Brain v/s Technology

What I want to blog about today has its cause and roots at my Windows work environment(:D)

My idea of a software engineer is that of a person who uses software and technology to provide solutions to problems in businesses/industries.

The general conception of

Software Engineering Equals Coding,Coding and more coding

is absolute bullshit as far as I am concerned. An engineer must be involved in the design of a solution and implementation of the same using the right tools and technology.And, to aid the engineer in building his solutions quickly/easily/efficiently an industry itself thrives to provide tools,frameworks and platforms. A lot of big and small players are involved in this industry,with varying degrees of success and market penetration. Each player remains in market owing to some specialty they are able to provide to their customers which the others are not able to match.

Now,from the point of view of an engineer who is interested in developing products/solutions for solving a set of problems,lets observe the requirements of a tool he/she would want to acquire.
1)Ease of use
Intuitive UIs,complete and concise manuals
2)Features that aid reduction in production time
Methods to accelerate commonly used operations
3)Facilities to let developer focus on business logic
Abstraction of internal technological details(left to developer to choose)

We see these things implemented with varying degrees of effectiveness in the various tools,IDEs,frameworks and platforms that are popular in the market.

The whole idea is that the developer's brain,effort and time has to be devoted only to solving the given problem logically and not in fiddling with the tool/technology itself. Its for this reason that companies are ready to invest on costly development environment like the ones ###@#@$*** Microsoft sells. But .NET and its accompanying tools are so royally messed up that a developer ends up wasting almost half of his/her time circumventing some technical issues or hacking it(as it is called). And it has to be done so frequently and in inexplicable ways that if the software moves to a maintenance team,the developer will have to make sure not to come in contact with that team(if he values his life i.e).
If I start listing the stupid and frustrating bugs that come up with Visual Studio, I can fill pages(that too in this short period of exp).

Another fact that I would like to point out here is that,though bug circumventing and hacking of tools are needed in other platforms as well,a few well placed Google searches can place you at a good position in those cases. In case of M$, for most of the crazy problems, you can only see questions been posted by poor developers like yourself. No official solution or usually ANY solution at all are usually present. If something is present, it might be either someone saying "I too have this problem..Please Help!",or someone pointing to something that does not work at all or some troublesome suggestions like reinstall framework/IDE or even OS :D :P.

So now I am getting to know in First Person why M$ development environment is royally ****ed up. They should realize that developers are people with brains and should let them utilize that more to solve more and more problems with more efficiency. The current state of affairs only aid in frustrating the developer and stealing his valuable time and clarity of thought. They should seriously stop imposing the junk technology on smart people.
Maybe they are just afraid that once people use their brains more,they will migrate to other platforms :P :P
Adios....

Datarupt

That is what a person who has lost all his data must right be called.
My dear 250GB hard disk at home got fully erased a couple of weeks back. Initially I couldn't handle the shock well,but in half an hour I managed to estimate the extent of damage and started inquiring with my friends about recovery mechanisms as well as availability of some of the data that I had.

Most of them comforted me by ensuring that its just a matter of recovery. So,this time when I was at home, I tried a pack of recovery tools on my disk,to no avail.All I managed to recover were a few random songs and some college photos.

By now I have resigned to the fact that I won't get all those data back very easily. And I have started planning on how to reclaim majority of those data. Softwares,games,movies and majority of the songs are available with the common market(i.e the average commoner also has). For the specific and rare ones, I might have to go visiting some old friends. Still there would remain a bulk of data that only I held. Those, I would either have to recreate or redownload if necessary/possible. Some(especially programs and ebooks),I have brought alongwith me to Mysore,making them the sole survivors of the loss.

Anyway,there would still be many such items which are never replaceable,the loss of which I have to accept. So anyone who wishes to contact me for any data,please know I am legally 'Datarupt'.
Living the life of a vagabond..its great fun.. adios amigos