We all love meeting celebrities. Because of the geography that I live in right now, I have had the opportunity to meet quite a few of them over the past year.
I always had this list of people to meet in person before I die in my mind. Until a year ago, It was mostly more of a fantasy list. But once I moved to where I am now, the fantasy started becoming reality. So I wanted to transfer that list from my brain to a document so that I don't miss out on anyone if an opportunity knocks on the door.
Boy - A 10th standard student in Coimbatore, who moves to Madurai for higher secondary schooling.
Girl - A 10th standard student in Chennai. No prizes for guessing where she moves for her higher secondary schooling!
May 2005 to June 2007 - The Beginning
As many would anticipate, they both ended up being classmates in their new school. Despite that, sadly, nothing interesting happened in this period of time (we know, they were such idiots back then!). They just looked at each other on random days and barely spoke.
June 2007 - The Actual Beginning
The girl moved back to Chennai and the boy moved back to Coimbatore for college. As with most couples of this generation, they started conversing with each other in the form on SMS'es and phone calls. Few days after that, they felt they were really close to each other. Few months after that, they realized they can't live without each other.
Few Months (or years) Later
The boy was on a late night train journey and as it was always, they were talking over phone (despite the annoying train noise). He felt something spontaneously and popped the question. It took a while for him to get an answer, but it was an answer that he rejoices till today!
P.S. The time frame of the above paragraph is omitted intentionally. ;-)
The girl told about her life choice to her parents and the boy did the same to his parents. Both of them were genuinely happy instantaneously. No hesitation, No fuss, Pure happiness. It was then they realized how gifted they were to have such wonderful parents!
September 2012 - Its Official
The boy and the girl got engaged on September 2nd, 2012. It was a small but wonderful ceremony with family and friends.
December 2012 to March 2013 - The Present
We are writing this draft over a video chat (damn you geography!). We are really excited about the brand new phase of our lives that we are about to step on to. So please mark your calendars and try to be there on our special day, as your wishes would mean a whole world to us!
By the way, the girl's name is Gayathri and the boy's name is Vignesh! :-)
March 2013 and Beyond
We are undergoing our "Happily ever after" phase. :-)
P.S.: I didn't write this now. I am just copying this from my wedding website. Since that domain expired, I wanted this to live somewhere on the internet.
Before you start reading, I really would like to warn you: Stop, Do not read. What follows is utter crap. It has been almost 5 years now since i fell in love with this amazing girl. It’s almost time now. I am literally counting the last few days of my bachelor life. The 7 and odd years that i have known her has just swung by very fast. It just seems like yesterday that I was a small school kid. I honestly can’t remember how college life went on so fast. Here I am now, sitting in a totally different part of the world, still unable to believe that I am actually here.
When I look back at the past 7 and odd years, there are various wonderful moments which I would say have made my life what it is now. Not to brag, but not many people in life get almost everything they want, especially at such an early point in life. I am indeed one of the lucky ones. I am surprised at so many things that I do these days. It just seems like yesterday (literally like yesterday) that i went around nagging people for career advice. Yet here I am today, talking to many of my friends about building their career, etc. I really am surprised at the way I have turned out.
I am in this state where i ponder upon looking for words to express how my life has turned around to what it is now. There has been unexpected twists and surprises, expected happiness and so many other feelings which words cannot describe.
If I sit back for a moment and think about why I am writing this post, I honestly have no clue. I just felt like I should write something that will forever remain as the last post I ever wrote as a bachelor. Not that it is a big feat or anything, but blogging was something which, despite many resolutions and swearings, i could not keep up with. So, not to feel bad about myself that I hardly write anything these days, I started out writing this particularly pointless post.
I am flying out to India tomorrow. It’s gonna be the most #epic trip of my life. Loads of things to look forward to. Girl of my dreams, getting together with her. Life is fun. Hopefully I write something meaningful sometime soon (of course after I am back from the India trip).
I have completed my college life. No more exams, no more results, no more bunking first half and sleeping and lots of other things will be no more. At this point, I want to take some time out, share the experience of my amazing roller coaster ride and thank the people who mattered and have helped me get where I am today (and where I will be in a few months :-P).
