Online Learning

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 accomplished? The students are given the videos to watch at home as homework and all the exercises that used to be done at home is now done in the class where the teachers and the students help each other in doing the exercises, thus making the class more hands-on and engaging where the concepts that are learned in the video are applied.

The Venture Lab consists of courses that are taught in Stanford. It is a gamified learning environment where there are learning videos and exercises. What is more exciting here is that one needs to form teams with other individuals from around the world. I just completed a course on Technology Entrepreneurship and I met some wonderful people from around the world in order to do my assignments. They bring a different perspective to the whole learning environment.

With all the videos on You Tube, the question/answer forums such as Stack Overflow and just the power of Google and Bing Search to filter information to programmers there are very few problems out there that do not have a solution online. Learning and being able to apply concepts is so much easier now than it has ever been in the past and one should only have the perseverance to continue learning and applying those concepts in what they do to really flourish in their careers.

Kids should be introduced to Khan Academy and encouraged to use that as a learning environment and adults should do courses on The Venture Lab and Coursera.

If you know of other sites that offer online courses, share this information in the comments section below. I would also like to connect with others who are taking courses on these sites so let me know if you are taking any of the courses and what was your experience.

Beginners don’t have baggage

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 technical thought process and their fitment with respect to the organization.
6. They come with no expectations other than to learn and work hard.

Yes it is hard work for a while as there needs to be a proper training and mentoring process in place. In a software services space clients expect experienced developers so it is a lot harder to convince and place freshers.

Experienced hires do bring a different dimension into the organization but a careful due diligence needs to be done to ensure that there is a good synergy going between the existing employees in the organization and the new hire. If this is carefully thought out and planned then hiring experienced staff can work wonders by giving more diversity to the culture of the organization.

Engineering education in Andhra Pradesh

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	102	25064	0
2000 – 2001	107	30896	0
2001 – 2002	174	46090	0
2002 – 2003	217	62710	0
2003 – 2004	225	65960	0
2004 – 2005	238	82225	0
2005 – 2006	262	92600	0
2006 – 2007	282	98793	0
2007 – 2008	337	118993	0
2008 – 2009	530	174742	17577
2009 – 2010	656	226000	48795
2010 – 2011	705	252000	74972
2011 - 2012	721	340000	120000
2012 - 2013	721 (approx)	340000 (approx)	200000 (approx)

Every year since 2008-09 there has been a steady increase of surplus seats but that did not stop more colleges from being opened and more seats being added to existing engineering colleges. Why did this happen? As part of the AP Governments fee reimbursement scheme any family that had an income of less than Rs. 100000 per year as stated by the local government authority was eligible to have the complete fees waived for the engineering course. Given this situation, joining an engineering course had an incentive and in society it was considered prestigious to be holding an engineering degree. Given this increased demand for engineering seats the number steadily grew until there was a glut in the number of seats.

This growth has come at a price - even students who did not have a liking or aptitude for the sciences were doing engineering and at the same time due to the increased number of colleges so suddenly there was a dearth of quality faculty to be able to cater to the demands of the increased number of colleges. This caused the quality of the education to drop drastically, thus making not more than 10% of the engineering students who pass out each year employable.

This is a very dangerous situation. What happens to 90% of these students (approx 200000 students who joined in 2009-10) who have spent 4 years of their lives studying for a degree that is not able to get them a job. Yes, some of them can be re-skilled and trained but for a majority of them they go many years (I have seen students who have spent 3 years) just searching for an appropriate job. This can lead to frustration and anger which is not good for the future of our country.

Programmers are getting younger and younger

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 the very first time. We got 30 min of time each on the computer to program small BASIC programs once a week. We did not have a teacher to teach us programming but luckily for us our Chemistry teacher took an interest in programming went to Chennai learned programming to come back and teach us. We did not have the internet to learn.

What we had was the hardware but we did not have the software, the knowledge and the ability to connect with the rest of the world so easily and effortlessly as it is now. The age we live in now makes this all so possible that it is such an exciting era to be in as a student where the world is your oyster.

But the problem is how much of India is like this during this exciting era - I just read this article on the WSJ that says 81% of U.S. engineering grads are immediately "employable," vs. 25% of India's, 10% of China's. We need to encourage more Evan Luthra's in India to buck this trend.

