A Sea Of Difference

It was a reckless Friday beginning for I studied till four in the morning for a pointless test in Object Oriented Analysis and Design hoping to clear the internals. I guess the teachers were as perplexed about the subject as me because the paper was a bit too analytical to be true. Too analytical to be true for someone studying in a private engineering college under the Anna University. For someone studying under any other college under Anna University the situation might have appeared worse and even unjust.

Later that morning, I had the opportunity of listening to a professor who delivered a lecture on "Digital Image Processing and Hardware Accelerators" and I must say I enjoyed the privilege of introducing him to the audience. After the introduction I took a chair hoping to doze off in about four minutes since I had burned the midnight oil and a bit of morning oil too going to bed at around four in the morning.

But there are circumstances in an average man's life when he just cannot sit back and let go. These are circumstances that will transform him and force him to act virtuous at least for a momentary period of time. I must concede that the lecture was one such experience.

The speaker was an eminent professor from the Department of Computer Science at the Pennsylvania State University and quite a talented man considering he had the reputation of guiding around 21 Ph.Ds by the young age of 37. He seemed very sharp and one could realize that he was certainly one of the finest in his field. At least that's what the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) thought when they decided to fund his idea of developing "Smart Cameras" to study the movements of people and identify their mood and intentions through their actions. The lecture was delivered for about an hour and a half. I never managed to close my eyes. The speaker had truly achieved his purpose.

Looking back one just cannot refrain from commenting on the educational system that is being thrust on the college goers of today. There were quite a few observations I made that day. Our system is bent on churning out the same old stories that the computer scientists of yesteryear wrote in the history of Computer Science and more unfortunate is the fact that it is waiting for computer scientists of today on the other side of the world ( interpreted as Outside India) to write new stories to keep grinding in future. Another observation was that the people who truly make a difference to their field of study are those who find out a need and take care of it while those who simply use the field to live a life are those who read the solution and fill the need as an answer to a two mark question in their examination booklet. Yet another stifling observation I made was that the truly inspired scholars of Computer Science correctly understand every part of the solution they build even though they may borrow ideas from a variety of disciplines and subfields. But the majority on the other side of the line have enough troubles coping with their own area of interest.

There's a sea of difference between us and the people on the other side of the world (read US and Europe) and it's time we bridge the gap soon enough before it turns into an ocean and drowns us in our own ignorance and lack of application.

An interesting twist to the tale : The professor mentioned was an Indian.

Waiting For An Idea For Your Final Year Project?

One month into the final year of college and people are already running around looking for supervisors for the final year project. All the build up suggests that life could turn out to be very hectic next semester. What really goes into a final year project? After a few days of running around and talking around with fellow students there's been a stark realization in my mind.

Big ideas presenting solutions to real life problems don't really work well for a final year project, especially if you are placed in a field as abstract as Computer Science. This should come in as a rude shock for some of us who still retain traces of those innovative ideas we had when we first entered college. I had the opportunity of presenting some of my ideas to the project coordinator and realized that there simply isn't enough infrastructure to implement anything worthwhile, at least from the point of view of a layman. It gives me a strong feeling that the next big thing in technology might never come from a University but from a Research Lab which is completely funded by the Industry.

Industry lending a helping hand to Education & Research is a very interesting concept because it seems pretty ironical that Industry should fund the progress of knowledge. I have always felt that the Industry is inferior to the Education sector simply because it is a by - product of the knowledge work done by educational institutions. Industry markets today what universities built ten years ago and they will no doubt cash in on the work done by universities today over the next ten years. Knowledge spawns Industry and yet all the truly defining research work seems to have moved to the Industry today.

Coming back to the issue of final year project, one thing which is very clear is that it is better to get caught in the web of abstraction woven by a project guide, rather than trying to solve a simple real life problem and getting caught in your own web without people to bail you out.

It all simply means that at any point in life hard work counts much more than innovation and ideas. Maybe it should serve us better to pick a guide and take his/her suggestion and then putting real effort into the project rather than whiling away time wallowing in our own ideas with nobody to reciprocate our spark.

The vacuum in the Industry-Academia Relationship

Why do we go to school? Why do we follow it up with college? What is the purpose of Education?It is obvious that most of us go to college to get a degree which will act as a launchpad to kick start a career. And when we enter the Industry, does the knowledge we gain (assuming we did manage to attend classes amidst our busy schedules) in college really help? The answer is an instant NO.

This is especially true in the IT Industry, where freshers have to be trained anyway to be made employable. If this is the case, then what is the use of spending four years in college learning concepts which might never quite serve any purpose in our lives?

Every year thousands of fresh graduates are flooding the Indian IT scene, yet one does not find any conscious effort made by IT companies to explain to students (still in college) what is exactly taking place inside an IT company. Wouldn't it make the job of a youngster easier if he were informed of what exactly he would be working on and how he would need to work in the company, while he is still in college?

Of course, there are companies which tie up with top colleges to hire fresh talent as a complete bundle but are they doing enough justice to their relationship with the institution which agrees to cooperate just because there is the slightest chance of improving the industry academia relationship? One interesting aspect of this relationship is the workshops conducted by the companies which surprisingly are conducted almost always by people from the HR domain. Wouldn't the students be better served if they were to attend workshops conducted by people from the Technical domain who can tell them how they fit into the company and what exactly is expected out of them by the Industry? In this way, the students can better prepare themselves for the industry and know what to expect from a job in the IT domain.