The Dream
Just like every computer science student, I had a dream too. My dream started along a bit early. Right from my school days, I had two rolemodels. I had only one dream. I found a few 6 year old messages in my gtalk log where i was cribbing to my friends about my dream of working at my dream company at its headquarters.
The Start
I got through a really good job during my on-campus placements. It is at this point most people get carried away, but somehow i managed to not fall into that trap and thereby miss my dream. I chose to do my final semester internship in another company so that I will have bandwidth to explore other options. Btw, the workplace where I am doing my internship is awesome (this place is so awesome that I just can't stop boasting about it whenever I talk of internships).
Ok coming back to the topic, naturally the first step was to prepare for other companies' interviews. I started doing that and decided to apply to a company by end of March. Thankfully, one of my friends knew a person there who could refer me and get me an interview (btw, my friend happens to be a really wonderful human being who has helped me whole heartedly whenever i needed any help. He also happens to be my college senior and i am heavily indebted to him!). Off went my resume into the company and i got an automated "thank you for your interest in us" email.
The Phone Call
Then the recruiter called me and was ready to set me up with interviews beginning with a phone screening. I was told I would get a call by 11 AM. The interviewer had some issues in dialing in my number so it got delayed by 10 minutes. One of the worst 600 seconds of my life where I was tensed to the core. Once the interviewer called me, time flew off. Einstein was right.
I felt quite confident. Eventhough i didn't nail the interview, I felt it was far away from being tagged along a tweet as #pathetic. Few days later, I got an email from my recruiter stating that I have cleared the phone screening and will have to visit their office in Hyderabad for on site interviews.
The Visit
I was plagued with sickness and was in a severe low health for a few days before the interview. They flew me from Chennai to Hyderabad on the evening before the interview. I have been informed that I would be picked up by a cab as soon as I landed at Hyderabad. That was the first "awe" moment of the trip. The cab driver was standing at the arrival lounge with a placard that had my name.
I couldn't have dinner that night, couldn't have breakfast on the day of the interview. Somehow i reached the office. The first thing I noticed was the sheer enormity of the Hyderabad office. It was just too good.
Thankfully Air India was flying that day!
Once I reached the office, I had to have a sticker with my name printed on it (a temporary id card sorta thing). Since it wouldn't stick to my t shirt, i had to stick it around my arm like a watch!
And then there were 6!
Then started the interview process. There were 6 rounds each comprising of 45 minutes to one hour. I had a lunch break in between for half hour and eventhough i couldn't eat much (because of my illness), i was totally mesmerized by the food court that they had. The interviews were over around 6 o clock in the evening and I came back to Chennai the same night. It was a long day and i was totally down with illness at the night.
The Wait
Next came the worst part, waiting for the results. I don't know what to write in this column, but there a few things and people that helped me overcome this strenuous period. My work at internship gave me some distractions but night times were a nightmare where I barely slept for 2 or 3 hours.
The Surprise
Then came the call on 17th May, stating that I have gotten through and that I will be intimated about the work location in a day or two. I was wonderstuck, I had no words to describe what it meant to me. I mean, it was my dream ever since from when I was at school. Fortunately, I was with the people I love when the call came and I could not have been more happier.
As it turns out, the call on May 17th wasn't the happiest moment in my life. That came a few days after, when I received my offer letter. It was a totally unexpected freaking surprise. My salary was mentioned in US dollars. I was searching the letter to know my work location (as I was most eager to know whether the work location would be Bangalore or Hyderabad). When I found it, my heart just froze, I mean, it just froze. It was my dream location. It was what I dreamed about in my school days. It was whose pictures I posted in Orkut years back when it was my dream.
It was a DREAM COME TRUE !
The People
None of this would have happened if not for the really supportive people around me. I have an amazing set of F.R.I.E.N.D.S from college and school. I really owe them for all their support over the past howmanyever years I have known them.
Another bunch of people whom I really owe a lot are my friends in twitter. It was one of the main reasons why I was able to achieve my dreams. Every discussion (the technical ones) I had in twitter had been a value addition to me. When I think of it, few peoplecometo my mind immediately. Thanks a lot guys, eventhough we've hardly met in person, you are a vital part of my life.
