IBM Developer Day - Whataday!

When one of the biggest open-source company announces Developer Day with events covering open-source, Cloud, AI & Blockchain, I wanted to experience the event and familiarize the technologies defining the present software development.

What really astonished me was the number of Devs & enthusiasts who attended the event! It was jam packed. There were hands-on sessions, booths & talks covering Blockchain, Data & AI, Cloud.

The panel discussion by IBM's CEO Ginni Rometty concentrated on open-source & how open-source is revolutionizing the way companies look at software. IBM has acquired Red Hat, which is one of the biggest companies with open-source business model.

Julian Gordon, VP, The Linux Foundation, urged developers to just dive into contributing to open-source, starting with improving documentation and concentrating on low hanging fruits in the initial stages. He said pretty much every modern computer runs an open source software & more than 10,000 lines of code is contributed to the Linux Foundation everyday!
Dr. Lata Iyer, Global Head, Digital Engg Services, Royal Bank of Scotland talked about how banks such as RBS have warmed up to open-source in the fields of digital analytics, blockchain to digitally support customers. One of the big methodologies RBS has ensured is that they use curated software approved by the regulators (for both proprietary & open-source).
Gautam Khanna of Infosys said the biggest myth is that Open source is free. There are costs associated with talent, scarcity, taking sub-optimal decisions regards to software. He said open-source has led to the democratization of software and hopes there will be democratization of data for bringing transparency in AI. Moments in time database by IBM is a good example of it.

IBM announced “India Developer champions”, a multi year program to recognize software developers contributions in open-source, in collaboration with Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) & Nasscom. 

Cloud Track:
Cloud is 14 years old, and 80% of the businesses have yet to move to cloud. This explains the enormous opportunity & challenges that exists in the Cloud.
The first tech talk on cloud by Girish Dhanakshirur concentrated on the difference between monolithic & microservices architecture and how to start thinking in terms of microservices. IBM worked with the American Airlines to move their website & apps to microservices architecture which cut down the maintenance time by 80%! IBM cloud architecture consists of open source softwares Kubernetes, Containerd, Istio, Docker.
Tech talks on Cloud touched upon the caveats of microservices, Kubernetes, and finally about IBM cloud.

There were hands-on sessions & deep dive workshops which I could not attend (There simply was too much to do in a day). But those who attended did say sessions were eventful.

AI Track:
AI Sessions concentrated on Machine Learning, Data Science, Deep Learning, Speech & Language Processing etc., The session about how startups are using AI in fighting fake news was insightful.

There were many demo booths by IBM developers showcasing the latest technologies that they were working on. There was a Virtual Reality game that included user setting up servers!

One very interesting news was that BSE was the first stock exchange in the world to run on open-source! And now both BSE & NSE run on Red Hat along with UIDAI (Aadhar).

That was about #IBMDevDay. I'm off to start contributing to open-source software by fixing documentation. Hope to see you contribute to open-source too!

Page Rank 0

In-spite of GeeksforGeeks.org getting good response from all four corners, I wonder why it's pagerank is 0. Is it because we do nothing to increase it? Or is it because no one mentions our site?

I must confess I and Sandeep have very little knowledge of web technologies or web search engines or any other stuff related to web(Apologies to Sandeep if this turns out to be false. But I'm pretty much sure). Help needed? just google. It's amazing that both of us managed to learn nothing about PHP even though PHP is the software used to build our website.

GeeksforGeeks is just a pure hobby and there are no plans to do anything else with it except to have some fun at the end of the day.  The team has no intentions of earning even a single pie from the website, even though its expenses are around Rs6000 per year. But at the end of the day it is completely worth because of the returns in terms of the learning. And the first hand experience of hosting a website. And yes some people benefit from our website too :)

New to website creation? A guy as dumb as me could do it

Caution: This is for people who are atleast half as dumb as me. Most probably you are not. Still read it to laugh at me.

Ok. Even before I start, if you like my geeksforgeeks.org and think that I'm not dumb, you are wrong. I'm dumb. Secondly, a dumb guy like me wouldn't have managed it if not for Sandeep. It is he who is its creator and preserver. I'm just its destroyer!!

But even if you are as dumb as me, you can still manage to come up with a great website. geeksforgeeks.org creation took only around a day. But yes it was because of the genius of Sandeep. Even otherwise, you can come up with one within 3-4 days. If you are thinking how, I'm coming to it.

