Principia Unlogica

Learning Python is fun. A lot of fun, reading about new things, and trying them out. And enjoying all the new revelations as they dawn upon me... yeah, usually things don't strike me, they dawn upon me gradually. But its "Yippeeeee" There was a time in Purdue when I took an operating systems course with heavy project load without ever having programmed in C before, without ever having seen a Unix system before. Starting my project I sat before the computer wondering just where to write the program in a terminal till someone came by and said - just use vi - as if I was pondering on an editor choice. What he didn't know was, I didn't know what vi was or meant, or how to open it, or anything about it till I saw him type vi at the prompt and open an editor. Wow, that was something colossally stupid. While my peers were wrangling through OS concepts in the project, I was grappling with the very basics. I remember compiling my first ever program. The compiler spewed li

I am picking on IITKanpur in this post just because of a conversation that made me think, but I suppose this can be applied to most Indian institutes. The other day, hubby was talking about the session he attended at IIT-Kanpur's convention on how IIT should be 30 years from now. He said that the panel was so completely out of touch, and so lacked a vision or even a grasp on current. They had employed McKinsey consultants and inspite of that they came up with ridiculous solutions like "We are going to build a new high-tech village near IIT Kanpur because the institute suffers from not being in a big industrialized city" Duh? But there is a basic issue here. Consultants. You cannot and should not outsource 'thinking'. Sure consultants bring a fresh view, but they do not know about your organization. Thinking about your organization or about your problem is an important process in which you learn more about organization, and really take time to step back from the da