LakTEK A Sri Lankan, A Rubyist and A Web Dude

Interesting stuff to watch out in 2010

We are already into the 2nd decade of 21st century and it is very evident that this would be the decade, where Cloud Computing, Realtime web and Mobile Web will start to rule!

As per some buzzword fanatics, this year (2010) will be the transition year from web 2.0 to web 3.0. Buzzwords aside, as a web application developer I too expect to see the rise and mainstream adoption of some very interesting technologies during this year.

Web Sockets

Remember how AJAX changed the face of web in 2000? As I see Web Sockets would be the new AJAX of 2010. It’s actually the next step from AJAX in improving the face of web. Web Sockets would allow two way communication between the browser and the server. With this, HTTP will no longer would behave as an stateless protocol. Actually, web sockets API comes as an upgrade to HTTP protocol in HTML5 specification, but already lot of Browser vendors and server developers has shown their interest and started adding support for the web sockets API. Currently, Google Chrome Beta version supports the cleint-side Web Socket API. In 2010, we can expect other browser vendors including Mozilla to support Web Socket API, enabling web app developers to come up with richer real-time user experience.

HTML5

Apart from WebSockets, there are lot of other interesting developments in HTML5 specification awaiting to get mainstream adoption in this year. Many new browsers has started to support audio/video elements, which would allow us to finally ditch dirty proprietary plugins (i.e. Flash, QuickTime & etc). Other interesting features in HTML5 specification includes offline data access, and geolocation API which would be really vital for improved user experience of mobile web. Google already utilise these features in their mobile web apps, which would give a big boost for the widespread adoption.

Rails3

Exactly after a one year from the announcement, we are finally getting to see the fruits of epic merge between Rails & Merb. Much faster, modular and extensible version of our favourite web framework is almost ready to be released as Rails3, within this year. To get more details on improvements in Rails3 please follow the blog series written by Yehuda Katz in Engine Yard blog.

NoSQL Movement (Scehma-less Databases)

Last decade, we only heard big boys like Google(Big Table), Amazon(Dynamo) are using schema-less key-value data storages. However, projects like MongoDB, Redis, CouchDB & Tokyo Cabinet is giving the opportunity for us to get a taste of it. Schema-less databases are proving to be really flexible over traditional relational databases for certain types of projects. NoSQL movement will surely gain more steam in 2010, so ignore it at your peril!

Git

You may wonder isn’t Git already a mainstream technology from the last decade? It’s true that its used to manage the world’s largest FOSS project, Linux. But the real power of Git is beyond from a Distributed Version Control System. GitHub is becoming very popular, which is a business model entirely based on Git. Certainly, Git has opened up a new dimension in collaborative development and distributed file systems. I believe there are lot of other uses of Git as a simple CMS to mange your personal blog to distributed data mining of large projects. If you haven’t checked out Git yet, I recommend you to add it as one of your todos for this year.

Node.js (server-side javascript)

Concept of server-side JavaScript is pre-dates back to 1990s, to the days where Netscape used it as a scripting language in their LiveWire servers. For two decades JavaScript couldn’t extend its client-side reign in to server-side environments. However, the release of Node.js, which is an evented I/O for V8 javascript engine, has again made JavaScript a strong contender as a server-side development language. Node.js differs from traditional call-stack based frameworks by having a non-blocking API, which is strongly supported by callback based & evented nature of JavaScript. If you never cared to understand JavaScript and thought jQuery could save your day, now there are better reasons to dig deeper into the world’s most misunderstood language.

What are other fascinating technologies, you would keep an eye in this year?

Can an Introvert be a better leader for Sri Lanka?

This morning, I came across an interesting article in Forbes titled “Why Introverts Make the Best Leaders”. It gives some really good reasons why introverts could lead better than their extroversive counterparts, who are normally considered as the natural leaders.

Being an introvert myself I know, majority of the people have the perception that introverts are just bunch of obnoxious people, whom they don’t like to interact and would never consider as leaders. Surprisingly, as the article points out world’s most successful business moguls, including Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are introverts. Even in Sri Lankan business context, there are successful personalities like Dr.Hans Wijayasuriya (CEO of Dialog), who I believe is an introvert.

Can an introvert rule a country? They considers, Barrack Obama is somewhat an introvert. How about Sri Lanka? Apart from Late. President J.R.Jayawardena, I don’t see any of our leaders, who can even slightly fits into the “introvert” label. Maybe, an introvert can never gain enough popularity to be the leader, in our highly extroversive society.

