fosstrack

I maintained a fairly successful legacy C/C++ application that performed business critical functions. The core developers were long gone, and countless of changes had to gone into it since. The only way the application survived was automatically comparing outputs and intermediate data structures against "ideal" values. Hundreds of business scenarios with their own input datasets. No one really understood what each scenario or ideal value meant. So your goal was to minimize divergence, and update the test case if it was deemed acceptable.

Second that. Anyone interested in studying web crawler tech should definitely take a look at Heritrix. I had used it extensively when it was still in 2.x. They got so many things right about writing well-behaved and fault tolerant crawlers. Plus the code is very modular, and extensible, if you know some Java. The other popular option then was Apache Nutch, but it had too much hadoop baggage.

I agree. Its not what they say on their deathbeds, but what brought them peace and acceptance ultimately (if at all).

In a way, you experience death every night when you go to sleep, and a new birth every morning. As I programmer - I need to remember to close my open connections every time, else my brain will run out of memory and crash.

Yup. Just read somewhere to the effect- "if you can stop complaining for just 1 week, you will be filled with positivity forever"

Notes to myself - "Sometimes, the people who have everything in life have nothing in death. But sometimes the people who have nothing in life have everything that they could ever want in their final hours." "I never go to bed angry." "I choose my words wisely with both friend and foe." "when people are lying in their deathbeds, they remember their parents and siblings and spouses and children and pets — not their high school geometry assignment or that one bad day at work 30 years ago."

There are really two concepts that I have been trying hard to master: 1. As the OP, learning to recognize the state of your mind, and picking a task that's appropriate to it 2. Learn to enter and exit the desired state of mind at will. Like switching off the lights in one room, and entering another instantly.

The latter is imho harder because it requires the metacognition from the former as well as discipline. But discipline itself is not sufficient. Need to build in sufficient downtime as well and fight the urge to be productive during that phase. Let it all sink in. This might be the hardest.

Pretty much any major university had this in their curriculum. Really enjoyed programming the 8085 boards (kits) using a keypad and LED segmented display. The boards used to lose power suddenly during practical exams after punching dozens of instructions. At which point, one is expected to not panic and perform CPR on the board by pressing hard on the chips with your palms till the display comes back online :-)

The culture is mainly collegial. We do all of those - birthdays, picnics, parties on the patio, etc. Ping me if you would like to discuss anything.

> Which means it's rare to find good natural programmers, which you do in western countries because it's pretty much based on meritocracy rather than degrees

Not disagreeing. Natural programmers do exist in plenty outside the IITs. They need to be nurtured. The educational system does not help. Not that many companies, in the US too, put that much effort into grooming talented individuals anymore. But when they do, there's payoff.

To add perspective as someone with 10+ years in the US and 7+ as founder in India: You should really qualify as to whether you are looking for development practices in outsourcing companies or tech startups.

Code quality and practices in Indian outsourcing companies are as good or bad as that dictated by US IT departments (out-sourcers), usually large non-technical firms.

Startups, however, are significantly different. I haven't seen much difference between US startups and Indian ones in terms of caring for your own code, jumping on the latest trends, and, generally, pushing the limits of what can be achieved. Indian startups, especially outside of Bangalore, do have to struggle to get proper funding. So they have to be practical on what they focus on.

Have no first hand experience with Chinese startups. But I would presume that they are no different.

This is sage advice. You have basically boiled down tons of self help material into a single comment. Thanks.

Agree. The Puneri 'patya' (signboards) are an interesting part of the local culture. Punekars (residents of Pune) don't take them seriously. Its all in humour.