While stumbling through web sites, I hit upon , Doolwind’s Game Coding Site, which presents a interesting test to find what type of programmer you are.
My result was
Your programmer personality type is: DHSB
You’re a Doer.
You are very quick at getting tasks done. You believe the outcome is the most important part of a task and the faster you can reach that outcome the better. After all, time is money.
You like coding at a High level.
The world is made up of objects and components, you should create your programs in the same way.
You work best in a Solo situation.
The best way to program is by yourself. There’s no communication problems, you know every part of the code allowing you to write the best programs possible.
You are a liBeral programmer.
Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We’re not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.
I am sharing the content of a email, I received today. Author unknown. A story about a software engineer. Here it goes:
It was raining heavily outside. Dark clouds gathered in the sky and nature was in its ominous best. I took a break from my work and went to the pantry to grab a cup of coffee. I had a sip and went near the window to see the rain pouring down heavily outside the glass structure. I was inside our huge office building, unruffled by even the fierceness of the nature.
Through the heavy transparent glass, I could see a small girl trying to hold on to her umbrella which the wind was snatching away from her. I felt sorry for the girl, and was happy that I was not in a similar pathetic situation. Yes. I take pride for the fact that I am a software engineer.
I have everything which a common man would envy; money, status, respect, you name it I have it. I always wanted to be software professional and here I am, working for one of the best firms in the world. But then, am I really happy? Now, I could see an imprint of my palm on the other glass window, through which I reminisced my past, basked in the warmth of the sun shine.
My childhood was so much of fun. I vividly remember those rainy days, when I hugged my mother tightly during sleeping listening to all the stories told by her. Now, I have a big house here, but then it is just a house, not a home. My parents are pretty far away from me now. I have a cell phone to talk to them everyday, but then I really miss those dinners which I had with my family everyday. I could easily afford to taste all the different cuisines these days, but the best of food there, lack the love and affection which is present in the food prepared by my mother.
I threw a lavish party for my colleagues for my birthday, but then they would never replace the birthdays when my friends secretly brought a cake and at the end, half of the cake would have ended up on my face. The couple of hundred bucks that u save for a long period just to give a treat to your friends in the road side chat shop can never give the pleasure even after spending a few thousand bucks these days.
The scene of me crying and refusing to have dinner on the day when I fought with my best friend came to my mind. Today, she has gone far away from me, taking away my love and with it my life, but I am sitting and coding here with a false smile on my face. Everyday I meet new people, but then I long ceased to make a new friend.
It’s true that I have a lot of things now. I have a nice bed, but no time to sleep. Lots of money, but no friends to spend it with. The latest designer clothes, but a worn out body . Awards for technical excellence, but no reward for the crave for peaceful ambience. A confident demeanor, but a reluctant and apathetic mind. Full of rain, but no sunshine even in the farthest distance.
Now, I could see the small girl on the road enjoying in the rain with her umbrella firmly in her grip. She might not have all the comforts which I have, but then she has the innocence and fun which I lost a long time back.
I have decided to come out of this false fantasy, even if it is at the expense of losing the tap of the software engineer. I am going to again enjoy my life. I am going to go out in the rain and play with the small kid now. I removed my tie, and went near my computer to shut it down. Just then, I saw a new mail alert in my mail box. I slowly opened outlook and I found a message from my manager with an attachment saying that there was a critical defect in the code and I have to fix it soon. I convinced myself that I am not going to get bogged down again by these pressures and stick to my decision. I ignored the mail and went to the rest room. After a couple of minutes, the software engineer in me came out, his shirt tucked in with the perfect tie knot, sat before the computer, and started typing,
Hi XYZ,
I am looking into the defect and will send the patch files before EOD.
I have registered a domain www.raasukutty.com. So I am moving this blog to the new domain. Everything remains the same excepting the design and the URL.
Happy to write my 50th post. That too on my own online identity. I have hosted the wordpress blog on DreamHost on Sudar‘s advice. So officially my site is www.raasukutty.com.
To quote Frost:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
As a candidate, you attend a lot of interviews and as a result, tend to have quite a lot of offers in hand. But before choosing one among them, there are quite a lot of things to be considered. You may be looking for a change for a variety of reasons like monetary hikes, different role, escape from a management you consider sucks, etc.
Check with the people working in the company about the company, its work style etc. Ask a few questions to the interviewer during the interview or to the people after the interview. The question can be:
1. What do the company specialize in.
2. Why would he/she want you to work for them instead of his/her company’s competition.
3. What will you be your role and responsibility in the company if you take up the offer.
You would need to know about the average intelligence of the people working in the company and how they find the work. This is more important than it appears to be. Always people tend to grow in a company where the average intelligence of the people working around them is a little higher than them. They are into a challenge where they are supposed to perform better, thereby getting a chance to improve oneself. Also ensure that the intelligence is not too high, because you will find left out in a race between the rabbit and the tortoise. Find a company where the challenges will appear realistic.
Ensure that the company work offers you a good work-life balance. “All work and no play” is not what you expect. You must find your job fits in properly in your life. (I say, your job should fit into your life, not your life into your job). Everyone wants to work for a living and not live to work. This should be taken into consideration while making the decision. All companies say that they work from 9 am and 6 pm and their employees stretch if necessary. What if the stretch is on everyday. Then you tend to lose interest soon, tired and wanting a change. Talk to people in the company and in the project that you will be allocated to and make the decision. The company should be flexible enough on the timing, to accomodate your needs.
A good company provides its employees the best environment to work in. A clean and nice looking workplace is one that brings the mood set for any developer to start work. A separate cabin, comfy chairs and a powerful system is what everyone expects. These are the things that make you look forward to working. Ability to express ideas, easy people and a feeling that your voice is heard in the management is what makes one to continue with any company.
