C development

Have to start study on the way a C development project works or how the design is to be accomplished. I have a client interview for next week and have to see how things go... I am trying to get some good resource for this but was not able to generate a good enough search query.. maybe somebodys blogs will give the info I require.
Joined British Counicl Library as a temp member.. but there are not enough Technical books over here.. so am in a fix.. but I guess I should be able to manage someway or the other here.. at the least the rooms are pleasant to read over here...
Wonder whether I would be able to use books from outside over here...Have to ask and hope that they do allow it...

Stephen King.........

Had heard a lot about Stephen King before.. but stayed away from him because I though that he was a horror specialist... but later on I got introduced to him in a different light through Swetha.. She lend me "The Green Mile" and he is a beautiful writer.. Two days back took "Hearts In Atlantis" and suddenly I am hooked.. have to find another good book of his soon (not horror of course)...
He is one of those writers who is able to express what you feel.. there are not many who can do that.. I have read Tagore and he does it I guess, but since his works get translated from Bengal to English I guess Iam getting an abridged version of his works !!
I have asked Swetha to suggest another Stephen King book.. She suggested IT.. Well i better not be a horror one.. else she is the one who is going to get nightmares....and ... gulp.. me too :( !!

Onsite....

Been released from my previous project and now desperately in search of an onsite project to boost my meagre financial reserves...
Anyway wishing is all fine... the problem is that u have to get around the maze and labrynth... that matc creates around u to reach there... these guys must be the incarnation of those designers and planners who revel in creating mystic passages and notorious labrynths from where there is no return.. unles the creator deigns to think that the victim is in much need of help and succour... well maybe this is a part of growing up in an organization... trust me i just dont want to grow up :) !!

All at sea.....

My study schedule went a bit awry. Perl was pushed aside and started ahead with C. I didn't update the blog, because a friend had created a forum to post any doubts queries or success stories. Its still in nascent state (me being the highest contributor should be proof enough of that)

There is a lot of things in C that I had not studied in depth during, college, which is again an indication of the college I was in. This is not a way out for me, for if I was dedicated, I guess I would have done all these things by myself !! What I ultimately mean to say is that I should have decided which college to attend and worked for that. Unfortunately, I cannot go back to that, so I guess now I must chose my company carefully !!

I have started with C++. Currently I'am just reading upon the OOPs concepts and trying to gel it into my mindset. Structural programming seems a bit foriegn once you start reading upon OOPs. The simplicity of the concept behind OOPs is quite staggering. I mean come on.... its like duplicating what you "think unconciously", when u see the world in general. And the way the whole concept has been implemented in C++ is also quite clean and well, I seem to understand it ; ) !!

Started in a small way with Heavy Metal. It comes with sharing the bay with Abhishek !!! Hearing him talk about Maiden, Judas Priest e.t.c, just made me feel like giving it a shot. He started me of with Jose Satriani, and though its hard rock, it certainly is quite good !! Lets see where this leads to :) !! Hmmm...........

The new year is here....

Perl has suddenly taken a back seat for some time and Iam just doing C now !! Wonder whether this is a good practice !!

Am going through recursion now. And its cool, How a simple line does the work of 3 or 4 lines doing iterative procedures !! Its an elegant way of looping.

The new year has come, but unfortunately, it was preceded by a calamity of proportions not dreamed of !! When nature is angry, I guess there is nothing anyone can do about it !! but allow it to rage itself out !! Just stay out of the way. I cannot think of the destruction some families would have faced ! How they would have had to start there life all together again !! Cant imagine the studetns who would have to start there life all together again, and worse those who would have to change there entire life !
Kids who do not understand what is happening ? I hope to lord that something good is done for them and they will have a good chance to continue from where there were so cruelly cut off !!

My thghts my prayers.....and a good part of my luck to them......

Been whiling away the time...: (

Had a break in my study plan !! Been whiling away the time actually. One thing is the work Iam being asked to do is bugging. Not sense in working on! But then you just cant survive on air :( (Unfortunately !!) !!


