This blog book and associated eklavyasai.blogspot.com blog are part of my humble give-back contributions in gratitude to the field of software development where I earned a decent livelihood, helped fulfill my family obligations which was made possible by my software profession earnings and enjoyed my work most of the time. I was in the software industry from March 1984 to Aug. 2002 joining it as a trainee programmer, progressing over the years to Programmer/Analyst (software developer), Project Leader, Project Manager and Software Manager finally in 1990 (all positions were as employee of software companies). From around March 1993, I became a freelance corporate trainer in software development (programming courses) and later an independent technical consultant (no longer an employee) which lasted till I took commercial retirement from the field in Aug. 2002.
The software development (SD) field enabled me to make great friendships with fellow software developers, and others like support staff and managers in software companies that I worked in or interacted with in India as well as outside India, get exposed to life in USA and Europe over assignment stints there totaling around 3 years, and get interesting exposure to South Korea through a short around 2 month stint there. My SD field work also involved interesting marketing trips to Europe and Singapore. It enabled me to retire from commercial work at 40 years of age to pursue my spiritual aspirations while leading a simple, single (unmarried) spiritual aspirant life.
The logical analysis skills which I had learned in school and college (I am a Physics graduate), were honed by the SD field through analysis of complex programs and large software systems. Software design and architecture to create technically sound software systems were taught to me by the SD field. It taught me that being honest about mistakes made by me, some of which were pointed out by peers and customers, rather than go into arrogant denial, was the way to produce better software designs and code. I learned that in software code and design, arrogant denial does not overcome truth, even if denial may cloud the truth for some time. Eventually it is the truth that triumphs over falsehood including arrogant denial of truth. The computer machine as well as the SD field in general is awesome in how they do not tolerate falsehood and how truth always triumphs on the computer machine and in the SD field in general. I learned to overcome the egoistic discomfort I initially felt when design reviewers pointed out flaws and suggested improvements in my designs, and matured as a software designer to the stage where I humbly and wholeheartedly welcomed and indeed, craved, for suggestions for improvement as well as flaws being pointed out, in my designs by peers.
Handling people, understanding their interests and views, motivating them, giving them reasonable freedom in their work, and cherishing and celebrating team achievements were taught to me both by my SD field management work and also by learning how managers that I reported to, and my peers handled me and my many human flaws. The great amount of literature and documentation that I read while in the SD field on technical as well as management and business related matters played a vital role in significantly expanding the horizons of my mind. It is the SD field that made me grow as a person from a Physics graduate job-seeker to a well settled and confident man who either knew his limitations or, especially in initial stages of my SD field career, was brutally made to realize such limitations by some mistakes and initial failures, and worked within those limitations to deliver on SD field work. Later in life, this growth as a person positioned me to seriously look at and write on larger challenges of understanding ethical/moral norms as well as existential reality of life from an individual perspective and from a larger community perspective, and the role of spirituality & religion as well as rule of law (of the state/country) in those areas, in our times and also in the past.
My bio-data and software industry work experience are given in an appendix of this book. My self-published book titled, “Autobiography of an Indian Software Techie and Spiritual Aspirant – Part 1” and sub-titled "Covers Mumbai & Dombivli based life with some foreign stints, till 2002 (age 40)" covers my software industry work period in a hastily written manner (due to lack of time; my apologies to readers). https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/p/autobiography-of-indian-software-techie.html [short link: http://bit.ly/2GVctBG ] has the links for free download of ebook version of above (part autobiography) book as well as paperback sale page links.
I take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to all the individuals, groups of individuals, companies and organizations including educational & research institutions that created, sustained and developed the software development field. This includes computer scientists, technologists (architects, designers, developers, quality assurance engineers etc.), teachers (including corporate trainers), (business) entrepreneurs, investors and, last but not the least, users.
Another aspect of my humble give-back contributions to the software development field was my stint in a Department of Mathematics & Computer Science in a deemed university in South India, where as free service rendered as a spiritual offering, I taught software lab. courses (software development/programming courses) mainly to Masters students in Mathematics and Computer Science fields, and guided student project work related to software development at Masters level (M.Sc. Mathematics and M.Tech. Computer Science) for around 9 years from Jan. 2003 to Mar. 2012. During this period I had designations of Honorary Staff, Honorary Faculty and Visiting Faculty. I also additionally played a partial Lab. Manager role from Jan. 2003 to around Jan. 2008. I should also mention that I have taught a few software lab. courses to Physics Masters students in this deemed university.
An appendix in this book gives details of the software lab. courses I taught in this deemed university.
The eklavyasai.blogspot.com blog grew out of my exposure to the challenges faced in Indian Computer Science (CS) and Information Technology (IT) academia in teaching software development well to its students.
A few friends have made significant contributions to the eklavyasai.blogspot.com blog which is the basis for this book. Thanks guys. The eklavyasai blog lists the contributors here: https://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/p/contributors.html.
The contributors/friends who agreed to have their pen-name/name mentioned in this book are:
The contributors usually do not have their name/pen name mentioned in the blog posts and associated parts of this book, but are named in a few articles. They are usually referred to as simply friend (or correspondent). Any content in the book that is not shown as having been contributed by somebody else, can be presumed to be written by me.
Besides the above mentioned contributors, some other email correspondents, which include some leading international Computer Science academics & industry figures, have also contributed to the eklavyasai blog by agreeing to me sharing some of their email responses on this blog. However, I have included only some of their comments in this book due to permission issues. But I will be referring to those comments which I have not included in the book by directing readers to the associated blog post.
One particular international software industry as well as Computer Science academic person, spent a lot of his valuable time in sharing his views on the matters raised in eklavyasai blog, and gave great encouragement to me to do that work. He prefers to be anonymous and so I am not mentioning his name here. I thank him profusely for the views he shared with me on eklavyasai blog posts and related matters, and for the encouragement he gave me.
Readers are free to disagree with the views expressed in this book and associated blog. I and other contributors have expressed our views (at that time). If some of those views are helpful, or in future become helpful to some readers then the effort put in by me on the blog as well as this book would have had positive impact. However, even if that does not happen, that’s fine by me. I am very satisfied that I have shared my views and thoughts and suggestions, along with those of other contributors, on the important issue of improving the teaching & practice of software development in Indian Computer Science (CS) and Information Technology (IT) academia/higher education, and through that I feel as if I have done my duty to my beloved field of software development which played a big role in making me what I am today. Note that some of the views, thoughts and suggestions in this book may apply to other countries’ CS & IT academia/higher education.
Ravi S. Iyer
1st March 2020