1. Wordpress is a great free tool available for starting a website. It is basically a blogging tool. But can be extended to do other things as well(though not very powerful). It requires PHP, apache server and Mysql. You do not need to know anything about these. All you have to do is to install them in your home pc for testing.
2. Find a web hosting provider supporting PHP and Mysql. He himself should help you in installing wordpress for you(this was our case). Now you are up and ready for hosting.
3. Follow all the boring installation stuff of wordpress carefully. Wordpress does not manage data in files. It writes all your data into database. Files only have the design of your website.
4. You are ready. Just login to wordpress with the account information it provides you and start posting!! You can select your own themes and etc etc.
5. Once you are familiar, you can explore plugins and other stuff. Customization will follow.

If you are thinking you should create an awesome website using Java, mvc, different frameworks like struts etc etc, off from here. This post is meant not for dreamers. This post is meant for pragmatic people.

If you need any help, I'm here. Fellow geek, we can have a dumb talk. GeeksforGeeks.org is there which is a simple, wordpress based website. You can use it not just for its data but also design. Did you geek today?

The Logo speaks

http://geeksforgeeks.org/

My dear friend,

Today, let me tell you my story. The story of my birth, and the story of my existence. When the GeeksforGeeks team realized the need for a powerful messenger who could convey everything they conceptualized about their website, I was born. I came to personify their ideal.

Now, let me explain the what each part of me stands for. The punchline "Coming together of Geeks" summarizes the idea. As you would have guessed by now, "G" stands for Geek. The two G's are symbolic to different Geeks. The inverted G represents Contributor Geek and the other G represents Would be Contributor Geek. The distance between the two G's represent the physical distance between individual Geek's and the link between the two G's represent what the website stands for: "Bridging the physical distance and knowledge sharing".

Even though I'm made of letter "G", I am more of a picture than just letters. I exist to remind the geekiness that exists in you. And to remind you the power of geeking(knowledge sharing). Did you geek today?

geeksforgeeks.org

geeksforgeeks.org has been my new love. We wanted to create a logo for the website. An idea stuck me one morning for the logo and after trying the whole morning with different designs, I settled for this. I was so excited with what I had come up and I couldn't stop grinning the whole day for my new achievement.

But I realized that the painful job starts only afterwords. The logo & punchline was accepted. And then I had to carefully create it on ms-paint(I'm unaware of any other photoshop) and with different colours. It was all worth it in the end when I saw how good an artist I was!!!

Reflections

Ever wondered about the purpose of the life we are living? Ever reflected upon the millions who have lived before us?

Fame, power and money: These are the three pillars of our life. Or should I say the three greatest obstacles one faces in one's life?

Is increased earning panacea for the wretched penury? Can we overcome our sorrows by indulging ourselves in epicurean experiences?

Is life all about reducing pain and increasing pleasures? Can we have pleasures without melancholies?

I feel sad for the way I'm living my life. But do I have a choice? What does it take to come out of my comfort zone? Well, the answer is simple and ready made. Even a primary school kid knows the secret of success. The difficult part is following it. Living through it.

Capitalism and Money

During 2nd year of my college, I was hooked on to playing age of empires. There was an interesting game - Defend the wonder. One team was to defend the wonder and the other to raze it to the ground. My team was assigned to the task of defending the wonder. We were doing very well. We were defeating our enemy who was advancing towards the wonder and also moving forward into their kingdom. The opposite team had a great tactician called SKR. He realized that there was no point in fighting a losing battle. So he fled the battleground, secretly marched his suicide bombers towards the wonder and razed it to the ground. When I thought that we were going to win the match, I was shocked to see the message "You have been DEFEATED". Huh, it's not possible! I thought. I reminded myself that the objective was not to defeat the enemy and show your might. It was to defend the wonder!

The above example may not be very apt but it captures the essence. You might say that capitalism, free market is our best chance. But look beyond it. The essence of today's capitalism is to make money. It does not say that its motive is to bring the best in us, and money is just a reward for the best you have on offer. Your objective is not your ability but to make money.

Vivekananda once said "If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better."

The sooner we realize the evil side of money the better. Or else we shall live to many more credit crises, great depressions and license rajs.

That's it for now. Thanks for your patience in reading.