Beautiful Omaha

There are couple of things in life which tell us the life is worth living. I have been living in Omaha for a year now and I have seen some of the best scenery in the natural setting. 

1) When we come down on 144 Street, from Military Street towards Dodge, there is Standing Bear Lake. One night after having dinner at friends place around 11:00 PM, I was driving down and it was a full moon night. I was at a corner, when I saw milky moon, whose shadow was reflected in the lake with all the green surrounding. That was one amazing view. In fact I stopped my car and did not feel like moving from that site at all.

2) One time I was on my way to Walmart on 99th Street in Northern Omaha. Somehow I decided not to take interstate that day and went by Military Rd. It was around 7:30 in June/ July and I could see orange colored sun going down hill. It was probably the best sunset I had ever seen.

3) In the night, when you drive on Dodge Street go from 72nd street towards downtown, you start the descend around 60th street, you see the street lights forming fancy M shape. Its a very pretty site. 

Sometimes unexpectedly you find these pretty sites and all the mundaneness of the life goes away.   All these great times, you feel like thanking god that you have eyes to appreciate how beautiful nature can be. 

The Pragmatic Programmer

When you get a reward certificate to be used on Amazon, you have millions of options to spend it. I was kinda confused whether I should buy a book named as "The Pragmatic Programmer" or get my favorite movie DVD  "Home Alone"? 

Hmmmm, very interesting. Is there really a book out there which tells me apart from theory how to do my job best? By my virtue of being the perfectionist at my job, I don't like the situations when people tell me that I wrote bad code, did not think of edge case. Nor that it has happened any time, but why not better myself so that it will never occur? After all its just a start of professional life :) 

Ok, I am not ready to read 800 page book on best practices where reading one page takes 20 minutes and understanding what I read takes 2 days :( After spending 10-12 hours in the office working with all new technologies everyday, do we need more reading?) 

I had heard about this book and this review helped me to make my choice ;)  

“If I’m putting together a project, it’s the authors of this book that I want. . . . And failing that I’d settle for people who’ve read their book.”

         —Ward Cunningham

It surely seems the book actually lives up to the promise. Lets review some of the first few topics that I have read.  One thing, the title of each topics are completely mind boggling! Following the tradition of "Head First" books.

1) The cat ate my source code:  

"Provide options, don't make lame excuses". 

Yes things go wrong, with all worst combination of various mishaps and downtime occurs. Monday morning is not meant to explain what I was thinking 6 months ago when I was working on the project. Hmmm.. So lets be practical. Just think what caused all this, do the analysis and do what can be done to avoid the situation in the future. 

Makes 100% sense!!!!

2) Software Entropy: 

However meticulous software engineers are, projects do not always have the best of the design and code. There is always some broken window left in the project and broken window gives the feeling that nobody really cares for the project. 

"Don't live with broken windows". Tells us to fix broken windows as soon as you find it. If you cannot fix, at least leave the comment, message to tell that you are working on it. 

I can go on and on with these handy tips of this book. 

Just amazing book! If you are a software programmer, find the meaning of word Kaizen and then your next hit is going to be www.amazon.com to buy the book :)

 I am sure you feel the same excitement  as me!!