Learning process

Its been more than 50 days that Reload happened. Glad to have kept myself busy with many technology related learnings during this period.

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 🙂

Best part about preparing for web services was the R&D. It all looked cluttered initially with so many sub-topics under the umbrella. But slowly all of them fell in right places. Along with de facto Google, I took help of YouTube and Javapassion for video presentations and tutorials. (Btw, javapassion is not free anymore). I feel happy to have utilized the resources on the web properly :). I think I have learnt how to learn (took this phrase from one of the blogs I came across).

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)