But I believe, an introvert would be better suited as the leader of our country. Here are some of the reasons, which makes me believe on it.

1. As the above article points out, Introverts do think first, talk later. Compare this with our leaders, who spits all sorts of bullshit that comes to their tongue. Have we ever had a leader who could stand on his words?

   Actually, this is also the main reason why introverts have become unpopular in an talkative extroversive world. Introverts don’t talk much, but when they do, they really know what they tell.

2. Introverts inspires and motivates themselves from their work, rather than the social popularity or material wealth. This gives them a better chance to achieve their goals.
3. When it comes to decision making introverts are more intuitive. They do not make decisions out of feelings. Naturally, they got a better sense and self-belief on what they could do, and would not tend to reverse their decisions due to external facts.
4. They are good listeners. By a good listener, it doesn’t mean anyone can say anything and influence them on the decision making. Introverts will know how to separate grain from the salt, because they do listen from the mind, not from the heart.

5. Introverts has the ability to understand the capacity of his subordinates better. This will make sure the right people are used for the right task, rather than appointing people based on the personal relationships or trust (which has been a huge mistake).

   Also, our country needs to involve intellectuals actively for policy making, if we want to achieve a sustainable development. Most of the intellectuals are also naturally introverts. Introverts feel more comfortable to work with another introvert, than an extrovert.

First Meetup of LK Ruby User Group

Last Wednesday (30th September 2009), the first-ever meatspace gathering of Sri Lankan Ruby Users was held at Ridgecrest Asia (Pvt) Ltd. There were more than 20 passionate, enthusiastic Rubyists filling the room and I would call it a promising start.

For several years, myself personally knew only handful of Rubyists in the country. Though, we had shared the love for the language, we doubted whether we could anticipate large adoption of Ruby culture in Sri Lanka and ever have a active community going here. One of the main reasons for that was at that time there were no mainstream industry demand for Ruby. There were only couple of startups doing Ruby (Rails) based development and very few of developers had the freedom to choose their development toolbox by themselves. So someone choosing Ruby as their main language of choice was a rarity.

However, in the last couple of years things have started to change. Globally, Ruby has received a mainstream adoption and success of Rails made it a de-facto consideration when it comes to web apps. This has made Sri Lankan developers and firms to think about Ruby more seriously. We’ve seen several new interesting Ruby based projects coming up, also, heard several firms considering to migrate their legacy code to Ruby. Overall, these are great signs promising some exciting times ahead to aspiring Ruby developers in the country.

Unlike Java, .NET or other commercial mainstream platforms Ruby developers are not gauged through professional certifications or training programs. As Matz believed, people should be able to express themselves freely when programming. This is something that cannot be trained or teached, only way one could absorb these Rubyisms is through passion and practice. That’s the key difference between a Rubyist and other commercial developers. But Ruby community believes in collective efforts and in helping each other to groom themselves.

The main idea of forming a Sri Lankan Ruby User Group (LK-RUG), was to help the developers to be inspired. It is harder to be inspired while working in isolation, especially when you are starting to grasp things. A gathering like this could help the people to share what they learnt from their experiences, while learning few tips and tricks from others. Behind many great rubyists there is a community which helped them groom. I believe same could happen in this country too. And the very first meeting gave positive signs for that. It was informal, friendly and very enthusiastic gathering. Let’s hope we could maintain the same spirit in the future meetings too.

So, if you already hacks with Ruby or eager to learn about Ruby culture, join with the Sri Lankan Ruby User Group and participate in the future meetings.

BTW, Here are the slides from my presentation on “Evolution of Rails”, which was done in the first meeting.

P.S. Special Thanks to Sameera Gayan, for coordinating the event and Ridgecrest Asia (Pvt) Ltd. for offering the the location for the meeting.

Update (05/10/2009):

Gaveen’s thoughts on the meetup

Flickr Photoset of the meetup (uploaded by Gaveen)

Independent Thinking

Independent thinking and self-concious decision making is what builds a person and the society. Yet, it’s the most discouraged, criticised and often punishable act that a person can do. Our culture has done a nice job by misinterpreting and abusing values - such as obedience, loyalty and teamwork to suppress the importance of independent thinking.

This starts to happen from our birth, where parents tries to give extra protection and care all the time. They will not let their eyes off the child, would not allow the child to touch anything or to play at his desire. This may be purely unintentional and due to their excess love for their child. However, unconsciously when they continue this beyond the limits, they do actually harm their child by blocking the creative sense and opportunities for self-realization. Afterall, humans are not weak as we seem.