Thanks are due to my parents who have been alongside me for every single decision I took in my life. They trusted me totally and I hope I have justified that trust to a certain extent now.
Apart from them, I sincerely thank all of you who have been a part of my life over the past 22 years. Without you people, I will not be where I am today.
Conclusion
I am joining my first full time job in a few months. I am living in dreams when i think of the fact that i am going to be working in the same place where people like Prabhakar Raghavan, Matt Cutts, Guido van Rossum, Joshua Bloch, Robert Love (and not to mention Larry Page and Sergey Brin) work. My life cannot be more close to perfect than it is now. Once again, I sincerely thank each and every one of you!
I'm Feeling Lucky!
-Vignesh
P.S.: I have not mentioned about one very important person in this post. That is completely intentional and the reason for that being lack of words to describe what that person means to me. :-)
Note: This is a personal article about my college.
Department of Mathematics and Computer Applications, more commonly known as DOMCA within PSG Tech. It is the place where i spent 5 years of my college education. I have come across many students who have been a part of this department over the past 10 years, mostly through social media like twitter or facebook. But nowhere have i seen an article/post that talks about the fame and pride of this department. So I decided to do that part and this article is my small contribution to the department where i lived for 5 fun filled years.
To begin with, the department offers 4 masters programmes none of which is a BE/BTech/ME/MTech programme. Now, its really tricky to be in an engineering college, especially one of calibre as high as PSG Tech, and to belong to a department that doesn’t have an engineering programme. There will be a lot of internal politics and complexes going on among students between engineering and non-engineering stream within the college, and obviously DOMCA’ites find themselves in the minority (as there are around 15 to 20 different engineering programmes compared to 4 programmes in DOMCA).
But despite all that, the department have managed to produce students of world quality (yes, you read it right, i said “world” quality) excelling in mix of qualities. Its more of a “you name it, we have it” kind of place.Starting from the orientation talk on my very first day, to the last hour of class I attended and the last exam i wrote in my 5th year, i thoroughly enjoyed every single moment i spent in the department.
Key #1 to any department is their students. None of the programmes offered by DOMCA admits students through the government’s single window system, which means there are no school level state toppers in DOMCA. Yet, we somehow manage to groom ourselves through five awesome years of college experience that gives you an example for almost every possible situation that you would ever face in your life.
Key #2 to any department is their faculties. I am not going to claim that all the faculties are awesome. Some of them are really top notch (by this, i mean "world" class). Some of them are lame. But what makes DOMCA faculties unique is their willingness to learn, their willingness to teach us what we want rather than teaching us whats prescribed in the syllabus.
An even more important factor that decides the success of any department is student-faculty interaction. This is something that i personally think DOMCA nails to perfection. All faculties are friendly. Some of them, "literally" friendly. Whenever you have a problem, academic or personal they are there to help you out. I can even quote some of them as best examples of purity by heart.
Every person who is at DOMCA right now, or who are going to be a part of this wonderful place, rejoice it. Your sophisticated office cubes can never match TCS Lab. Your super duper fast multi core giant machine in office can never beat the fun offered by the dabbas in CC. I really wish i could be back at the department some day.
There are a lot of shortcomings, but in the long run, you hardly remember the shortcomings as you remember the good things. So, that's where this post is coming from, all the good things i have been through in the past five years.
This may not be Carnegie Mellon. This may not be Stanford. But our hearts really are proud every time we quote that we are from DOMCA in PSG Tech. So, according to me and possibly many others who were a part of this wonderful department, this isn’t just a department where they teach you subjects, this is an ecosystem that has been built upon human values.
To quoteSheldon, “I love PSG Tech, But my feelings for DOMCA are much greater. It is the singular location in space around which revolved my entire universe."
Its the time of life that almost everyone has to experience. There is always a time when extreme fun ends. The farewell to college life is the event where one really realizes what he/she has done over the past 5 years, how lame he/she has been over the past 5 years, where he/she realizes the actuality that this part of life is going to end soon.
It was one such day in our lives. October 8, 2011 - The day that made many people who hadn't knew what a tear was previously in their lives cry their ass off.
