At personal front, still digging into data structures and algorithms. Found many good articles, blogs and notes on the topic. At office, am now a member of Java/J2ee center of excellence groups. I was never comfortable with web services earlier; along with EJB, web services always was like a distant blurred image to me. Never had opportunity in projects to dig deeper nor did I put the full effort to learn outside the projects (open source frameworks and tools were always dearer). Being part of COE ‘made’ me learn web services. Not that I am a pro now but competent nevertheless. I am confident that I can join the cloud now taking SOA and ROA along with me 🙂
Reload!
I have started reading algorithms and data structures once again. I remember having read those topics 10 years back. So, why this reload? Because I vaguely remember the topics read (10 years is good time to forget what was taught or read, wholly my opinion). Also, since I was a computer science student (now being classified as an IT professional) I must always remember the basics (?).
So, what was I doing all these years? Hmm. For one, I was busy being lazy. Additionally, I was also ‘building’ my career (http://in.linkedin.com/in/bharatkumarmeda). Now that I have built enough ground (or so I believe), I felt I should continue from where I left.
Do I have enough time? (Someone in my team asked this question when I showed myself with a book in my hand). Well, no. I never had. I was always busy. Slogging, watching movies (sometimes back-to-back immaterial of the time spent in office), hanging out during those rare office-free weekends, visiting parents, visiting relatives, catching up with old friends (orkut et al), ‘reading’ IMDB, shopping using credit card… typical life of a bachelor IT professional. Now I am married with a kid. I have cut down on most of the activities from the list (movies, visiting parents and IMDB still holds good) but still was not able to steal time to read.
I don’t know the top trigger which led me to stop worrying about not reading and actually made me start reading. I believe it’s the age factor. Or the age-old factor of self-realization. Where am I heading? Whats my career plan? Some very silly questions started running into my mind. Silly because those thoughts should have run down my mind much earlier. I have taken those thoughts very seriously (thus created this blog without any further delay). I plan to continue this blog along with my journey on the knowledge path (interspersed with anecdotes from real and surreal world)