Lasty, a good compensation. Money is one thing which drives people, but it is not the ultimate goal. You tend to be first attracted towards a company by the salary they offer, but it is not the only thing that will sustain your interest. So keep monetary gains as the last reason when choosing a company. What if, they pay you lots and you are supposed work 16 hours. What is the use of earning, when you have no time to enjoy?
So decide wisely! So that you don’t start regretting the decision after joining!
I had challenges in understanding the documentation for installing and configuring CruiseControl.Net with StarTeam as the souce control in a Vista system running IIS 7. Finally I have successfully set up cruise control to work. I am listing the steps to get it working.
Step 1:Grab a copy of CruiseControl.Net from here. Run the setup. As a part of the install, the setup installs the ccnet server and a webdashboard.
Step 2:Once installed, to get the webdashboard up and running, fire your browser and type. http://localhost/ccnet (this is the default virtual directory on install. This points to the $InstallFolder/webdashboard folder in your build server. If the system is running IIS5 or 6, then you will see a CruiseControl.Net page, in IIS7, an 500 error is thrown. To resolve this issue, proceed to Step 3, if no issue was encountered, proceed to Step 4.
Step 3:Run the followin command as an administrator. Note: Here ccnet is the virtual directory which points to the physical location of webdashboard in the system.
%SystemRoot%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd migrate config "Default Web Site/ccnet"
Once the command is run, then just restart iis and browse to http://localhost/ccnet. It should show the CruiseControl.Net dashboard.
Step 4:Next step is to configure the ccnet server. Open the ccnet.config file located in the ‘server’ folder of the install directory to edit.
Project Section:
Define the project section. The project name can be any identifier not necessarily your project name. This will be used by CruiseControl.Net to recognize your project.
Source Control Section
In my case, the source control was StarTeam. Various properties like login credentials, project etc, are to be set.
Executable:Path to the ‘stcmd.exe’ the Star Team command line utility.
Project:The name of the Project as defined in Star Team, that has to be extracted.
UserName, Password, Host, Port:Star Team Server connection setttings.
Path:Path from which files have to extracted from StarTeam. Example: Consider the Project root folder in StarTeam is “Test”. Let the project and solution files lie in the hierarchy “Test\TestProject\MyProject”. To pull the project files and solution from this location, specify “Test” for project and “TestProject\MyProject” for path.
Override Folder Working Directory:Path to which the files from Star Team are to be checked out for the build. If not specified, the original working folder specified in the StarTeam will be used to extract the files.
Auto Get Source:Specifying this to ‘true’ will allow CruiseControl.Net to automatically check out files from StarTeam
fileHistoryRegEx:I had to make a change to the Date regular expression, as my regional settings was configured to English(India), wherein DateTime is specified as DD-MM-YYYY HH:MI:SS (IST). I had to change this, since I got a Format invalid:System.DateTime exception during the run.
TimeOut:Specify the timeout for StarTeam polling.
Following is the complete listing of the starteam configuration block.
StarTeam
MSBuild section
I used MsBuild for the build task. Following section explains the properties involved to get the MsBuild setup for CruiseControl.Net.
Executable:Path to the ‘MsBuild.exe’ file in the system.
Working Directory:Location of the files to be built. i.e., Location to where the StarTeam extracted the files that need to be built.
Project File:The .proj file or the .sln file that needs to be built.
Build Args:Specifies additional arguments passed to the msbuild.exe.
Targets:Actions to be done. Here I wanted Clean’ and then ‘Build’ done on the Solution.
Timeout:Time after which error message will be displayed if there happens to be a failure to invoke the build.
Logger:Location of the logger assembly that will be used to produce the build result.
Following is the complete listing of the msbuild configuration block.
MS Build
Triggers Section
Triggers section specifies the time and condition when the build of the project had to be invoked. During intital setup for testing, set the buildCondition to “ForceBuild” (forces a build), and once the testing is done, change it to “IfModificationExists”(does a build only when a modification is detected).
Following is the complete listing of the Triggers configuration block.
Triggers
Step 5:Run the ccnet.exe application located in the ‘server’ folder of the CruiseControl.Net install location. The code will be pulled from the StarTeam to the location specified and the build should proceed. The results of the build are stored in the $InstallFolder\ProjectName\Artifacts\ms-build.xml file.
I was in my hometown, Neyveli for the Deepavali vacation some two weeks back. Sitting in the garden, in the silence of the morning, I could see a lot of birds looking out for food, chirping and making the scene alive. Four squirrels were fighting over the left overs. It was nice watching them. I felt light then, a joy that can’t be described. Feeling of oneness with nature.
There are some things that money can’t buy. One among them is this. Living in the city, I had long forgotton the charms that nature provides. A part and parcel of city life is pollution, noise and commotion. Here the most important entity becomes, money, work and speed where people themselves get forgotten. Must be the curse of city life everywhere.
This is a follow-up to the previous post on Diwali. I enjoyed it well. Lots of crackers and fireworks to play with, lots of new dresses so that I could change every one hour, lots of TV programs to watch, lots of friends to greet and share the joy of the occasion.
But, I missed out one major thing that completes the festivity. The snacks. My mom had prepared Vadai, Suliyan, Somasa, Murukku, Mixture, Ola pakoda. She had ordered for other sweets like Jilebi (Jangiri), Baadhusha etc., The day I left to my hometown, I ate at a road side shop, that left me with food poisoning of the worst degree. I could just watch everyone eating. I was on just Idli‘s and Rasam.
Waiting for it to get over soon, so that I can feast.
Raasukutty's 