As I discussed in the previous post, schools to exert enough pressure to kill off the rest of the independent thinking capabilities within a person. This will continue to happen until the exam oriented education structure vanishes and people realises the value of each other irrespective of the educational or social background he comes from. Sir.Ken Robinson nicely presents this point in this TEDTalk. Take some time to watch it, if you haven’t seen it before.

Things get worse, when you enter into higher education, where you expect the independent and critical thinking is to be fostered. You are guaranteed to have poor grades if you are to challenge or tries to explore beyond what is taught. Parrotised lecture notes should be vomited on the paper if you want higher grades (is it the lack of knowledge or envy is still a puzzle). With the beliefs of higher the GPA, higher is your salary, nobody doesn’t seem to be bothered to diss the current knowledge system. These professionals are so vulnerable to change and would never encourage their sub-ordinates to change. This results with a legacy knowledge system that is incapable of solving today’s problems.

When it comes to politics, corporate business or any other form of community activities you see the obvious. There is very little room (or actually no room) for independent thinkers. You’re assured to be sidelined, mocked, harassed and in worst case even to pay the penalty with your life, if you are to hold a different point of view from the so called majority (which is actually a minority, which has exploited the power and force to grab the blind following of the rest, who have been trained not to use their wit by the earlier systems).

Just think about it independently ;)

Ban Schools & Education!

It’s very sad and alarming to hear the recent incidents taking place at Sri Lankan schools. Government shows they are so concerned about these issues by banning everything they believe that can harm our next generation :) Mobile phones at all schools are banned, Web Sites with explicit content are banned, screening of “Adults only” movies are banned. Ok, now government could say they have taken all necessary steps to groom our next generation to be well disciplined citizens, and future our country is guaranteed to be prosperous.

However, governments and its so-called advisers will never realize the root causes of all these problems. Their short sighted decisions and floating policies from the past, have aggravated these problems to this level and none of their decisions would help to change the situation in the long run.

I believe Sri Lankan education system is screwed in big time! Kids are thrown in to a rat race from the kingdergarden, when they don’t even have a slight clue on where they are heading. Not to mention, even after going through all the steps of primary, secondary and tertiary education, more than 80% of them still don’t have an idea why they ran all these years. It leaves a big question whether do we have to run at all?

Aside from the spoon-fed knowledge only selfishness, insensitivity, jealousy and hunchback (after carrying a school bag of 4KGs) are the only gains of this current education system. Why Sri Lankan education system failed so miserably in building citizens with self-confidence that they are someone who is adding value to the society? Why can’t someone be a janitor, carpenter, factory worker, farmer, dancer, sportsman or a doctor and still feel they are all equal in the society?

This false social grading starts from the primary school admissions. It’s only the kids of the rich and so called elites will be admitted to the popular schools. No matter how closer you live to the school, your child would not be admitted if you cannot afford to give a hefty donations to school’s development fund or if you don’t have enough civil power and political influence. From year 1 these kids starts associating only with a certain social layer and will never understand their is another way of life lower or higher than them. They will measure the quality of their lives relative to these layers. Basically, layer above them are the most superior, powerful and layer below them are the inferior, wretched. They will never understand all these social layers has their own mix of good and bad.

Next biggest mistake is the mis-interpretation of aesthetics and extra-curricular activities in schools. You are not allowed to sing or a dance, if you are cannot select for Derana Little Star. If you are not a play cricket, if you cannot select for college XI. Talking about myself, I had no skill on any sport or aesthetics. Still, I went to football practices, bloody well knowing that I will never be selected for the college team. I participated in drama, dancing and singing practices for cultural day in every year, though I only got the chance to be on stage handful of times. Later I learnt it wasn’t my talent. But looking back today, the experience and lessons learnt through those activities is impossible to gain from sitting in a classroom. The negligence of extra curricular activities in schools is also a main cause of the unfortunate incidents we hear today. I know some schools cancelling Sports Meets, Cultural Days to finish the syllabuses on time. Can we call such places as schools?

There are more stuff running through my mind, but I will stop this rant at here. What I want to stress is whether you are a govt. official, principal, teacher, parent, got a sibling or even a total outsider - please pay your attention to the root causes and be aware of what’s really happening at schools. I’m sure none of you would want to hear more unfortunate incidents.