50 Programs for software engineers looking for jobs

Loops and Variables

1. Write a program to swap two numbers without using an additional variable.
   Solution : vb.net
2. Write a program to find the biggest number in n numbers without using arrays.
   Solution : vb.net
3. Write a program to find the second biggest number in n numbers without using arrays.
4. Write a program to find the smallest number in n numbers without using arrays.
5. Write a program to find out m * n without using the * operator.
6. Write a program to find out m / n without using the / operator.
7. Write a program to find out m ^ n without using the ^ operator.
8. Write a program to find out m % n without using the % operator.
9. Write a program to find out the average of n numbers.
10. Convert a number in String format to integer - Number entered as "1234" should come as 1234 and "1234a" should come as an error.
11. Write a program to find the factorial of a number.
12. Write a program to find out 1+2+3+4+...+n
13. Write a program that sums up the digits of a number until it is a single number
    Eg: 2748303 = 2+7+4+8+3+0+3 = 27 = 2+7 = 9
14. Write a program that accepts a base ten integer number and outputs the binary, octal and hexadecimal representations of that number.
15. Write a program that accepts a hexadecimal representation of a number and outputs the decimal representation of that number.
16. Write a program to print all the prime numbers between m and n where m is less than n.
17. Write a program to find all the prime factors of a number.
18. Write a program which reverses the numerals in an integer, that is 326 becomes 623

Patterns

1. Write a program to print the pascal's triangle. The way to compute any given position's value is to add up the numbers to the position's right and left in the preceding row. For instance, to compute the middle number in the third row, you add 1 and 1; the sides of the triangle are always 1 because you only add the number to the upper left or the upper right (there being no second number on the other side).
                                                       1
                                                  1        1
                                              1        2        1
                                          1       3        3        1
                                     1       4        6        4        1
                                1        5      10      10       5        1
2. Write a program that prints
                               *
                          *        *
                      *       *        *
                 *       *        *        *
            *        *        *        *       *  
3. Write a program that prints
                               *
                          *        *
                      *                 *
                 *                           *  
            *        *        *        *       *  
4. Write a program that prints
   *   *  *  *  *  *  *   *
   *                            *
   *                            *
   *                            *
   *                            *
   *                            *
   *   *  *  *  *  *  *   *
   

Arrays

1. Write a program to find out the median of n numbers.
2. Write a program to find out the mode of n numbers.
3. Write a program to sort numbers using bubble sort.
4. Write a program to sort numbers using quick sort.
5. Write a program to find the sum of two m x n matrices.
6. Write a program to find the product of two matrices.
7. Write a program to find the transpose of a matrix.

Fibanocci Series

1. Write a program to print the first n numbers of the fibanocci series.
2. Write a program to print only the first 10 odd numbers in a fibanocci series.
3. Write a program to print the list of numbers in a fibanocci series that adds up to n.

Strings

1. Write a program to reverse a string
   - "My name is sudeep" should become "peedus si eman yM"
2. Write a program to find the length of a string.
3. Write a program to reverse the words in a string
   -"My name is sudeep" should become "sudeep is name My"
4. Write a program to display all possible permutations of a given input string
   - if the string contains duplicate characters, you may have multiple repeated results.
   Input should be of the form
   permute string
   and output should be all the combinations of the letters. Here is a sample for the input
   cat cat cta act atc tac tca 
5. Write a program that takes an integer and displays the English name of that value. You should support both positive and negative numbers.
   Examples:
   10 -> ten 121 -> one hundred twenty one
   1032 -> one thousand thirty two
   11043 -> eleven thousand forty three
   1200000 -> one million two hundred thousand 
6. Write a program that takes two arguments at the command line, both strings. The program checks to see whether or not the second string is a substring of the first (without using the substr -- or any other library -- function). One caveat: any * in the second string can match zero or more characters in the first string, so if the input were abcd and the substring were a*c, then it would count as a substring. Also, include functionality to allow an asterisk to be taken literally if preceded by a \, and a \ is taken literally except when preceding an asterisk.
7. Given a pair of words (the first is the correct spelling and the second is the contestant’s spelling of the word) determine if the word is spelled correctly. The degree of correctness is as follows:
   CORRECT if it is an exact match
   ALMOST CORRECT if no more than 2 letters are wrong
   WRONG if 3 or more letters are wrong
8. Write a program to read a sentence and calculate the average word value for that sentence. Word value is calculated by finding the average of the ASCII values of all of the letters in a word. Average word value is the average of the word values of all of the words in the sentence rounded to the nearest integer. All letters are upper case. Any non-letter characters are not part of the word in which they are located.
   Eg: MY NAME IS SUDEEP
   = (77+89)/2 + (78+65+77+69)/4 + (73+83)/2 + (83+85+68+69+69+80)/6
   = 83 + 72.25 + 78 + 75.67 = 83 + 72 + 78 + 76
   = 309 / 4
   = 77.25
   = 77
9. To convert a word to Pig Latin, the first letter of the word was moved to the end (after the last letter of the word) and the letters “AY” were added. For example, PIG becomes IGPAY. Write a program to convert a given sentence to pig latin.
   Eg. MY NAME IS SUDEEP.
   In Pig latin : YMAY AMENAY SIAY UDEEPSAY

 Files

1. Write a program to find the number of lines in a file new line defined as "\n" and the number of words in a file. A word is defined as two patterns of characters separated by one or more spaces.
2. Count the number of times a word occurs in a file - the word and the location of the file are inputs to the program.
3. Write a program that will merge two files and give an output of 1 file.