The day was full of surprises. It wasn't just the day. The whole tale of farewell, right from the informal invitation to the formal invitation to the awesome ride to the farewell venue (which we never knew till we got there) was full of surprises.
Suspension Memo
Let me rewind back a few days to start telling this story. It was a usual day in college and I was with my friend in a nearby pani poori shop. My phone started ringing and at first I was kind of amused to see that it was my dad calling me (usually he never calls me unless its some emergency). I picked up the call and he said, "hey whats happening in college? we have received a letter from college that looks very threatening. it says you are suspended!". At first thought, though i was shocked, I definitely knew it was some prank. Then i asked him to read it out fully and confirmed it was indeed a prank. It was the informal farewell invitation that i was talking about! Many people fell for the letter. Few girls even started crying right away when their parents called!
(Click to Enlarge)
Handmade Invitation
Two days before farewell, the juniors asked us all to assemble in a classroom during lunch. It was quite a small classroom and there were 130 people in it. Needless to say the amount of noise we were producing would definitely turn all the heads to look at us. Then, each one of the juniors came and gave us an invitation. My first thought on seeing the invitation was that it was really awesome. For one, it was totally handmade. 70 handmade invitations? Thats a loooooootttttt of work to do!! It also had a nice picture of both our batches together. As one of my friends rightly pointed out, "anyone can spend a lot of money, but putting in effort for preparing 70 invitations really shows love!".
Note that, its just two days to farewell, and we don't know the venue yet.
Trailer
To add to all the expectations, the juniors released a trailer video for the farewell. Still, no clue of the venue! They kept us guessing!
The D Day - Assembly at IM Amphitheater
Even on the day of farewell, we didn't know the venue. We all gathered at IM amphitheater, 5 or 6 juniors were along with us to direct the proceedings. When everyone was there, the first instruction was to "Proceed to Peelamedu Bus Stop". People started fussing! What? Bus stop? Really?
The Journey to the Venue!
The first surprise of the day was parked at Peelamedu Bus Stop, we weren't going to take a city bus. There was a specially arranged bus which was waiting to take us to the venue! Even the bus driver was properly trained to play along with the lines of juniors to keep up the suspense of the venue!
The bus first started westward (towards lakshmi mills), so the first thing we did was to strike off of the major hotels on the east (jennys club, park plaza and le meridian). The bus journey was on and so was the music and dancing within no time. The bus slowed down and stopped in front of Tristar Deja Vu! Everyone shouted saying, "Yaay! We've reached! Our guess was right!". One of the junior guys got down and talked to the hotel security. He came back into the bus and said, "This hotel is very bad, olunga paint kooda adikala, we'll go somewhere else!". That was the heights of surprise!
Then the bus took a "U" turn. Everyone was able to guess the venue after the U turn! It was definitely one of the three hotels which we struck off earlier. The journey went on, along with the music and dance. We crossed jennys club and park plaza. Now everyone knew the venue! It was Le Meridian!
Le Meridian - Kovai Ballroom 1
Amidst of really personal warm welcome, we entered the room. My first thought on entering the room was "WOW"! I was totally speechless, it was amazingly decorated and well lit.
First item of the day was to celebrate the birthday of an unlucky junior soul. Unlucky because there were around 70 people waiting in the queue to wish him with birthday bums! There was a nice bigg cake with which we celebrated his as well as few others' birthday who fell in the proximity of few days.
Next was a video depicting how we have evolved over the past 5 years. The video rekindled many nice memories from our past. It indeed amazed me to know how much everyone has changed in personality over 5 years. Then came a tea break.
Next was a funny game. It was named "Balloon Bamblimaas!" :-) We were divided into 6 teams. Each team had to choose a person, who will sit on a chair. Rest of the team members have to place a balloon in the first person's lap and burst it by sitting on it! Team who bursts the maximum balloons will win! It was a fun game and as one of my friends very aptly pointed it out, "S.J.Surya kooda indha maari oru game a yosichirukka mattan da!" :-)
Then there was dancing for quite a while with various pairs formed by the juniors! Also, there were special performance by two awesome dancers of my batch, Santhosh and Michael along with the awesome dancer of the juniors batch, Shyam!
