the abstraction is right or wrong.  You end up discussing, arguing with your counter part that yours is best and his is worst…. He does the same thing…

However, these problems are always addressed as you gain experience (which you can gain by reading more books/articles and doing real time projects) in defining the abstraction. Abstraction by itself is a huge and an interesting concept.  But, I feel that most of the people, who define classes, do it without knowing what an abstraction is. Most of the times they are right.   But doing your work with more knowledge (knowing what you are doing) lets you to enjoy.

 Note: Characteristics of a situation or object may be seen (legs of a table) or unseen (smell of a food), felt or unfelt.   This means that there is no specific definition for characteristics of a situation or object..

Hope this article gives you an idea about Abstraction.   Please feel free to post comments on what do you think about Abstraction.

First letter in the name is in upppercase and first letter of each subsequent word concatenatd should be in uppercase. The following will follow Pascal casing 

1. Method names

2. Class names

3. Public attributes of class

4. Namespace

Camel Casing

First letter in the name is in lowercase and first letter of each subsequent word concatenated should be in uppercase.  The following normally follows came casing

1. Variables

2. Private attributes of class

C# Keywords

         In C# all the keywords are in lowercase.  Note that Main is not a keyword.  

I am now reading a book called “Beginning C# Objects” by Jacquie Barker and Grant Palmer – Apress.  Since I will be concentrating on C#, I choose a book which gives me introduction to Object Oriented concepts with examples in C#.

So, I think  I have taken a health first step towards mastering .NET.  You can find the basic and advanced concpents about OOPs in this section.

Greetings!

I am moving my blogg from blogger to wordpress.  One major advantage I found with wordpress is – it allows me to categorize.  But for the categories part, I am prety much happy with blogger. 

With this new blog, I have some change in direction on  my posts.  Here you can expect posts under various categories

1. Software

2. General

3. Career

I will be adding on categories when I find.  My current focus is on learning .NET and Agile Methodologies.. 

A part of the action plan towards achieving the above goal/wish is to start a technical blog and record my learning every week. I will be having atleast one post week (not limited to one, it may be more). It will be a summary of what I learnt over the past one week.

My learning journey will start from the basics…

1. Basics of Programming – Data Types, Functions, Structures, Program flow etc
2. Basics of Object Orientation
3. Gradutating slowly but steadily to intermediate to advanced levels of programming in C#
4. ASP.NET with C#

Its one of my belief that getting basics strong is the very essential thing for a programmer. So, I decided to start with basics. It may take time, but I am sure that after sometime I will be a better Computer Professional.

This Month, I will be reading and posting about two books.

1. Programming in the Key of C#. Charles Petzold. The url for the author is http://www.charlespetzold.com/. He is in programming for many years. He has a couple of best selling books in Microsoft Technologies. His one of the book for beginners is "Programming in the Key of C#". A good read so far. Summary of my learning in next blog.
2. Beginning C# Objects: From Concepts to Code by Jacquie Barker and Grant Palmer Apress © 2004. This is one of the very good book for learning basics of Object Orientation. The author has a very vast experience and is a professor in one of the top universities in USA. She has one of the best selling Java book for her credit. More information about the author in http://objectstart.com.

So, am ready to get started.. I will have more techinical stuff from next week.

This is Nivasini's First Pongal. Myself, mom, wife, Nivasini, Grandma and Goutham went to Thottingadu for Pongal. This turned out to be a simple one and for the first time, we are having pongal without cow.. there are no cows in our farm this year. Gone are the days where the pongal preparations would start a month before. But, now things have changed totally. Pongal for most of the people in my place is just another day..

Does this mean that our harvest festival is slowly dying? May be… Only thing I can do now is think of good old days..

Today I went to a book fair in Chennai. Its been organized by “The Booksellers and Publishers Association of South India” at The Quaid-e-Millet Govt Arts College for Women. There is a stall for every publisher. What surprised me was, over 95% of the stalls (there are 280 stalls) are Tamil Publications. Man, I never imagined that there are so many Tamil Publications. What surprised me even more is the response to this book fair. I didn’t find a stall where I can move in freelly and check the books. There are 100’s of people waiting in Queue to enter each stall.

In the fair, the people from Publishing group spoke to me in Pure Tamil. They were polite to everybody. Good to be in such an environment. (You will not be surprised to see people talking on a Tamil Book in English…. I don’t know why? Anyway..)

Though I didn’t get too many books in the fair, it was kind of a great experience to me.

Today is kind of special day for me:

* Jan-8th is my daughter Nivasini's first Birthday.
* This is my very first blog
* I attended the very first .NET Community meeting today.

Its also a most missed day in my life.. Yes, my daughter and wife are in Pollachi. I missed my daughter's first Birthday. Its kind of very very sad thing.. Actually, myself and my wife decided to celebrate our daughter's birthday in Pollachi. We planned this a month ago and I booked my train tickets then. Late last month, there was an email stating that there is a .NET community launch today (http://www.CNUG.org) in Chennai. I stayed back to attend the community launch….. The reasons for this decision may be logical, correct and etc etc.. but a missed day is a missed day….

So, what will be on this Blog? Mostly the stuff that interests me. It would be mostly about .NET, my family and my friends and relatives.

You can expect at least one technical post a week. It will also contain incidents that made me happy or worry…..

With that said, I Welcome you all to my Blog. Happy Reading..

Azagu.