Change, Adapt, Learn. Or Perish!

[From the Information Technology perspective]

Hi,

This post is somewhat off the subject from my regular posts here. First one inclined towards professionalism and work. That is what you get when you enter a Recursive Vortex: spiraling flows of fluidized thoughts from all the directions. Just trying to give a little justification to title of this blog. :-)

I had this feeling that I am loosing whatever I have learned in the past. All my self taught IT skills are no longer useful and that I am bound to turn into an obsolete member if the IT fraternity in due course of time. If, of course,  I do not enhance my skill set to accommodate the rapidly evolving IT world. That was an enlightenment that set me on a course of continuous learning and now I am in a state of learning all the time. What follows are some thoughts on my rationale to this state of continuous learning particularly in context of professional development.

I have been self-teaching all the technologies right from GW BASIC, DOS, etc so forth to this day. I see that the technologies armed by which I made my debut into the IT field are no more relevant in today's IT scene! Now that does not indicate that I am growing old ;-) That only indicates that the IT world is changing quite fast.

Not only in IT but take any other field, automotive for instance. Just twenty years ago we had cars with rudimentary features and inefficient engines. Each of these built by hand. Today we have cars that are feature rich, can spray pico-liter quantity of fuel 1300 times a second (a Maruti's DDIS engine running at 4000 RPM), are safer, and built on mostly automated assembly lines where robots are precise to fraction of a millimeter.

Radical difference indeed.

Back to IT, where sustaining employ-ability is now greatest challenge due solely to the phenomenon of change. From Visual Studio 6.0 we have moved on 4 generations of development platforms now to Visual Studio 2010. We have seen a host of technological concepts changing the way we develop applications (Waterfall to Agile), the way we deliver them (Installable clients to SaaS/Cloud), and the way they look and feel (Desktop/web to Smart Client, Mobile and Touch). All these changes have come within a window as small as a student's graduating years! A full 360 degree change in such a small time frame certainly presents some challenges to the information technologist.

Foremost of all, university curriculum are are getting farther and farther away from the industrial needs. Basically due to the delay in updating the curriculum and red tapes involved in the process. A new comer into the industry is subject to a strange world totally different from the image that they had in mind while they were busy inking down lectures in the classrooms. As soon as they step into the real world, they are subject to a vast amount of choices, new methodologies and loads of stuff to learn that they never heard of. Only a quick learner's pie.

Secondly, it is more and more difficult to see where you have to lead yourself to. The world now offers multiple ways to accomplish a single information technology based solution. For instance, few years ago HTML, Flash and Dream-weaver were the only tools you needed to develop a website. Maybe a couple of more but still masterable. Now you have can choose among, Flash, Silverlight, Joomla, Ruby on Rails, LAMP, Wordpress and many many more ways to accomplish the same.With a number of choices available to accomplish a certain feat, it is inevitable that this choice of technology puts one's foresight to a real test.

Then is the problem related to lifespan of a technology. We have seen cassette players being obsoleted by CD players who are now on the verge of extinction themselves. Thanks for streaming media and compact storage support in almost all media devices. I frequently use online media to search for my favorite music rather than look for a file in my personal collection. Technology has become so short spanned that one has to keep the learning engine pumping in new concepts in all the time and the onus falls upon the learner to decide what to let go in order to make way for the coming ocean of knowledge. What if all your efforts to master a new technology are obsoleted by a single gush of new trends in the ways we exploit technology?A fear factor we all ITians have to learn to overcome.

Ask that to Nokia Symbian operating system developers after Nokia's "Platform on fire" memo and subsequent shift to MS Windows as new platform. What would their future be now?

For a true information technologist, not so dark I would say.

Bill Gates' quote "Change is the only constant" holds true more in this industry, than in general philosophy of life. It is now more necessary than ever that an information technologist be equipped with an appetite to digest the oncoming changes, format their minds and reprogram them for the new paradigms, new technologies and new productivity tools. To survive and sustain their employ-ability in such a changing world, it becomes apparent that a fraction of analytical skills of an information technologist must also be focused on foreseeing the change and preparing to adapt for the same proactively..

