Test more

My realisation of general lack of discipline while coding has led me down the path of "Test Driven Development". I had heard the phrase before and even knew what it meant, but was too lazy to try it out. Recent events at work have forced me to take this(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development) up.

I'm trying out Perl's Test::More package. (http://search.cpan.org/~mschwern/Test-Simple-0.96/lib/Test/More.pm)

One sleepless night and a red bull later I'm close to finishing up a simple read-from-database-generate-file batch job the test driven way.

http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/12/Practical%20Test-driven%20Development%20Presentation.pdf

^^ This is an excellent tutorial which introduces Test Driven development in Perl using Test::More

Influential people

- Carl Sagan

- Richard Dawkins

- Mamoru Oshii

- Larry Wall

- Oystein Ramfjord

The List

• Accidental Complexity
• Reinventing the square wheel
• Design by committee
• Bystander apathy (strictly personal)
• Soft coding
• Premature optimization

Notes

This blog post is not entirely "context free". The above list was filtered from the list of software "anti-patterns" that was posted in Hacker News.

Clarity

Every time I come out of one of the local air-conditioned trains my glasses get fogged. But I dont wipe them clear. I like the feeling when the fog gradually goes away and everything gets crystal clear again. In life, in code, in phones, in conversations, all I yearn for is a bit more CLARITY.

The "Born" Identity

No I didnt get the spelling of "Bourne" wrong. This post has nothing to do with the fantastic Matt Damon movie, but is rather my take on various identities we are assigned when we are born. Ever since I was posted overseas and after i started interacting from people from other racial and cultural backgrounds there is this comparative study that goes on inside my head where I stack up "what it means to be indian?" against "what it means to be malaysian/chinese/singaporean/australian/whatnot?".

These internal "culture" ratings took place multiple times and most of the times I ended up concluding that "Its a good thing to feel proud about being an Indian" or "Its a good thing to be proud about being a Malayalee". I even remember Shashi Tharoor tweeting that "He was proud to be a Nair". Now, I dont know whether he was aiming the Nair votebank or whether he is genuinely proud of his heritage. But I've recently concluded that it is totally NOT OK to feel "proud" in these regards. I would phrase my stand as follows

I am NOT proud of being an Indian/Malayalee/Brown/etc. I am just HAPPY that I am these things. Now there is a big difference between being "proud" about something and being "happy" about something.

I insist that it is inappropriate on my part to be proud of the fact that I am Indian simply because i did not CHOOSE to be indian. I did not CHOOSE to be a malayalee. I did not CHOOSE to be born in a Hindu/Nair family. I have no recollection whatsoever of filling out an application form that said "Yes sir..ill take that family down in south india to be born into. Seems like a solid place". I just happened to be born into my family.

I can be proud of the fact that I run linux for eg because that is something I choose to do unlike my nationality or caste or former religion. Heck you can even be proud about winning the lottery because you atleast made a choice to invest some money and play. Dont be proud about something you had no call in. Be happy about the fact that you belong to whatever country/race/${identity} you belong to. But thats it for me, no pride, none..zip.