Google Suggest and other things

Joel pointed to Google Suggest, another incrdible offering from the guys who always think different. I agree with Joel when he says that "Google is very publicly raising the bar on the quality of interfaces that people will expect from web pages." What inspires me is the approximate number of search results displayed along side the suggested search term, result of the XML HTTP Request magic.

Among other things, voting is on (and it seems would be on for a long time) for the New 7 wonders. Emails from patriotic Indians all over are already doing the rounds. Do your bit to give the Taj it's due.

Maintenance projects and DPs

Not many developers get the opportunity to be part of a project through the entire SDLC. For many people who are working on maintenance project, where the product is already there, the developer is usually involved only in bug-fixing or minor enhancements. Having been involved in a few, I have always wondered on the question, how can the Design Patterns be applied in such a scenario?

I raised this question to the authors of Head First Design Patterns at Javaranch and the following was Elisabeth's reply:

..even if you are involved only in the maintenance of a project, programs continue to evolve and new requirements come along all the time. A maintenance person might end up being the "expert" on the code after a while, especially after it is gone through a number of fixes and upgrades. Perhaps this maintenance person can see when the bug fixes that are requested are going to cause a problem, or perhaps are caused by a bad design. Having design patterns around to help to see where a program needs to be made more flexible to meet changing requirements is good for anyone. And eventually, this maintenance person might be asked their opinion of whether or not the program needs an entire overhaul to support a new requirement, or if they think a new requirement can be fit into the existing code. Knowing and understanding the design will help them greatly with this challenge.

While I agree with the author, I still am skeptical about the application of Design Patterns for such a project. Many, if not most, of these maintenance projects do not either have any documentation at all or have insufficient documentation on the background or architecture of the application. How do you just get to know the patterns used just by looking at the 2-3000 odd files in the project folder? The Application designers may have followed a pattern to begin with, but when the same code passes through a dozen hands (maintenance projects usually see a lot of resource rotation problem) the pattern thing takes a back seat. You simply comment out old code, tuck-in yours, alter and add few queries, all this forgetting about the performance issues, the focus is simply on restoring and ensuring the expected functionality to meet the deadline. I agree a lot depends on the programmer himself but then it is difficult to meditate sitting in the market-place.

You may read the complete thread here.

BBM on Nuktachini

As the baton is passed by Ek Cup chai!, my Hindi blog, Nuktachini becomes the first indic blog to host the Bharteeya Blog Mela. Nominations are being invited for BBM's 37th edition. Blog posts written by Indians on Indian topics during December 7 - 10 can be nominated for the mela. This blog had the privilege to host mela once, you can read it here.

Blog strolling -1

With most of the bloggers being IT professionals and students (I seem to be too sure on that), it is a refreshing change to see a lady "criminal psychologist" blogging. Thenga, Manga, Pattani, Sundal is the blog I stumbled upon recently (though I didn't quite get the need of having another blog with the same name but different username even if "Ethnic-chiclet" sounds cool..). The author seems to experience the same quandary every blogger goes through at the beginning, says she in her maiden post:

I cannot decide if I want to have an online journal, the kind that mimic the teenage cutesy highly private diaries (with the cheesy key and the corny poem on the first page that warned all intruders of dire consequences) or the more mature blog. Somehow, blog seems like a weighty word, as if it should contain deep, heavy words that speak of profound issues.

A comment on my last post, brought me to Vijay Bhaskar's Ripples with a rear view, nice name for a blog and must say..sporting one of the sexiest blog-banners I have seen. Also check out Parth Pandya's Salilowkey.

Blogger block

Charu refers to an article on how to dela with the blogger burnout, a term I came to terms with when Jivha quit blogging. For me it has been more the case of Blogger block rather than burnout. I have never been a zealous blogger anyway but few months back I at least would right twice/thrice a week, it is still twice or thrice but the weeks have turned into months. A friend, who just would not have Null Pointer on his blogroll ;), tauntingly observed recently, “I like your blog but it would be better if you atleast have one post a week instead of one a month”. Some write to me enquiring if I have quit blogging, and while I am reading all those blogs regularly, I am often ashamed to find a referrer log entry from a reader who visited my blog expecting some new post but (perhaps) went away perturbed. I worry if s/he would ever come back again.

A thing that prevents me from blogging regularly is absence of net connectivity at home. Then the recent happenings at the personal front are to be blamed too. Blogging at work is definitely awkward, your colleagues keep staring at your monitor and are not content to ask “Yeh kya hai?”; preparing a post especially in Hindi (and I am very poor at punching Hindi on Takhti) seems more heinous than looking a porno pop-up that shockingly appeared from an innocent looking site. During the day I must have been thinking at least a dozen times to blog about this and blog about that, but I am too lazy to jot it down immediately. Then it slips from your mind and poof, the slate is blank again. Now, I never have been in the habit of posting a link with a short comment, an advice given in the article that I just can’t follow, most of my posts are lengthy, some are notoriously so.

So I don’t think I (and the readers) have much choice really except that I don’t care a damn about those staring eyeballs and don’t feel ashamed in jotting a short link post instead of waiting to post longer ones and then not posting at all.

Zooming in on India's map

At least there is some initiative for India. Me thinks Map My India, the desi version of Mapquest has still long way to go but it’s good. I tried searching for my locality at my native place Bhopal (only a limited number of cities are covered as of now) and though it just managed to point at a broad outline, no street level data was given as with Google’s Keyhole, but then Keyhole would not ever concentrate in India, will it?

I can understand the limitations, you cannot expect the sarkari mapmakers to get into such nasty details, may be when the business prospects are understood and the moolah beckons the municipal corporations will wake up. As far as the business use of such products is concerned, unlike CNN news channels in India hardly ever use such micro-views with news capsules, we are still accustomed to looking at DD styled political maps of India and the ones send by our good old Insat. [Link through Animesh.]