Wear “Tester’s hat” to be a good Developer

Developers cannot be good testers of the products they have created….so true
As, mothers know their baby well, and they will never put them into a test, where they know their baby is going to fail, so is true, with developers also. I believe we developers always want to see our code working properly, so we will test it to check if it’s working correctly as, designed by us and not as desired by the customer.
Testers will test it to fail it in any way. This is the difference between developer testing and a tester testing.
Developers are considered to be very lenient while testing their piece of development as they tend to skip the bugs.
We will always test it, such that it would work always…; whereas, testers would always query your product such that it will always break the functionality.
Hence, Developers are said to be creators and testers, the destroyers.
It’s always better to get it reviewed from others instead of analyzing it yourself. Try looking at it from customer point of view than from a Developers point of view; that would make your baby smarter. The more we ignore the know bugs, failures then we end up putting more efforts correcting them.
Correcting the bugs at an earlier stage is better than doing it later; we end up putting more efforts figuring out what needs to be fixed. If we face the obstacles at the earlier stage, helps us improve the quality of the code and its efficiency.

Just like a successful life cannot exist without failures, any code cannot be 100% error free without any bugs. It is those bugs which help us know more on the issue and improve our code quality. So, it is developer’s responsibility also to do proper unit testing, we should be good testers to develop good products……
I believe a Good developer should have good testing skills…..by wearing the ’tester’s hat’, he can not only improve the code quality, but also helps him satisfy the customers requirements.

Scientific temper

Today, we tend to complicate our lives, due to which we are feeling insecure, restless. I believe this is because we are not adopting ourselves to the changes, not willing to accept the changes. There fore, we end up believing in superstitions, rumors, myths, astrology and start believing them blindly.
Leading Big sessions at Avaya had Jayant Narlikar to speak about ‘Scientific Temper’. It was a great Experience to hear this great 72 yrs scientist. He said Scientific Temper was talked about by Jawaharlal Nehru in his Discovery of India book.
Scientific Temper is an attitude of looking at things from statistical point of view.
Every theory should be put to test before accepting them at their face value, and avoid simplistic reasoning. He gave examples that Newton’s theories were never accepted, they were analyzed through experiments and statistics….
But today, if someone proves it , we blindly start believing it …..the most proven example is Astrology. Many of us must be reading their horoscopes. Many of us still follow some superstitions even when we know that scientifically they are not true…..we are just fooling ourselves, slowing falling into pit of restlessness.
But, it is seen that people who don’t believe in such myths, etc benefit due to such superstition driven people. A classic example is of Solar Eclipse(SE) day. It is believed that on SE day, you are not supposed to go out of the house, not supposed to have food, and perform some poojas. We were in B’lore when there was SE , our relatives had told us to do all these things a day before. We treated the day as a normal day, we went out for somework….our work got over early….:),since there was no traffic that day, that too in a city like B’lore…;)…see that’s the benefit. One of my friends gave an example of the similar day. It was difficult to get train tickets for some place. She had decided to take a general ticket and travel through general boggy. When she reached the station, she was shocked to see that the whole train was running empty and she could easily travel through an AC couch…I wish there was Solar eclipse all those days ,I travel too….:)
So, the moral of the story is, don’t fear such myths, believes, fear our stupidity. Be analytic, always put things to test and believe in statistical results than mere facts. Critical thinking is not just for scientists, we all need to apply it. He said that IT has been a key factor in spreading such bias and illogical information….(mails such as ur wish would come true if u fwd them,..ganesha drinking milk mail, etc). Truly, we have grown so much in technology, but we are still behind in our thoughts…



We all need to adapt the attitude of Scientific Temper, make ourselves tolerant and break all those artificial barriers. We need to focus on our goals than focus on such artificial barriers. Jayant Narlikar’s talk has strengthen my believes of not following things like astrology, superstitions, vastushastra, etc. It was an enlightening session for all.

Follow your Passion

‘Leading Big’ is an initiative started by Avaya, wherein people from prominent fields share their thoughts for an hour with Employees of Avaya.
On 26th Feb, I was fortunate to attend the session. Aparna Phanshikar was gonna talk on ‘Follow your Passion’.
It was a Friday and wanted to spend some time away from work.
I had no clue, who she was, so visited her site—www.aparnapanshikar.com.
Aparna is a Hidustani Classical vocalist. Born to a family renowned for achievements in various forms of Art.



I was not sure, if I could attend 1 hr session, listening to such renowned persons, usually such talks don’t retain the crowd, so caught up with a last row seat…..(so that I can move out quietly if I cant resist it…)

The room got packed with people sooner and Aparna along with her Hubby (Nikhil Joshi) entered, and took their seats.
She being, a singer was feeling odd in between the crowd of geeks….

She started the session with a short, beautiful ‘Gurushakshat’ prayer based on some raga.
I loved it, this the first time, I was hearing a song live……
Sweet voice, reached all hearts seated there, no mike, but the song could be heard and felt, it was a lovely experience, wished the song didn’t stop for ever and felt like losing self in it.
Her husband is an Elex Engg and started unfolding her life, telling us about her famly background, and how she followed her passion..

Aparna’s uncle Prabhakar Panshikar is a renowned marathi actor, her mom Mira Panshikar is a famous Classical vocalist.
Though she belonged to such family, it came as a surprise to me that she did not start singing since 2 yrs, but it was after her SSC(10th Std) that she actually chose classical singing and followed it as a passion.

She told us about her various foreign tours and her unforgettable Kabul visit.
She enjoys spreading the joy, peace to people across world through her songs.
She feels spiritual, as though god sings and experienced the divine feeling, couple of times.
She concluded the session with the famous ghazal (Aaj jaane ki jidh na kara – Farida Khuyam). Lovely song and I was lucky to hear this song from Aparna.
I believe music relieves you from your stress, especially such soft, slow classical songs.
It was a memorable time for me.
I just did not realize how that 1 hr passed and it was time to leave.

Some of the thoughts that I could catch from her session/talks:
1. It is never late to attain your passion. You only require that will and love for it to follow it seamlessly.
2. There will be number of obstacles that you will face, but it is up to us, whether we fight it or fall prey to it and give up.
3. It requires years of hard work and patience to follow your passion.
Aparna’s voice was so sweet, sharpened, which was a result of years of daily riyaaz.

A person who lives with his/her passion is said to be the happiest person.
Aparna followed her passion and made a career out of what she likes to do best—Singing!!.....I could see the shine in her face, since she was living with her passion….grt 

I love creativity, either that is through programming (create an app) or showing creativity through collages, painting, sketching…..
I love learning new things…..
I enjoy doing such stuffs, they give me the pleasure, happiness and I don’t realize when I forget myself doing these things. This is, like following your passion for me.
I love teaching ,just enjoy the feeling when I teach Maths (my fav subject) to school students. I am fortunate to be a part of Great Foundation, where we teach 9th & 10th students Maths and English.

I am living the present, following my passion of learning, teaching and doing creative stuffs.