The Journey of a Gene Machine!

I have been reading 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins for the last few days. It says that what ever we do is the action and reaction of our genes. And our genes do whatever it can for its survival.

Basically we are machines which are controlled by our genes.

Anyway my genes are making me study more about software system architecture. I have almost thousand million million genes inside me which are advicing or ordering me to learn this new branch of science.

I wrote my first computer program 10 years before. Thats none other than a 'Hello World' program in 'C'. A few years before that, I had written programs in the ancient language of basic. I didn't consider myself into computers at that period when I learned 'Basic' . I was more interested into poetry and literature during those days.

I learned C first. Then learned HTML - the first scripting language I uploaded to my brain. In 1999-2000 period I created my first familly website. I uploaded the web pages to the internet at an internet cafe at Trivandrum, the south most city in India. This is one of the beautiful cities in India with beaches one one side and hills on the other side. Once I finished the upload I was overwhelmed with happiness.

I started my engineering degree on Computer Science & Engineering during 2000-2004 from University College of Engineering, Kariavattion. I learned C and C++ during this period. We did a graphic intensive application which resembles the windows GUI using C and C++.

I stepped into IBS Software Services Ltd on 21st June, 2004. This is one of the most exciting days in my life. For 6 years my dream was to be a software engineer. And this day I was officially declared as a Software Engineer.

I learned the basics of Java at IBS. We had a great leader VK Mathews as the founder of IBS. A man with a great vision. From 2004 to 2006 I was immersed into various J2EE technologies - swing / jsp / servlets / struts / EJB / JMS .... phooh!!! More than I could grasp. I was a rolling stone. But I learned a new lesson. A disciplined approach on what we do differentiates a normal programmer and a software engineer.

On 11th September of 2006 I had to bid good bye to IBS. I joined Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Ltd. Here my first assignment was to be part of a standalone application in Eclipse. I started to learn Eclipse. From enterprise applications to standalone applications :). I was always curious about different kind of software applications.

After two years working in Eclipse, I would see myself as a baby trying to walk in Eclipse framework. I am trying to get up but I often fall.

In future, I need to work in one of the open source projects to get more exposure in software engineering. I scanned through most of the projects and I have shortlisted two projects.

1. Eclipse RAP (Rich Ajax Platform)

2. TMF Xtext

The first one is more web related and second one is more modelling stuff. Both areas are of my interest.

I may look more into xtext. This is a project developed by a company called Itemis in Germany. Ed Merks the EMF project lead has recently moved to this company.

I believe the best way to harness my skills is to work with the best in the business. Hope 'my genes' are satisfied that I am moving in the right direction ;).