Linked Lists
Note : The format for the node should be a struct containing an integer value, val, and a next pointer to the following node.

1. Write a program to find out the length of a linked list.
2. Write a program to find out if the linked list has a loop.
3. Write a program to print a singly linked list in reverse.
4. Write a program to reverse the entire linked list in place. By in-place, I mean that no memory can be allocated. The resulting code should be function that takes the head of a list and returns a the new head of the reversed list. 
5. Write a program to implement push and pop functions in a linked list.
6. Write a program which can insert a new node at any index within a list. The program may specify any index in the range [0..length], and the new node should be inserted so as to be at that index. The index is calculated as the position from the beginning of the linked list.

Problem solving skills

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 you have to do is give her the cue word and the rest of the poem flows out fluidly. And this has been my experience in the interviews as long as you stick to the tried and tested questions you will get very text book like answers.

From our experience we have realised that its easier to train a developer that can think on their own and can look up a million resources on how to write the program once they have identified the solution. If a developer cannot think of the solution on their own then you end up helping them to come up with the solution and also helping them to solve it which takes up a lot of ones time. Also it is very hard to teach someone how to think. It is relatively easier to teach them how to program or the syntax.

Software Development Professionals = Problem Solving Capability

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 was nuts - but I find that what she taught us then is invaluable. I don't use any of the languages that she taught us but I use the problem solving skills that she taught us without which I would not be the software development professional that I am.

So its important to take each problem as a challenge and to attack it with enthusiasm and vigor. You should have the curiosity to solve the problem. You should have the curiosity to investigate how problems have been solved in the past and learn from it. It is very important to be excited when presented with a problem. It should not be a big burden. If you have these kind of thoughts then you are destined to be a great software development professional. Tools and languages are just a means to an end.

H1B Visas on SAP Street

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.

Is our education system really good ?

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 shortage in the industry for freshers who can do the job they should have been educated about? Why do organizations have to spend large sums of money in retraining professionals after they are hired? I think the answer to all these questions lie in the system that we have that is just not keeping up with the pace of technology.

The lecturers that we have in our college except for a few of them are just not keeping up with technology. Neither is the syllabus that they teach. That is why after they pass out from the colleges almost everyone has to be trained to do their job. The Indian education system lays a good foundation where the basics are ingrained into each and everyone's head. There is talk of an experiential learning system - but I still believe in the by-rote learning system for I believe that the basics need to be ingrained at an early age. But I think our higher education should work more closely with industry to adapt to what the industry needs and then channelise the students into various streams so that they are fully employable when they pass out. This will make the institute more popular because everyone will be clamouring for students from there since they will be all set to start off being productive very quickly and the students gain since they can live in the comfort that they are employable and are not doing the course just for the sake of the degree.

Why do all the organizations clamour for students from the IIT's, NIT's and a few other premier institutes. I do not think the answer lies in the fact that students from these institutes are trained and so will be more productive. I think the fact is that getting into these institutes is through a competitive exam and most of the high rankers get through into them. So hiring someone from these institutes gives you an impression that they will pick up things fast and do the job as compared to people from other institutes. I think this is a warped way of thinking since I think freshers from these institutes are overpriced.

So my advise to all the other institutes is talk to the industry and get your syllabus in tune with what the industry wants and send your lecturers for training courses that will equip them with the tools that they need and I am sure you will become as popular as the IITs and the NITs. The other way is to ask the industry to depute experienced professionals to work closely with the college. I know a lot of professionals that would like to teach for a short period of time while still being employed. I have read a few articles about this happening but I wish it was more widespread. The key is whether the institutes are ready for this. I am sure the organizations are. So its time for a symbiotic relationship to develop between the industry and the higher education system.

Funny name for a training institute

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

A walk down SAP Street

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 that 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 training 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 been cheated by these so called training centers.

I have heard that these training centers offer a lot more other than training. Some of the services that they offer that I have heard of are as given below.

When you are doing a course in MCA/BTech you need to do

projects - these institutes will give you complete source code with the documentation of the project.

Any certificate in showing that you are trained in anything under the sun is possible. Pay the course fee and you will get what ever you want.

If you want an experience certificate some of these training institutes have single desk organizations with a complete website that provide you experience certificates complete with background verification.

They can send you to pretty much any part of the world - just ask for it.

I have personally had two experiences with these institutes that were not too pleasant - one was where I was trained by a so called "faculty" from one of these institutes and she knew nothing about the subject that was being taught. And the second experience was where we needed to hire some developers very quickly so we thought that we can check out if any of these institutes had quality people that were being trained and hire them. You can read more about that experience here.

