Sudeep D'Souza

Online learning has never been more exciting than it is now. There are so many wonderful free resources out there for online learning but there are 2 specific resources that I have tried out in the last three months that I would like to talk about which I think are really amazing. The first one is Venture Lab and the other is The Khan Academy . I spoke about The Khan Academy a long time ago in this post . But a lot has changed since then. They have applied the concepts of gamification to it along with a learning path. This gives a logical path for the student to watch the videos and do the exercises and as you do the exercises and watch the videos you earn leaves and badges that keeps you motivated to continue learning. I was listening to a podcast where they were talking about how this is changing the teaching paradigms in many schools where what used to be homework is now done in the class and what used to be taught in classes is now being given as homework. How is this acc...

We have been hiring and time and time again I have come to realize that it is a lot easier to hire smart bright freshers and train them rather than hiring experienced developers. The problem with hiring freshers from databases such as Naukri and Monster is that there are a lot of profiles there that are put up by consultants who fill up the profile with fake projects and experience and it wastes a lot of your time filtering this out. What are the advantages of hiring a fresher 1. They come with no preconceived thoughts of what they want to do. They have an open mind and are willing to take up any kind of tasks. 2. They are open to listening and adopting to the company culture. They fit into the way the company works and functions a lot easier and faster. 3. They enjoy and appreciate everything that is given to them. There are no comparisons made. 4. They stay much longer in the organization and they are much more loyal. 5. They are easier to hire as all you need to judge their ...

Way back in 1993 when I wrote EAMCET, the common entrance test for engineering one was considered brilliant if they managed to get a seat. In that year there were less than 9000 engineering seats and it was easier to get a seat in Karnataka than it was to get one in AP, but the colleges in AP were much more popular and better and everyone wanted a seat here. Fast forward to 2012, there are 340000 engineering seats and the funny part is that not more than 220000 write the entrance exams for these seats thus making the entrance exam just a farce as anyone who wants to get a seat will get one irrespective of the marks they get in the exam. Let us look how the increase of seats has been through the years Year   No. of colleges No. of seats Vacant Seats 1994 – 1995 32 9335 0 1995 – 1996 37 10155 0 1996 – 1997 37 10455 0 1997 – 1998 57 14155 0 1998 – 1999 89 19773 0 1999 – 2000 ...

I came across this TED talk today by Thomas Suarez, a 12-year-old app developer that develops apps for the ipod, ipad and iphone. In Startup Weekend Delhi I met with Evan Luthra who describes himself as a Student, President, CEO, Founder, Director, Keynote Speaker, Blogger & More. Evan is just 17 years old and he has his own company that designs and sells apps. We are seeing more and more students starting to challenge the status quo. They are challenging the tried and tested way of the 10+2+4 or the 10+2+3+3 education system. There is a lot of encouragement that they get to pursue their passions. There is so much information out there to help them learn quickly. I was born and brought up in a small town in the coastal area of Andhra Pradesh and had my first taste of computers when I was 14 years old, courtesy my school. The school, bought 2 computers to teach Computer Science as part of the ICSE syllabus that had just introduced the subject as an optional subject for th...

Loops and Variables Write a program to swap two numbers without using an additional variable. Solution : vb.net Write a program to find the biggest number in n numbers without using arrays. Solution : vb.net Write a program to find the second biggest number in n numbers without using arrays. Write a program to find the smallest number in n numbers without using arrays. Write a program to find out m * n without using the * operator. Write a program to find out m / n without using the / operator. Write a program to find out m ^ n without using the ^ operator. Write a program to find out m % n without using the % operator. Write a program to find out the average of n numbers. Convert a number in String format to integer - Number entered as "1234" should come as 1234 and "1234a" should come as an error. Write a program to find the factorial of a number. Write a program to find out 1+2+3+4+...+n Write a program that sums up the digits of a number until it i...

We have been on a recruitment drive for the last month or so and its been quite a frustrating experience. Our recruitment process for junior developers involves a written test, technical interview and a HR interview. We have found a lot of candidates have cleared the written test and are able to answer technical questions with regards to definitions and syntax of programming languages. They do this with ease and its a very text book like answer. If you wander into the domain of making them think by twisting a regular problem slightly they are taken completely by surprise. I think this is due to the way we are taught in India. We are very good as long as one does not deviate from the bookish suggested approach of understanding and solving anything. We are taught how to "by-heart" everything even if one does not understand it. For example, my 4 year old daughter is forced to learn Hindi poems each 4 lines long even though she does not know what the words in the poem mean. All...

