Learn to Write and Write to learn

Shankar Balachandran — Tue, 14 May 2019 14:58:18 +0000

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

― Terry Pratchett

One often undervalued aspect in Software development is Writing. Technical Writing is much more complicated than coding at times. When I started Software Development, I always thought documentation is an exercise in futile. The code is either easy to understand for anyone and if not completely non understandable for anyone. In my first job, we were exploring and learning an ERP platform. The company gave me enough freedom to spend time on research and make sure I completely understand the Product.

Probably 6 months in to the job, I had written a personal blog on something that I don't remember now. Reading through that, my boss suggested I should try my hand at Blogging about the platform we were working on and the challenges we were facing on it. I thought this was a simple exercise. Only as I started writing my first blog post did I realize that I did not know much about the functionality I was going to blog about. The thing with mind is sometimes it's way more powerful than what we give credit for. It knows that you are a troubled soul and many times to keep you at peace, it gives you a false impression that you have understood things even though the truth could be otherwise. The same dawned on me that day.

My first blog post is in this blog and now 121 posts later, I am still amazed how far I went in a short span of time. From May 2010 till May 2011, I remember going crazy and writing almost 2-3 blog posts a week. It's not much by current standards, but with my work, even to manage that time is more surprising to me.

The reason for this blog post now is because, I was looking back at the fact that, it is this very blog that had got me my last 2 jobs and still makes me feel good about myself when someone references my blogs during development. To those devs, who are starting out now and even to those who can't write to save their life, use this opportunity to remind yourself that more you learn to write about your developments, the more you will understand and the more you can share with the community.

I am planning to write more blogs henceforth on generic topics related to Software Development and if you want any specific topic addressed, please do let me know.

Happy coding...
P.S : I have published the same in my personal blog as well here.

My 10 years in Application Development

Shankar Balachandran — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 11:09:59 +0000

It's been around 10 years since I started programming. Maybe a bit more if I have to include my first attempts at C programming in school. But it would be a grave insult to call remembering ten lines of code and just replicating it to put a star on the screen. I also did a course on Visual Basic, but it was more gimmicks that Application development. But it was truly in the year 2007 when I started my Master in Computer Applications that I found a new flare for developing applications.

I was very late to computers in general and even when I joined my Masters, computers were not really accessible to me. But when I joined my Masters where one is actually expected to hone the skills which they already have, but in case it was where I was learning the skills, initially it was very difficult. I was not sure what computers had for me nor I had a natural flair for programming. But the thing about computers that attracted me was the visual medium it gave. Initially, it was just a door to a high paying job, but in a month or two, I knew I was genuinely attracted to the computer.

I was not good at programming (neither now). I am not someone with strong Algorithm and data structure background who can write complex code. But I liked building applications. Probably, that's why I titled the blog as 10 years of Application Development and not 10 years of Programming. I took a lot of pride in developing an application using the visual medium that had lots of User Interface elements and less of code behind it. I remember my first few projects were Cricket team building application on Visual basic (much like Fantasy cricket in cricinfo). But building screens, navigating them, providing something new on each page was something I was very much fascinated on. I purposely kept the complexities to the bare minimum because what fascinated me was the joy people got when using applications that just worked.

I built quite a lot of small applications and developing a simple todo list was my dream then and a dream now though I might have developed around 5 todo applications that I used for some time and then discarded for one reason or the other. There was not GitHub at that time, so lost most of it. When my friends honed their skills on heavy programming, I was just dreaming and making small applications that made sense like a simple Sales portal done on VB and MS Access. I remember having a project on C++ where we had to implement some encryption algorithms. I still remember a very good friend of mine and a brilliant coder almost writing 10000 lines of coding implementing a very complex algorithm. All I did was create 10 encryption techniques on my own like reversing alphabets, replacing alphabet with numbers etc with my own logic built in. They were not perfect encryption techniques as such, but the goal was to design an application that handled multiple encryption techniques. I used to envy my friend for writing such brilliant code, but I hardly wrote around 700 lines of code, but more functional.

When I started working in late 2009, I entered into the world of Enterprise Resource Planning, I was fascinated by how little companies cared about the User Experience. They wanted to jam in as much complexity as possible and make it so hard for the users, that they had to be trained on using the system first and then on its functionality. From that time, with the good vision that the companies I have worked had, I always develop functionalities which are more intuitive in nature and less complex. It didn't bother me that I was having more fields where fewer fields would suffice. But I always wanted the users to see more to understand the application themselves than to read through manuals to use a single page.

Fortunately, very early in my working career, I got chances to design stuff, which was my core strength and probably my only strength till date. I am good at fixing things quickly though sometimes they are not the best option available but a viable solution where the client is more happy to use the System. Still 10 years down the lane, I have lot's of regrets including not worshipping Data Structures and Algorithms, but as the years passed I have gradually learned to work with them.

The reason for writing this blog is to give people like me believe that you can thrive in this industry. Always we are clouded by people who can code x lines in a minute, who can solve all the code challenges put forth by big companies. But remember, there are lots of opportunities and scope for creators in this space. There are so many things in this world which needs to digitize and the world needs simple programmers more than ever. The more application developers think like end users, the better the world would be. Do not limit yourselves to the confines of the programming language or the application but rather learn to dream and remember, the world is never enough for Dreamers.

Happy Coding...

DEV Community: Shankar Balachandran

Learn to Write and Write to learn

My 10 years in Application Development