Now I know how Damocles felt...

Haven't posted anything for a while, what with submissions and vivas taking up all our time...I was planning to blog about the sordid details, but the very thought of writing about this crap is distasteful - so I'll settle for a brief overview(read not-so-brief rant). If the stuff I write isn't up to my usual standard, blame it on anger and overwork...

The story as of the 25th: Web Technologies submissions are on. Vivas are scheduled for the 4th or 5th, so we're all pretty comfortable about things, when suddenly WHAM! - vivas are moved to the 27th and 28th, throwing all our nicely made study plans into disarray...

The chap in charge starts making trouble, and calls us on the 26th. We duly turn up - and find out that he hasn't bothered to come! What's more, a little investigation reveals that he probably never had any intention of turning up either. How the hell can anyone place so little value on other people's time? There's already a long history of completely ignoring the needs of students in our college(I can't speak for other colleges, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be a university wide phenomenon.), but this beats all records - or so I thought. A friend of mine from Electronics told me that the final year Electronics guys had an even worse experience...apparently they had vivas on the 28th, and the external turned up on the 27th.

What happens? Do they tell the external to come later, since 70 students will have no end of trouble otherwise? Far from it. Instead, they call up the entire class and tell them to turn up at once. To top it all off, they're told that if they don't get to college on time, they will fail that particular subject! This isn't just injustice - it's an ugly combination of misuse of power, incompetence, lack of consideration for students, too much undeserved respect for authority, and arbitrary high handedness. To put this into perspective, I have a friend who lives so far off that he takes over 2 hours just to commute from home to college. If there were any such unfortunates in the Electronics class, God help them...

(Interesting quote: Never attribute to malevolence what could have been due to ignorance. Might actually be applicable to this situation...)

Back to the Web Tech vivas - eventually we get things straightened out and submissions are done - in less than 30 seconds, to boot! And for this he made a bunch of us wait two days??!!

The vivas start up. The other guy in charge - the fellow who was supposed to teach us, but for some unspecified reason never did - begins to ask questions. At the outset, his mood seems good, so people come out with reports of very simple questions. Near the end his mood turns ugly, and the group before us is left gaping (ostensibly because they couldn't find anything to say). No points for guessing who ends up in the last group - and who gets the worst question of the entire damned vivas...

The problem wasn't that he asked us this - the problem was that none of this had ever been taught, owing to our ridiculously nonstandard schedules and messed up timings. To expect us to learn it in two days with all these other swords hanging over our heads is madness of the highest order. And apparently the only reason I got the big enchilada was that the other two guys with me were confused by simpler questions(which I could have answered in my sleep).

Anyway, I made one hell of an effort and actually figured out half of the devastating question the chap posed. At this point, the Infotech class comes in to finish off their submissions, so we're finally let off. At least I did better than the other two guys - but that's hardly much consolation - if I had either of their questions, I could have finished them off in a couple of minutes. Murphy wins again...

Still, the guy had a strange ability - he deduced the extent of our hastily crammed in knowledge from less than three questions. Once he had identified the stuff that we didn't know, he proceeded to grill us on exactly that...yeesh.

I often wonder what exactly makes some of our teachers such utter sadists - it's not even like they all have this problem. Our 3rd semester Electrical Networks prof was one of the nicest people I've ever been taught by, but there are several examples of profs who think nothing of deliberately misusing their power to cause trouble for students who have offended them in some way(often something so damn trivial that the poor student doesn't even know). There's even one guy(who's no longer teaching here, thank God) who, as far as we can see, caused trouble simply because he could. Thankfully, his responsibilities have now been given over to a teacher who will never mess around the way he did.

Anyway, a little thinking about this problem produced the following theory. The way India's IT industry is going, every Tom, Dick and Harry with(or without) a degree, and a moderate amount of talent, is immediately picked up by some company. The best minds end up abroad, doing research(which is practically non existent in Indian universities). Now that almost all the people who are really good at computers have been removed, who do we have left? The dregs at the bottom of the coffee cup - the ones you probably wouldn't trust to defrag your hard disk properly. Very few people of any real talent stay in education - teachers are grossly underpaid - thus fulfilling the age old adage "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." In essence, we're being taught by a bunch of guys who see their students going on to more lucrative jobs every year, and who know that they are not good enough to do the same. No wonder they make trouble for students - imagine the painful knowledge of your own inadequacy being clobbered into your head year after year.

Combine this with my earlier post on systems losing sight of their core vision, and you'll understand why this phenomenon deserves attention. Visions of India as a future IT superpower will never be realised as long as this goes on.

