wrt Tech Mahindra a very senior engineer who used to work there told me that there have been so many layoffs there that, in some projects the Team Leads report straight to the VP. Newbies receive little to no training or guidance.
I was also skeptical till I noticed 2 huge deployments 1.Cafe Cofee Day is India's largest chain of cafes, sort of India's Starbucks. Their billing machines seem to be a custom Linux that boots into a console application (tastefully made)that's used for billing, taking orders at the counter, upload data etc. 2. Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India the country's largest Insurance company with thousands of branches has rolled out Linux desktops a couple of years back.
Thank you so much Doug. It has influenced me in so many ways and broadened my outlook Right now I'm reading John Markoff's "What the doormouse said", which is a fascinating account of the early days of silicon valley and how it was influenced by the sixties counter-culture. I decided to buy the book after hearing an interview with the author on Dr.Moira Gunn's program on itconversations.
Do not believe any programmer, manager, or salesperson who claims that code can be self-documenting or automatically documented. It ain't so. Good documentation includes background and decision information that cannot be derived from the code.
- Jef Raskin on self-documenting code
Programming by coincidence as the PragProg says (someone has already posted the link).It's extremely common here in most Indian companies, especially with freshers.
pg seems to have said something alex'ish elsewhere:
"I once sat in a crowded hall and listened to Paul Graham give a keynote presentation about going big, doing it quickly, and getting tons of funding. During Q&A, someone asked what was wrong with instead of trying to go big with big money backers, you just went for profit and kept ownership to yourself and Graham said something like "you want to run a little business? Go run a shoe store then"
That interview with Steve Jobs has some interesting insights.
PLAYBOY: Like computers, the automobile industry was an American industry that we almost lost to the Japanese. There is a lot of talk about American semiconductor companies' losing ground to Japanese. How will you keep the edge?
JOBS: Japan's very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don't think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that's already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor. Out of that understanding, they will reinvent it in a more refined second-generation version. That strategy works only when what they're working with isn't changing very much—the stereo industry and the automobile industry are two examples. When the target is moving quickly, they find it very difficult, because that reinvention cycle takes a few years.
As long as the definition of what a personal computer is keeps changing at the rate that it is, they will have a very hard time.
I have been predicting this to friends for a couple of years now - there's absolutely no depth. Infosys, for instance makes only ~15% of their revenue through app development, per their latest quarterly report. When the IT boom started, it was mostly all s/w dev and maintenance. Slowly it has been replaced by non s/w dev activity to the point that s/w dev is only a minor activity (revenue wise).
"Imo, there isn't enough of a critical mass of India specific issues related to hacking/startups/programming etc sufficient to support a whole new community." - So true !!! I have been thinking about this very topic for the last month or so.
Now these are all fine people.Maybe it's time to add some color and character to YC.How about a James Bondish cat stroking villain type as partner,who sits in a dark corner of the room during the interview.Meow - Make stuff people want.