Then was the game named "Queen of Sheeba" (never mind the spelling). The queen will ask for an item, which we will have to fetch from some junior and hand it over to the queen. It was ultimate fun. The first thing that queen asked was for a t shirt. One guy was literally stripped in the process of obtaining the t shirt! ;-) Then was many other fun things like cigarette packet, hair clip and gold chain.
Amidst of all things we had lunch. Usually when we get free lunch, that will be the talking point. But in case of yesterday, no one even bothered to say "yaay free lunch". So much was the effect it had on all of us!
Then, there was a challenge wherein guys were asked to wear saree on stage with girls' help orally from their seats, followed by a cat walk and dance! Few of them did it quite successfully!!
Next was, they gave us all a token of rememberance. They had a song for every one of us and kept us guessing who the next person was. The gift was really awesome! It was a wooden piece with each of our photo carved in it along with a statement from their batch! So personalized and so amazing! It was really wonderful! They also gave us a booklet which had feedbacks about our batch from faculty, seniors and juniors.
Then came the feelings part of the day. The part which many thought can get over easily but went in the totally opposite manner. A video was screened. The video again showed various pictures of us over the 5 years. In the last scene of the video, few juniors were talking about things we'll miss and things they'll miss after we go away from college. The scene was well shot with only candle lights. The lights in the auditorium was switched off during the video screening and we were all totally into the video. The last sentence in the video was, "idhellam en panrom edhuku panrom nu engaluku therila. aana neenga therinjukanum nu nenachingana konjam pinnadi thirumbi paarunga! (இதெல்லாம் ஏன் பண்றோம் எதுக்கு பண்றோம்னு தெரியல. ஆனா நீங்க தெரிஞ்சுக்கணும்னு நெனசீங்கன்னா கொஞ்சம் பின்னாடி திரும்பி பாருங்க). Next moment was the one which made many cry. We all turned around, all the lights in the auditorium came on, 70 juniors were standing with each of them holding up a heart shaped balloon in their hands! That was totally the moment of the day! Unforgettable for life!
What happened after that was quite undescribable with words. Overall, it was indeed an amazing day. I was so happy to see the effort that the juniors have put in, in even the tiniest of things. Their attention to detail and level of personalization was highly amazing. In the end, the day concluded with a simple formula, Xanthronz + Embergs = Xanbergs! As one of the facebook statuses aptly described it: 9 A.M - Xanthronz! 11 A.M - Embergs! 5 P.M - Xanbergs!!
Kudos to every single junior who has worked hard and showered your love to make this day make a mark in our hearts permanently!
Every Computer Science student begins his academic travel with the first stop being C. It is really a good language to begin with and it helps the student to grasp the fundamentals of how a computer program works. And (atleast in India) most of the Computer Science courses just revolve around C/C++ almost the entire of the curriculum. All the laboratory classes usually mandates the student to develop programs in C/C++ or Java in some cases.
Any student who has worked for a reasonable amount of time with a language like Python or Ruby will be against this system. He will be frustrated in writing tens of lines of C code when the same can be accomplished in very few lines in Python. I have a strong opinion that this should not be the case and undergraduate courses should insist on students using C/C++ as their primary language on the academic curriculum side.
C is a programming language that requires very verbose form of writing programs which will be highly helpful in learning and understanding the underlying concept thoroughly. Consider an example of quick sort. It is a single line of code in Python. But what does the student really understand out of that single line? Whereas when you write the same thing in C, it really forces you to understand the algorithm line-by-line, thereby making the student more knowledgeable about the actual working of the algorithm rather than just getting the thing done. Getting things done is top priority in an industry. But when it comes to academia, learning the underlying working is more important than getting things done.
Another good example would be writing a simple socket program. In python its a maximum of ten lines. Whereas in C you work very closely (almost with actual system calls) and hence you thoroughly understand the whole process of how a socket connection works.
More the abstraction, better the survival. This definitely holds good, but not when you are undertaking a course to become a computer engineer. Abstraction is good once you have completed the learning process. But when you are in the learning process, less abstraction is more helpful in making a student better.
