I am reading this book called "Making India Work " by William Nanda Bissell. He is the owner of Fabindia.
I recommend that you read this book and try their products. I wear the Kurtas almost all the time that are purchased from Fabinidia and Khadi Gramudyog.

In the book, William makes a very telling comment - "India is not a poor country its a poorly managed country" He cites several examples of how India's centralized government is overextended.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in this country's future.

        

Mobile Megatrends 2010: from VisionMobile.

Diversification: by Fred Wilson. ” If you want to make higher returns, you must take on higher risk. But you can mitigate that risk by diversification.”

 

        

Every now and then, you see something in India that defies logic. You see pavements that are built, and rebuilt till kingdom come. However, the roads next to it have craters that will put the ones on moon to shame. Its obvious that the contractors, politicians and everyone in between is conniving to make money.

        

Pun intended

Thanks Sapinder. Our verdict goes to StyleCop for striking the best balance between usability, customization and price!

Tool	Integration with VS.net	Langauge Support	Support for Web/Windows	User customization	Commercial/Free	Source Code available	Framework supported
fxcop	Yes	Analyses managed assemblies(dlls and exes)		It provides us with default set of rules, however we can create additional custom rules by using the FxCop SDK	Free	Not available	Framework 2.0 or higher
stylecop	Yes	It analyzes actual c# code	Applicable to any .cs source code file	It provides us with default set of rules, however developers can implement their own rules	Free	Available	Framework 2.0 or higher
ReSharper	Yes	C# 4.0,VB10,ASP.NET, MVC,XML,XAML, MSBuild and NAnt build scripts			Commercial	Not available
ndepend	Yes	Analyses managed assemblies(dlls and exes)		It has got hundreds of standard rules, custom rules can also be defined.	Commercial	Not available	framework 2.0/3.0/3.5
code.right	Yes	Analyses actual source code files(.vb/.cs)		Provides own SDK to define custom rules	Commercial	Not available	framework 2.0/3.0/3.5

        

• History for Dollars: by David Brooks.  “Let me stand up for the history, English and art classes, even in the face of today’s economic realities.”
• Does the Internet make you Smarter or Dumber? from the Wall Street Journal. By Clay Shirky and Nicholas Carr, respectively.
• Location-based Services in 2012: by Robert Scoble.”Death of the Information Silos.”

 

        

One of the most frequent issues that arise in software development is that Development/Architect/QA/PM/UserEd reports to Test/PM/Client/Customer that the work is "done". And believe it or not, the response from the other side is "NO" it has x,y,z issues...

I often discuss this in our team meetings - what do you consider "done". The definition varies depending on your role. Let me start with development.

Development - The job of a developer is to think "deeply" about the system from a development point of view, they have to think laterally and not just be bound by the specs/design. Their role is to ensure that all their creative abilities are focused on writing world class code that meets the expectations of other roles.

For a developer to consider it "done" - the following checklist is what comes to my mind

(1) Are the requirements clear? Have they been documented in an email/doc/spreadsheet/piece of paper?
(2) Is the design clear/documented? In small teams, the developer might do the design, but its best to do this on an email/doc/spreadsheet/piece of paper. Reason: The cost of writing in ABC is <<< cost of writing in C, C++, C#.
(3) Are the coding standards/guidelines clear? If not, please ask the architect or PM. Typically there should be sample code with brief but precise instructions on how to code.
(4) Now, you are set to code. But wait - before you code - make sure you do an estimate. The estimates must be day wise. Anything longer than a day must be broken down. This enables you to review your goals on a daily basis and also helps you present the correct picture in the daily scrum calls/meetings if you have one.
(5) Now, you are really really set to code using your favourite language/IDE.
(6) Star coding, think, repeat... till you get the code done. Keep thinking about corner cases, scenarios in which code will break. If you dont have time, just mark it as @TODO in the comment so that you can come back and do it later. Think about performance from Day 1.
(7) Do unit testing. For e.g. if your system is to support 3 browsers, then please check on the one that is most used. If you have written a piece of code without UI (like a logic module) test with most common values. Throw in a corner case test for good measure.
(8) Make sure all your code is checked in correctly. If you use a tool for automated build, then make a build or force a build.
(9) Do unit testing again on the build on the server and NOT your development machine (neither your friends ) If something is broken, repeat Steps 5-9
(10) Send a release note to all concerned about the
(a) files checked in
(b) features/bug fixes in the release

Ok.. have a cup of your choicest beverage and relax! Consider it done...

        

The Coming Data Explosion: by Richard MacManus. “We don’t know yet which computing or Internet companies will be most successful over the next 5-10 years, but one thing is for sure. They’ll have to know how to process and make sense of massive quantities of data flowing through the Web - and do it in real-time.”

How Pixar Works: from Wired on the making of Toy Story 3. “At Pixar, a staff of writers, directors, animators, and technicians move from project to project. As a result, the studio has built a team of moviemakers who know and trust one another in ways unimaginable on most sets.”

Interview with Nicholas Carr: from 800-CEO-Read, on Carr’s new book “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.” Says Carr: “Because the Web is displacing many other information and communications media and becoming what I call a universal medium, it’s having much farther reaching intellectual consequences than earlier media did.”

Is India in a Coma? by Mohan Murti in TheHindu “Europeans believe that Indian leaders in politics and business are so blissfully blinded by the new, sometimes ill-gotten, wealth and deceit that they are living in defiance, insolence and denial to comprehend that the day will come, sooner than later, when the have-nots would hit the streets.”

        

Mobile OSes and Browsers: by Jason Grigsby. “From two operating systems to many. From many browsers to one. We have two core mobile technologies headed in opposite directions.”

India’s Delhi Metro: from the The New York Times. “India’s romance with the village, which Mahatma Gandhi believed was the most suitable environment for human development, is partly to blame for the decrepitude of Indian cities.”

        

I am on the prowl for good automated code review tools. Developers are notorious for not following the coding guidelines that are set out for the team and doing manual code reviews tends to get boring especially at the syntactical/rule level.

FxCop and StyleCop are used in .NET world and Lint from C is the mother of all of them.

Please leave your comments/suggestions...

Tarun

        

Mckinsey’s report on the future of India’s cities: “India’s lack of effective policies to manage its rapid and large-scale urbanization could jeopardize the nation’s growth trajectory. But if India pursues a new operating model for its cities, it could add as much as 1 to 1.5 percent to annual GDP growth, bringing the economy near to the double-digit growth to which the government aspires.”

 

Lessons from the fall of Palm: Michael Mace writes about “the five lessons I think we should all take away from Palm’s struggles.”