Software Training Institutes

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 could write the 10 lines of code could not write 10 lines of decent English. So what are these institutes teaching these so called students? If you ask me from my experience I would say NOTHING!!!

I know this is a very drastic answer to give but I strongly believe that they are teaching them NOTHING and this is why I say that - none of them knew the basics of computers - we were recruiting for C# and we asked them to write a program to sort 'n' numbers and they could not write that program. If there was 1 or 2 that could not write it after attending a training program of 3 months I will believe the course thought something but when you have 90 % of those that took the test have no idea where to start writing the program then I have every right to say that the course taught NOTHING !!!

These institutes are in my opinion creating hope in students when there is none. They spend thousands of rupees getting trained on everything under the sun without knowing the basics or having the inclination to code. I had the opportunity to look at one course being offered and out of 10 modules being taught 7 of them are mostly add-ons or advanced topics that are rarely used in projects. These students are spending 70 % of their time doing stuff they will never use. Secondly when the student does not understand the basics which are 30 % of the course there is no use teaching the remaining 70 % which depends on the 30 %. Hence the whole course is a waste!!!

There are a few that do get out of these institutes and do get good jobs - these are the ones that had the aptitude and inclination to write code and only needed the knowledge. I would call this the gifted lot and I will not put this as being more than 5 % of those being trained.

What is this doing to the industry? In my opinion - its doing immeasurable harm to the industry. The reasons being

• There is a whole segment of so called trained work force being created that is useless to the industry and the industry wastes hours and hours sifting through this lot.
• A whole lot of so called trained work force is getting disillusioned by the lack of jobs available to them. This in turn creates a bad reputation for the industry that it is picky.
• There is a shortfall of good resources in the industry because this so called trained work force has not been trained right.

What is the solution? First of all the institutes need to align their courses to what the industry needs. The industry should create a legitimate grass root training programs by tying up with educational institutions. Let the education that these students get in school and college train them to be fit to code the day they join. If we do this I am sure we will go a long way in making off shoring a dream that will never end and effectively remove all competition from other countries.

Computer Training in Institutes - boon or bane ?

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. The faculty that came consisted of some very junior COBOL programmers that had textbook knowledge of Microfocus COBOL and by the third day agreed that they were just teaching us what was in a Microfocus Manual. Some of the faculty who I have met that teach in these institutes have no real world knowledge of what they are teaching and also are of a quality that will not get jobs in the industry. Given that this is the quality why do people flock to these institutes and that brings me to my second question.

What are the reasons for these institutes to thrive in this city?
The main reason these institutes thrive in the city is because there is a need that these institutes are meeting. The need is for training in the software world that is not imparted in our colleges and universities and students believing that once they are trained in that skill it’s a ticket to see the world. It’s so unfortunate that most of the people that go to these institutes just do course after course hoping that one of these courses will get them that ticket to ‘nirvana’. I once had a guy who walked in for an interview and he said that he knew Java, I told him that I did not have any openings in Java and that I had openings in .Net and that if he had any of his friends that knew .Net he could refer them, this lad then asked me if he had to learn .Net and I sat with him for the next half hour explaining why he had to stick to Java and master it since he had already trained himself in Java for 6 months and had to just wait for the break.

The other reason these institutes thrive is because the industry wants people with experience and there are only so many experience people floating around so there is a shortage in the industry. What these institutes do is that they train the candidate in a skill, they then cook up projects to show that they have been working with them for the last couple of years or so and they then send these candidates to recognized software development houses around the city for interviews and get them placed earning a fee from the candidate for guaranteed placement and earning a fee from the software development house for being a consultant. Now these so called experienced candidates when they are placed in situations where you hope their experience will help the project get done come up lacking miserably and there by affecting the credibility of the organization and the industry as a whole. Coming to my last question

Are these institutes good for the image of the software industry in the city?

I have just two words to say “Absolutely Not!!!” I think I have given enough reasons till now to substantiate why I have such a strong view towards these institutes.

What can we do to stop this? Shutting them down by force is not the answer. We should cut out their livelihood and that is the students from going to them.

First of all I think the Universities and Colleges should change their curriculum to keep up with the industry. There is no use teaching subjects like COBOL, Pascal, dBase, Lotus 1-2-3, DOS and so on. The universities and colleges should work with the industry to understand the needs of the industry when coming up with the curriculum for the courses. That way the industry gets trained candidates that can be productive as soon as they join.

Secondly the universities and colleges in association with the industry should offer courses that are one off such as a course in “The Java Programming Language” as opposed to “Basic Java” or “J2EE Course” as opposed to “Advanced Java” that is offered by the institutes. These courses should be conducted by trained staff from the industry and should lead to certification by the relevant bodies in the industry. That way the education centers continue to play the role that they are meant to play and churn out students that are aware of the technologies that are needed by the industry.