I was sitting all alone in podanur railway station (podanur is to coimbatore is what tambaram/perambur is to chennai) awaiting my train to chennai. I had arrived an hour early than the scheduled time just to know that the train was late by half an hour, leaving me a solitude wait of one and half hours. I really liked the peaceful environment with gentle breeze flowering across my face. If I was like before, I would have just been irritated that i would have to wait alone for one and half hours. But then, I had all the feelings about the past awesome six months rushing up to me. And I was involuntarily forced to open my blog and start sharing them. As the title suggests, people who aren't interested in me lamenting about stuff I like and stuff I'm gonna miss, please feel free to press Ctrl+W (frankly I know that you don't really care if I miss velachery railway station or not)
Long story short
Past six months have been awesome and I have really been at the efficient frontier of my life. But sadly, everything has to come to an end. The internship is about to end in a few days and I already couldn't stop feeling bad about the things I'm gonna miss. On the whole, I will miss chennai, I will miss efficient frontier and I will miss everything that has been keeping me going for the past six months.
Short story long
It just seems like yesterday that I stepped into the seventh floor of chamiers towers (well known as satyam building), but all of a sudden, six long months have passed in a jiffy. There have been many life cheering moments over the course of this internship.
I have had many wonderful moments. A bulleted list won't hurt after all:
The daily bike rides to office! (13 kms one way)
Breakfast at the near by mess!
Velachery Sangeethas T20 (the offer still continues as T30 - velachery folks, dont miss it!)
5 working days = 5 different cuisines for lunch (Andhra, Punjab, China, Italy, Delhi, Tamilnadu)
Heavenly mini noon naps in bean bags!
Non-stop free flowing discussions about work!
Non-stop fun in the entertainment area (more on the upcoming post..)
Besant Nagar Beach with friends in the evening!
Dinner daily at some random shop!
Maintaining accounts (thinking before every swipe of the card and every rupee out of the wallet)
And of course the work!
Fighting online for tatkal tickets to and fro home for long weekends!
Note: This post is not intended for a general crowd of audience. This post rambles on about something that the current college syllabi lack and suggests some changes to improve it. If you are interested in reading the previous sentence, then go on. Otherwise just close this tab and move on with your work instead of wasting time here :-)
We all know that database is a software that is used to store, organize, blah blah blah our data. Any person who is taking up a programme related to computer science would have learnt this definition for a short answer question in his/her database management systems course. After having worked with a database that grows by approximately 40000 rows a day, I now realise that the college level courses on DBMS could do much better than what they actually are doing now.
Insights
How the indian college DBMS courses work? Lets have a quick bulleted list of items that a student does during his DBMS course spanning one full semester.
Reads through the differences between File Management System (FMS) and DBMS
Reads about ACID properties and byhearts them for answering in the examination
Reads about various normal forms (and byhearts them for writing short answers in exam). Almost all the DBMS courses say that there are only 4 normal forms (1st, 2nd, 3rd and Boyce-Codd) and they always omit even the fact that there are actually 3 more normal forms (4th, 5th and the 6th)
Whiles away time with Entity Relationship (ER) diagrams which is the student's life saver in exams (as there is no such thing as THE right answer, anything that makes sense will fetch you marks)
Learns basic SQL and does a huge list of CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) commands. The most complex query one writes here involves a query with another inner query
Argues over whether SQL should be pronounced letter by letter (like an abbreviation) or as SeQueL (like an acronym)
Reads about and byhearts various types of joins and remembers all of them for writing in the exam with a single example
Optionally, develops an information management system (famous ones include Library Management System, Airline Reservation System, etc.) at the end of the course, where the actual system will consist of nothing but data entry. This project will, of course, go into his/her resume during the interviews
Towards the fag end of the course, reads something about how the DBMS does some basic operations internally. Most of the students omit this as it is covered in the last few weeks of the semester when students are busy with some other work
The problem
The main problem lying around here is the difference between theory and practice. The beauty about DBMS is that everything that works out perfectly on theory performs worse in practice. For example, consider normalisation. In theory, and according to college syllabi, Boyce-Codd Normal Form is the best that a database could be designed. But in practice, it might kill the database if it mostly consists of reads (because of the increased number of costly joins even for simple reads).