Have to start on with regular expressions in perl. And have to catch up on the Unix reading that I was doing also !
maybe will start up with it. Ever felt like becoming invisible and seeing how people do their work for 30 odd years and still find the motivation to continue. It cannot be just financial security !! Maybe I should talk to some factory workers and find out what keeps them goin ? :)

Unix Programming Environment !

Been laid low by that obnoxious thing called viral fever. If only happiness was a virus :( !!

Anway one good thing about being laid low, was that i could read up "The Unix Programming Environment" by Kerninghan and Pike. And this is a must read book, the excercises are meant to really oil your grey cells.

Finished 3 and half chapters in two days :) !! A few good things that I learnt :
: directories are files, and the content of these files are the files and directories that are present under it. More than just the contents, it also contains the i-name or inode of the files. So remember that pesky link number for each file when we do a ls -l. Well that link is the link from the directory to the file !!

: using shell builtins are always faster than commands. For e.g. shift, cp doesnt change the owner and permissions of the output file.
|| is much more faster than the corresponding if condition.

: awk and sed are coooool, but its gonna take an awfully long time for me to learn these "tools"

Well others I dont remember that well. But some of the shell programs are cool and very suprising in terms of simplicity. You need a particular mindset to do these things ! And i seriosly lack that mindset I guess !!

Will keep updating this page. I have perl to catch up on now.

ciao !!

Bullet Club Meeting, Perl e.t.c...

My plans for continuing with Perl did not work out today ! Sriram had come down in the morning and went to meet him. Then was roaming arnd till evening. Then went for the bullet club meeting and ultimately got back here.
Did a bit of hashes today and left it at that. Maybe will start it out tomorrow.
Want to do a bit of C now.

As for languages that can be used for creating CGI applications: C, C++ and JAVA, plus many more.. So why perl ? maybe i will know as i move on. The obvious answer is that perl is a scripting language ! hmm.. or maybe i am yet inexperienced and havent seen an instance of extreme data processing required by a web page. I guess the more apt reason would be the later ;)...

Anyway enough for today then....

Perl and CGI....

Yesterday was spent in learning the ropes of perl cgi. Once you start learning something and then look back at the times you were wondering what all this greek and gibberish were, u suddenly feel foolish :) !! But dont get me wrong its a great feeling.

CGI standards is actually one of the outdated standards that is present. There are others like JSP's, .NET e.t.c which are more faster and powerful.
The whole setup on CGI can be envisaged as a controller which allows users to communicate with the server. What users see is an html page. This is the interface for them to talk to the server. The users will input some data through the form (html page). This data is then grouped as key-value pairs and sent to the server. The CGI standard has got certain environment values through which these key and values can read and processed. The back end processing is done by Perl. (And Iam assuming that this is possible with other languages also. Which languages ? I do not know now, but maybe I will have something to update with tomorrow !)
Supposes there are 100 users accessing that form, then for CGI, there will be that many instances !! (Yes !!) Consider the same scenario in case of JSP. In this case, there will still be only one instance, which timeshares the info provided by the user with the server !!

In spite of this why do peopel still use CGI ? Iam not sure. Maybe its the compatibility with languages like Perl. Or maybe It was because of legacy considerations !! Maybe I should look into that and see if anything interesting comes up or not .

Perl ! Why didnt I do this before....

Iam about to be released from my present project. As per plans that were proposed when I joined the project, I should have been released last december!! Finaly a year later, I am to be released around middle of January,2005 (touchwood!!).
Till now I have never been interested in going onsite or anything, but in TCS and as per the latest promotion policy, the only way you are going to make some money is to go onsite and so that s what Iam trying to do.
My resume has been sent to one project based in Australia. It has got a perl requirement. My knowledge in Perl is okay. Have started to brush it up from today. Not sure whether the assignment will materialise or not, but whaterver I alwasy wanted to learn Perl ;) !

I have three basic reasons behind blogging. Become a competent bullet owner, a good photographer and a linux guru !! At the moment Iam nowhere near there. And Iam really anxious to see where I would end up a year from now !!
Hopefully this blog would be a black and white proof of what I wil be by then :D

ciao !!!