Well, the title looks as though an experienced Principal Engineer, who has worked in the industry for 20 years is writing the post. But I am just a young kid, 6 months old . Even then, I could notice a clear change in the way I perceive/interpret things these days. The other day, when my brother asked me, where I had kept his book, I casually replied “Its on the 1st shelf! Check it.” He rummaged the entire shelf and couldn’t find it. I then realized, I had actually started counting the shelves from zero! and referred to the 2nd one (sigh). This is not the only instance this has happened to me. The reference to the word ‘server‘ at a restaurant, ‘thread‘ at a provision store, triggers a totally different meaning immediately.

I thought there were only a few people suffering from this ailment. But, I was proven wrong. My friend Rahul received a mail(am referring to the postal mail here ) from HSBC which had his address and name misspelt. He quickly exclaimed “Their internal DB(Database) seems to be inconsistent !”. I am pretty sure there will be many more people who would empathize with me .

On the other hand, I have become more organized in the way I do things. Software developing is not only about coding, its much more beyond that. It makes you think! You keep asking yourself, “Why are you doing this ?“, “Am I actually wasting time doing this ? Is there a better path that I can take ?“. Though this seems to be software design oriented questions, these can be extended to day-to-day life as well. Trust me, you get a lot of clarity in what you do. The design decisions that you make in developing softwares can be extended to any damn thing in the world!

For instance, I am always apprehensive about using my credit card in restaurants- how are you so sure that the waiter to whom you had given your card, has actually not swiped it twice! ? He could have well swiped it for a massive amount the first time and swiped it again for the corresponding bill amount. Would you ever know that ? I would have ideally expected the card statement to contain ‘previously swiped date and time‘. The moment you find that the value of this field matches the current clock, the waiter is in trouble! Well am sure you can think of lot many better designs .

I have often got questions like the one above in many occasions. Its legally possible to have more than 1 passport. Shouldn’t it be an unique identifier ? Things like these seem to come up. Anyways, I seem to be enjoying this life and hope to be like this forever