Almost all the colleges teach DBMS in theory and they never consider the practical aspect. And yeah, developing an information management system over the period of the course does NOT count as practice. The information management systems which students develop as a part of their DBMS course hardly involves more than 10 rows per table. And most of the students develop it in the mindset of deceiving the faculty for marks rather than to actually learn DBMS which is the actual objective. DBMS is all about scalability and hence teaching DBMS in small scale is like teaching something that is totally illogical.
What can be done?
Again, let me make a bulleted list of points that i think can be done to bridge the theory to practice gap that is found in the DBMS courses. I am not an expert in DBMS and these are just my humble views on what i feel could be changed.
First major change to be done is to teach DBMS in the actual scale in which it is to be used. In the lab classes, don't let the students create their own tables and add 5 or 10 dummy records. Give them a preloaded table with ten lakh rows and make them query against that table. This will make them write better queries naturally as every query is going to take some time to spit out the output they want.
The above step also makes the student to learn about indexes. Indexes are one thing that is really useful in DBMS (i am in the process of writing an article about database indexes - will be posting it once its complete). None of the courses on DBMS really teach about the practical benefits of indexes. When a large table is given, students will have to define indexes and exploit them in their queries.
Instead of making students worry about JDBC, ODBC, etc. leave the frontend language to their choice and just lay constraints on the backend DBMS system. For example, don't force them to use Visual Basic, which makes a student focus more on learning ODBC and designing forms rather than designing databases.
Make the joins practical. Don't just teach the various types of joins for the sake of short answer questions. Make it such a way that the student is really comfortable with how exactly the different types of joins work.
And for god's sake stop teaching stuff about File Management Systems. We are in an era where there is a group that says even SQL and DBMS is not needed (For more about this google for NoSQL).
Closing thoughts
Database Management Systems are the arteries and veins of any corporate business. Hence, learning the complexity and scale involved in it is really inevitable and important. Making proper use of the DBMS course in colleges would be a real boost to the student's career. If the changes i suggested here are incorporated in a course, then that will definitely also save the time that a student spends on preparing DBMS for interviews.
To conclude, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. Whereas in practice, there is". DBMS is more of an art which is being taught in colleges as a science. If this change happens, quality of students being spit out of college every year will become better for sure.
I take this moment, thanking all my teachers from my primary, elementary, secondary, higher secondary and college to have made me who i am now. I will always remain thankful to all of you in my life. Thanks for making my life better.
I have always had the feeling that having a good teacher makes things umpteen times easier and better. Luckily enough, i have all the sweetest the most caring teachers ever (i am not listing any specific names as that would make this post veryyy long).
As our ancestors have rightly mentioned its "மாதா, பிதா, குரு, தெய்வம்".
I am pursuing a course in my college that has a total of 10 semesters and it mandates a 6 month industry internship during the 7th semester. The usual procedure, as always, companies come to college and conduct written tests and interviews and recruit students for internship (with a good amount of salary - or should i call it stipend?).
In order to follow the companies' policies, i will call the companies X,Y,Z, etc. ;-)
The Confusion My aim was to join X. There was a lot of confusions with it. Some said they were coming to college as a part of their campus recruitment drive. Some said they weren't coming to college for absorbing interns. After lots of such dizzy stuff, finally an HR from X talked to me and agreed to set me up with a te interview and I could not have been more excited in life (except for few other moments that happened on mid june, 2008).
First Round with X At last the day came and i was sitting in my college's so called Smart and Secure Environment Lab (where i spent most of my 2nd and 3rd year of college in the name of project). I was sitting in silence waiting for the call, which came sharp at the very time they had scheduled it. The interviewer drilled me for one hour with questions on algorithms for which i gave the worst possible answers and code (which i realized thoroughly only after a few days). The HR called back again and asked me how did my interview go for which i said it was ok. The HR said she'll set up another round of interview in two days which made me think that i had cleared the first round.
Second Round with X I had to attend my second round from my home as i fell ill at that time. The second round was surprisingly short (just one question) for which i was asked to mail the code. I did and it was obviously not up to the standards the interviewer expected (but i still had some hopes on getting one more round of interview). Finally, as it turned out, i got a rejection email from the HR two days later. It was a heartbreak. But I had to survive with it and was in the urge of looking into other available options.