Lest you think that I can do nothing but complain - here are 3 things that could serve as the beginning of a solution:

1. Get the government to pour more money into education, so that the brains will remain there.
2. Set up research programs in universities, and establish a solid industry interface. This useless system of people learning how to give exams, and then teaching others how to give exams, has got to go.
3. The most important of all - when the teacher becomes unreasonable, give the students the right to tell them why and get away with it. Every time anyone tries this, they're told not to argue - as one prof once said, and I quote, "Don't make argument." Yeesh.

One of the things that several Eastern cultures need to understand is that arguing(with anyone, young, old, whatever) is one of the most human things a person can do. Animals don't argue with each other - disagreements are settled by teeth, claws, hooves or horns. As far as we know, humans are the only creatures capable of settling disagreements without establishing some kind of dominance relationship(though they don't often do this). In a world where most people are unworthy of the name human - argument is something we need more of.

That concludes the rant for today. On to other news...

Looks like my family is finally coming back from Malaysia - the flight is due at 8 pm tonight...can't wait to see what I've got(greedy look in eyes)...

Better get back to work now. Off to study again...

PS: In case any of you don't get the title, it's an allusion to a chap in Greek mythology called Damocles who had to sit under a sword suspended by a piece of string, never knowing when it was going to come slicing down and send him to kingdom come...

They've done it again

It always happens. Every single semester. Just when it looks like all the submissions will go down perfectly - BOOM! - they dump a cartload of work on us(and I mean cartload - the amount of paper that ends up in submission files every semester is phenomenal - the files weigh a ton!). The word has just gone out that we have to write stuff amounting to about 17 experiments and 10 assignments - and all in the space of two days. And so the suffering continues...

The most painful part is that the teachers all seem to take it for granted. It's almost impossible to find a teacher who will admit that the end of term screw ups are largely his/her fault - and even if they do, they don't seem to care. Teachers have shamelessly said stuff like "We suffered through this - what's wrong with you going through the same thing?" What's wrong? The fact that it's all completely unnecessary, that's what!

A huge part of applied CS deals with creating systems. Systems are created with some specific purpose in mind - they're supposed to do something. Without that unifying purpose, the system isn't just useless, it's pointless, just a big waste of time, money and creative energy.

This isn't just true for computer systems. There's a reason why management gurus talk about the 'systems approach.' It's because human beings create systems to do things all the time. In the long run, it's almost as natural as breathing.

Why have I suddenly dragged this into this rant? Because the stuff I'm ranting about is a symptom of a common problem we face with complex systems - losing sight of the purpose your system serves, and focusing all your energy on the system itself.

When you do this kind of thing, there's a sudden role reversal. All of a sudden, the system is all powerful and everything else is subordinated to it, including the people whose lives are supposed to be improved by it. Eventually the system turns into a vast, self perpetuating behemoth, and the original purpose is lost or hopelessly warped in the confusion.

Take a look at governments. Bureaucracy is the canonical example of a system having lost sight of its core purpose. The first bureaucrats were guys who decided to get things organized so that the government could run more smoothly, which meant that people's lives would be easier. What's the story now? Fill this form here, attach copies of such-and-such official document, make sure you keep painfully detailed records...

What happened? Why did everything go down the drain like this? Simply because the people who carried on the bureaucratic tradition weren't as smart as the guys who invented it. Most of them had only a rather hazy idea of what the entire setup was for, and so it was a lot easier to adopt the pencil pusher mentality and make sure that the little details were correct - this got stamped, that was signed, blah blah...And of course, each succeeding generation was trained by the previous one, eventually culminating in a bunch of guys whose only purpose is to sit around, take long breaks and quibble over ludicrously insignificant details.

Even today, people are still arguing over why communism failed. Though there were a billion other factors, the core reason should be clear - the rights and interests of the individual were subordinated to the interests of the state. Everyone totally forgot that the only reason the state existed was to make life easier for the individual.

One of the most famous slogans ever is JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." With respect to JFK, that line is ridiculous. Your country is supposed to do something for you - that's the whole point of having a society in the first place. People who 'serve' their country should properly do so out of a sense of self interest. In an ideal world, when you do something for your country, you indirectly do it for yourself, and patriotism be damned. In a nonideal world(read this one) you usually don't care enough, because at the back of your mind is always the nagging suspicion that somehow, you've been had.

Whew...that was pretty typical of me...what started as a rant turned into a weird sociopolitical discussion inspired by computer systems. Man, can I digress...

Running seriously low on sleep now...off to bed. Will continue preceding idea stream later...hopefully on Monday night, when most of the trouble should be over...

A day to remember....or not.