In all cases, there will remain a nook or cranny in the IT jungle that will go on providing meals to those who are still unable to digest the ensuing change. Till they develop appetite enough to move on and embrace the new, now changing face of information technology, these nooks and crannies will keep then healthy and alive. Thanks to all those IT administrators who still recommend Novell and DBASE III and help feed many who could never take off with the change. :-)

For those who see it coming, tune in your antennas and prepare to reformat your memories for the new Paradigm, Technological, and Methodological shifts.

Happy changing ;-)

PS:Where is my design patterns book?

Toddling at cricket - I played man!

Hey there!

Note: This post is all about a cricket  tournament. [You have been warned]

I mentioned here about my initialization into this sport called Cricket! Today, guys from the office had organized an intra championship. A 4 team knock out tournament. It was apparent from time table of tournament that this thing was going to take us to task given that we had three matches scheduled for a single day and our tech-fi constitutions.

Praying for being knocked out early so that we may retire to our comfy beds and enjoy rest of the weekend in our cozy la-z-boys was one idea but not the best one. And when you are in the battle, the enemy IS the enemy and you got to take 'em down anyways. But got to shoot them by the rules of the game. :-)

After a couple of hours of spectating the first match which was to decide who will be our oncoming opponent in the final if we make it up there, came our turn to show the brass.

While the first match was in progress I had my hand on the official camera and ended up capturing some (nice and spectacular) action from the first innings. Unfortunately, at the same time exhausting the battery, so we were without a cam for rest of the day! No one was cursing me; at least in the face. :-)

We won our first one in KO and moved on to the finals.

Got to bat first and we had our star players all set to assure a death sentence for the opposing team who boasted about some of the best bowlers in the company. After the first wicket went down, our captain made a decision that might have well caused us to loose the series as well as some humiliation. He sent me to bat next! ;-)

I am glad that I got a really fair chance but the opposition used this opportunity to have me as a ball-sink. Not a single ball was bowled straight to the wickets lest I had to go home and they were not stupid enough to let such a resource go. I missed quite a lot of them owing to lack of practice and that worked to lower the RPO rate. Smart bowling eh!

So my team ended up scoring some 30 runs less than the average of that day's innings totals. Courtesy, my amateur batting. I did opened with a spectacular six that left me amazed as well but nothing of that sort happened again after that; apart from a humble four. I contributed a 27 not out. Assured by the fact that I am not going to get a first down in near future. I went back to what I do best. Fielding!

The chasing team got the fiercest blow to their arsenal when their star batsman, the trump card and the opener, was dismissed at duck. This event switched the chasers from attack to defend instantly and undoubtedly saved me from some "You-did-it" stuff as well. :-)

And the Jill Team came tumbling after.

Thanks to the tremendous effort by our team, we were able to wrap the chasers far below what everyone anticipated and far far below the day's average almost half a century short of our team's already humble score.
Really a burning match where every moment was tough on everyone's guts because of the lurking uncertainty  in the air.

Finally, we won the tournament that was concluded by a decent trophy distribution ceremony.

Now I am preparing to retire to bed after pampering two sprained ankles, an overclocked knee, a slightly blue thumb and aching toes. Waiting for more muscles to show up by morning. I played man!

So? A day well spent? A loud YES!

PS: There also exists a thing like office and life. I almost forgot. :-)

Toddling at Cricket

Cricket field to me is what Wonderland is to Alice! I have never played the game apart from in my childhood home and to me Cricket on TV is more boring than waiting for the local at a railway station. No offense fans!

But lately I have started participating in the games being planned by some office colleagues. Although I cannot play well, it is a good start for weekend and provides a good change to mingle and enjoy.

Today went to and participated in second match of a cricket tournament hosted by my colleagues. This is my third or fourth participation in the club matches. Not much of a club it is but we have managed to pull up a decent arrangement to de-stress ourselves and have something to cheer about the next working day.

Our team lost this one to whatever reason, but I am happy for this time. Reason is to see my efforts to get better at the sport working positively. This time I aided one run-out and caught another one. Now that in contrast to my first attempt at fielding when I was practically transparent to oncoming balls, seems to be quite a win to me at least. Today's lucky stroke also gets my name in two slots on the tomorrow's scorecard in contributors. :-)

So well, another match follows next weekend and that is the final. Lets see what happens there as far as my contribution is concerned. Wish me luck!

Another interesting thing happened on the fields that I have mentioned in another post on another blog  because that happening deserves some different attention. Click here to read about that incident.

Cya later all my readers, friends and well wishers!