The Options At this point i felt like in the middle of no man's land as i was totally relying upon getting into X for this internship. There were many other companies coming to the college for internship recruitment in the meantime, upon which, one specific company (lets call it Y) is of our interest. Y is located in bangalore and it was a regular mass recruiter in our college. My resume was sent to Y through college and they said i will have an interview soon. Whereas i was not very much inclined towards joining Y. To explain this story further, i need to tell a flashback.
Flashback - **TWO MONTHS EARLIER** It was a normal day and i woke up with the irritation of the need to go to college. It was when i realised that there was a programming contest in a big event in college. It is supposedly the highest cash giving event to be held in PSG Tech. After calling some 10 of my classmates, i was finally able to pick up a partner for the contest. We went to college around 10'o clock and found that the registration charges for the contest was 150 rupees. My partner started staring at me as we never expected it to be so expensive. I somehow convinced him to pay (by telling that we can get it back via the prize money ;-)). We went to the prelims hall and to our astonishment, the longest hall in PSG Tech (A310) was almost completely filled with participants (Believe me, there were atleast 200 teams).
We got our question paper and my partner started staring at me again as there were too many questions (50 if i remember correctly) that were to be solved in 30 minutes. We did our best and solved almost 40 to 45 questions. And obviously we were confident of clearing prelims, which we did. The finals was in the same day evening and was supposed to last for two and half hours. It involved hands on solving of 8 different problems (one of which was, "Given a sudoku, solve it" :P). We were able to solve 7 of them well ahead of the time frame and decided to skip the sudoku question. They said results will be announced only after the judges evaluate the programs. Since i had no patience, i returned home and my partner returned to hostel.
That was when the story took a twist, I got a call from an unknown number saying that i have won first place in the programming contest and that i am eligible for an internship interview with company Z (Hint: the person from whom i got the call is my colleague now). It was because the contest was sponsored by Z. Apart from that we also won 5k of cash which was in the first place my objective to attend this contest ;-). The people from Z said that i will contacted back after a few days regarding the internship interview. And i came to know that the work location of Z was chennai.
Back to Present Ok, now that i have mentioned about both Y and Z, it was time for me to choose one. The risk involved here is if i decide to give a shot at Z and if i don't get through, then Y also would be gone by then. So, i had to make a choice and i did choose to risk yet again. I sent my resume to Z and they said i will be having 3 or 4 rounds of phone interviews and we agreed upon the dates of various rounds.
Interviews Galore It was the day before my first round of interview with Z, i suddenly got a call from an HR of Y and i was informed that i will be having a phone interview with Y that evening. I was shocked and without knowing what to do, i decided to underperform. The time came and the interview with Y started. It went on for around 15 minutes, where they did not ask me much even to underperform. The next day i attended the first round with Z and it went on for around one hour where i was drilled in every possible domain under computer science. The same day evening, Y announced their results and i was officially selected as an intern in Y. Since college never knew about Z, i went to my dean and explained about my situation and that i am interested in Z. Whereas my dean's strong response was, "You have to join Y".
Chennai Vs Bangalore As i was trying to convince myself about the shock that i have to join Y, i had to send a mail to Z explaining the scenario. The next day, i got a call from Z saying that they were also ready absorb me as an intern. That was when the whole race started. I had to beg dean and the placement officer of my college daily for about one weeks (during which i hardly ate or slept) and atlast i got the fruit of joining Z as per my wish. As a matter of fact, The college people tried to handle the matter diplomatically as a result of which i got a call letter from Y after i had already joined Z. Finally, i won the war of chennai over bangalore :-)
Happy Ending Here i am, doing my internship with Z as i wanted to. And i really like whatsover that has happened to me in the past two months of my internship. I have learnt a lot (not just with respect to computers). You can easily know what Z is by visiting my facebook profile here !!
Honestly, I don't expect any comments for this post :P
I hereby wish Embergs (Softies + Techies 2k7) a very happy batch day. Whether you are in chennai, or bangalore, or coimbatore, or gurgaon, or calcutta, I sincerely hope you have some kind of fun with whomever time has made us possible to.