Today has got to be one of the most interesting days I've ever had, in more ways than one. Here's how it was supposed to go:

1. Wake up at 7:20. Leave for college a little over an hour later, getting there in good time for the Computer Graphics practical exam and orals at 10.
2. Write whatever program they hand me - hopefully in about 45 mins to an hour.
3. Answer whatever questions the external examiner throws at me(these are the aforementioned orals) and wind up.
4. Head back home. Depending on how long 2 and 3 take(and taking into account the elastic nature of Indian Standard Time), this would be anything between 1 to 3.

All fine and dandy so far. Here's what actually happened:

Act 1:
The Big Rush
1. Cellphone alarm went off at 7:20. I hit the quit button and did my usual wake up ritual, which consists of lying around for about 10 mins getting progressively more awake. Like I've done several hundred times before, I closed my eyes for a second.
2. Eyes opened, glanced at time on cellphone. 8:30!!! Holy crap!!!(These are the exact thoughts that went through my mind at that instant.)
3. In the next few minutes, I made Olympic runners look like lazy snails as I rushed through the morning routine - bathing, shaving in 10 mins flat(for those who think this is normal - my facial hair are more like titanium than keratin) and getting ready to leave.
4. House all locked up(since parents and sis in Malaysia on vacation), ready to go. Time: 9:10.
5. Rushed down to the bus stop. Watched helplessly as the bus sped by just before I got there.
6. No time to lose - emergency procedures - grabbed the nearest taxi and prayed that I'd get there in time.
7. Finally got to college, with 3 minutes to spare. No sign of prof...AARGH!


Act 2:
Anticlimax
1. The entire exam group(35 of us) are waiting for the prof to turn up. People are frantically mugging programs(how the hell do they do that?) Meanwhile, I'm reviewing derivations that I'll have to do so I can figure out how to write a few progs. I strongly urge a friend of mine to do so - he succumbs to the lure of the majority and mugs end products instead...I decide to give it a try - and give up 10 mins later. Too hard on the memory and too much chance of screwing up. Better to know how the guy who invented the algorithm thought instead.
2. Prof turned up - must have been 10:30. Mentally kick myself for wasting money on the taxi. Yeesh.
3. External turned up while prof is giving out papers(each one has a little chit in it with the program name on it). Turns out I'm the last guy in the batch...guess who has to wait 15 minutes while the mob gets their progs? Mentally reviewed a prog while waiting(techies - this would be Bresenham's ellipse algorithm).
4. My turn. Just one paper left - looks like I don't get to choose. Open it up - hey, two chits! Prof says pick any one - I do so.

Act 3:
The Last Laugh
1. And my program turns out to be....DDA line drawing??!! This is the easiest computer graphics prog in the book! Actually, it's probably just the easiest one worthy of being called a program, which may or may not amount to the same thing.
2. Got on the assigned comp and started pounding keys.
3. Program done - coding, debugging, testing - the whole schmeer. Time taken: 5 mins, 30 seconds. Thank you TopCoder! Scribble the algorithm on the paper as ordered.
4. Time to call over the prof. She gives a bunch of inputs and pronounces the prog perfect. Sends over external.
5. External does the same thing and asks a bunch of trivial questions. Why? Because it's a trivial program.
6. I'm off! Stop in the next lab to pick up my bag, astounding a bunch of classmates who frantically fire queries about the examiner and the kind of questions she asked. Turns out no one else is done. I'm reminded of a stack - Last In, First Out!
7. Back home at 1, celebrate by playing on cousin's PS2, and several slices of his sister's birthday cake. Yum, chocolate!
8. That's all folks. Rest of the day isn't remotely as interesting.

Just goes to show - as the poet Burns used to say - "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley."(If you're not a Wodehouse fan, you probably won't get the allusion behind the allusion, so just ignore it.)

Lessons we can all learn from this:
1. For heaven's sake, use snooze on your alarm clocks! If you're desperate, use Clocky.
2. It's never really as bad as you think it will be. Well, almost never.

And that winds up today's post. Stay tuned for more news of my exasperated attemps to finish off our submissions - then get through the vivas - and finally study for the exams. Back to the rat race...

Finally got around to it...

Whew! Must have gone through at least 15 possible urls before hitting on one that was available - and that one was created in answer to all possible variants of my name being taken on Yahoo. Nothing like the Web to teach you about infinity...kinda reminds me of some famous chap who stood up to give an after dinner speech and said "Hang these fellows, who have said all the good things before us!" Well, hang these fellows, who have taken all our cool URLs!

At any rate, I've finally got around to starting a blog. Seems pretty unlikely to me that anyone will want to read the bilge I write...but being a bloody minded chap, I'll write it anyway.

Sadly, there isn't much I can write about at the moment. For now it's off to dinner and a quick review of computer graphics for tomorrow's practical exam + vivas...hopefully sheer programming skill will win the day. Until my next post, then, thank you and good night(man, I always wanted to say that!).