Quite a few people have asked me what does it take to become a software development professional. I have also been asked what should I learn in order to become a software development professional. I think the most important thing that a software development professional should learn is how to be able to solve a problem. It does not matter what means are used in solving the problem, all that matters is if the problem is solved and is it solved in the most efficient manner. The language does not matter, the tools don't matter; just the approach matters. I had a professor when I did my Masters In Computer Applications - she taught us C, Pascal and Fortran. Yes we had all three languages as one subject in one semester. The teacher who taught us that subject was brilliant. She spent the whole semester teaching us how to solve problems in plain English. That is all we did in class, just solved problems. She taught us the languages for just a few classes. At that time we all thought she...

I was just about to drive into "SAP Street" in Hyderabad when a banner caught my attention. The banner said "IT Professionals Processing of H1B for job opportunities in US Limited Period Left". I have seen a lot of banners proclaiming that they can train you in anything under the sun but this is the first time that I saw a banner that can get you a job in the US and also get your H1B visa. Well as they say pretty much anything can be done on "SAP Street" from completed project reports that can be submitted as assignments, fake experience letters, Microsoft and other certification exams that can be written in proxy and many more activities that make the birth place of the IT industry in Hyderabad infamous.

One hears a lot about how our education system is one of the best in the world and that we have the most number of young educated people. Well it may be true that we have a lot of educated people but the question is did they get the right education to be able to do their job competently. From my own experience I feel that the education that I got only gave me the opportunity to get a job through a campus placement and in all the years in the industry I have not really used anything that I learnt in college, I was either trained in it after I joined my first job or had to learn the stuff on the job on my own. There are a lot of young people that I meet each day who have fancy degrees such as B. Tech's, BE's, MCA's and MBA's who are desperate for a job, any job. The question we have to ask ourselves is why aren't they getting jobs? Why are there so many training institutes teaching people what they should have learnt through the education system? Why is there a shorta...

I really wonder what they would have named their institute if they were teaching "hardware" !!!

This morning I walked down the famous "SAP" Street ( that's what it is called by most locals) in Ameerpet , Hyderabad. Below is a map of the path that I took. This is where the software industry first started off in Hyderabad - but now it is quite infamous for all the stuff th at happens here. The streets are filled with banners proclaiming to teach anyone anything from any ERP application, data warehousing, languages, testing practices, testing tools and the list goes on. Name it and you can find the training here for it. Now one may say that this is not that bad a thing to have - you are training people in technologies that will be useful to them. But that is not the case - There is no real quality training happening. These institutes also play on the minds of the impressionable - they hook them into one train ing course and then make them take a series of them promising them jobs and lucrative careers both in India and abroad. I have known a lot of people that have...

Having lamented about the quality of software training institutes in the city in an earlier article, I had the opportunity to experience the kind of education being dished out by these institutions. We needed to fill some positions very quickly a few days ago and not having much luck with walk-ins and other forms of recruitment we decided to go to some of the institutes and see if they had anything to offer. We contacted a few of them and they were more than willing to accommodate us to come to their institute and conduct interviews to recruit. So we decided to hold a test which consisted of a couple of simple school assignment kind software programs and an essay of 100 words. We administered the test for a 100 people and we short listed just 6 out of the 100 only to realize that the 6 that we short listed were unfit too. It was an absolute waste of time and effort. What was wrong with them? To put it in a nutshell - 90 % of them could not even write 10 lines of code. The ones that co...

Hyderabad is becoming a haven for training institutes that can teach you anything under the sun. Some of the questions that I would like to explore in this entry are - What is the quality of these institutes? What are the reasons for these institutes to thrive in this city? Are these institutes good for the image of the software industry in the city? Let me now try and give you my views on each of these questions. What is the quality of these institutes? The quality in most of these institutes that thrive in and around the Ameerpet area is bad. I was one of the unfortunate ones that had to endure a one weeks training from a faculty from one of these institutes. The organization that I was working for was looking to train a bunch of developers on Microfocus COBOL and this course was not being offered by any of the recognized training institutes. We then found one institute in Ameerpet that was supposedly doing the course in their institute and was willing to do a one week course for us...