Go Embedded!

Stories of Indian students and professionals thronging distant shores in search of greener pastures and better education opportunities are now all too common. Every year more than 100,0000 students from India travel to United States alone to get higher education. Here is the story of an American inventor who traveled not less than 14,000 kilometers from Chicago, USA to Nagpur, India to learn C Programming from the true master of the art – Yashavant Kanetkar. His name is CLINTON EVGENE CRAWFORD. At first glance he appears to be a normal American – always smiling, eager to speak to people and willing to adjust to whatever foreign countries might have to offer to them.

Mr. Clinton came to India with a dream of productising more than 10 inventions – small and large (by his own admission). He plans to hire several programmers to give shape to his ideas. He says that he plans to learn programming because he wants to be able to tell who is really a good programmer.

On landing at Nagpur airport he came straight to our Ramnagar office. On the airport one of the Taxi drivers told his friends to cheat the “foreigner”. But thankfully he was not cheated and he came here safely. On arriving here, Mr. Sharmaji a guard at our office who doesn’t know a word in english managed to communicate with him and found him a AC room nearby. He is quite happy to be here and loves the “hot” climate of orange city.

Let us hope that this reverse flow of students and ideas continues and opens our own minds to broader world and makes us accept the global talent more freely.

Regards,
Asang Dani

Today I watched the 1987 movie Wall Street starring Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen and Martin Sheen. I think this is a film every would be engineer in India should watch. The reason I say this is simple. Many of them are attracted to a glamourous career in finance industry – be in students from IITs, NITs or other institutions. In the process they hardly realize what they are heading for. The movie shows an unscrupulous Wall Street shark played by Michael Douglas who raids the companies uses them to meet his greed and a budding associate played by Charlie Sheen – whose father Matin Sheen is a union leader for an airline company. He is an honest man – but his son idolizes Michael Douglas. Finally they show how Charlie realizes the sins he is about to commit by falling for Michael’s traps and deception and goes out of the way to save his father’s airline company and jobs of workers. Finally – Matin Sheen tells his son that “Although you are going to jail – in  a weird way this is best thing that could have happened to you. Rather than living off by selling and buying shares of someone else – finally you are thinking of creating things and not destroying someone”.

I feel sorry for the loss that India as a country makes by losing lot of such budding and creative minds to the lure of easy money offered by big finance and consulting companies of the world. By being engineers they may make much lesser money but enough to give them self respect and pride of having done something useful with the brainpower that they are gifted with.

प्यारे मित्रो,

क्वेस्ट – C प्रोग्रामिंग का हिन्दी संस्करण आपतक पहुचाने का हमारा सपना साकार हुआ है. निश्चय ही वह आपको पसंद आएगा. और जानकारी के लिए निचे दिए लिंक के ऊपर क्लिक करे.

http://quest.ksetindia.com/product_info.php/Product/Quest_C_Programming_In_Hindi

जय हिंद!

प्यारे मित्रो,

  बहोत जल्द क्वेस्ट – C प्रोग्रामिंग का हिन्दी संस्करण आपतक पहुचाने का हमारा सपना साकार होनेवाला है. हमें आशा है की आप उसे उतनाही प्यार देंगे जितना अंग्रेजी क्वेस्ट को दिया.

जय हिंद!

With plethora of educational and professional opportunities in IT sector, confusion prevails in minds of most youngsters when it comes to making a career in this industry. They rarely find someone accessible who can guide them in matters as simple as creating a good resume or choosing what subjects to study. If you want to succeed and make it big in computing and make it a lifelong passion, this course is for you. In this course we have packed all the experience that we have gathered while working with Indian and global IT companies for more than 15 years. For details click here:

http://quest.ksetindia.com/product_info.php/Product/Quest_Career_Guidance

As most of you are aware, the road to a successful career in software starts with a series of Written Technical Tests conducted by most IT companies in India. These companies test your fundamental skills in programming and design in three major areas – C Programming, Data Structures and C++ Programming. Most of you may have prepared for that “dream test” without knowing the exact pattern, the level and the difficulty of questions that appear in such tests. As a result, you are not able to give your best performance in these tests.<br />This “Interview Questions” series addresses these concerns and is aimed at giving you the necessary practice and confidence to help you crack these tests. This series presents a whole gamut on questions on different topics in each of these three subjects—C, DS and C++. For more information, please visit:http://quest.ksetindia.com/product_info.php/Product/Interview_Questions_In_C_Programming 

We went to Japan this May on a trip that spanned 50% of the country. I had done fair bit of reading on Japan – it’s culture, people a little bit of history etc. We landed at Osaka Airport late in the evening. Osaka airport is built on an artificial island. Starting with the queues at the immigration counter, silent nature of Japanese people was in stark contrast with my fellow Indians – no offense meant! Compared to America, one of the best things I felt immediately after getting there was abundance of public transportation – both ground and rail. Roads are as good as they are in the US – better in many cases. Road signs are bi-lingual. So getting lost is not that easy. Fascination of Japanese with machines is remarkable – be it a vending machine, coin-changers, bus station, train station, toilets automation and machines are omnipresent. Density of population is quite high in most metro cities but commute doesn’t take a toll on you as it does in Indian metros or even most American metropolitan areas. Our colleague in Japan told us that most people in Japan believe that there is too must of infrastructure there.

Indians are held in quite high esteem by most Japanese and they feel that if India has achieved what it has without much government support and infrastructure; imagine what they would do if “they” had the right infrastructure. Most of them believe that we Indians are really good at mathematics and science — I won’t say anything about that, otherwise my countrymen will pelt me with stones.

Overall my first impression was that Japan is a very nice country without xenophobia – at least about Indians. They are a country which has achieved a lot but as individuals most people are polite and do not exude the confidence that is so typical of most Indians. Learning Japanese is a key to success in Japan. It’s not easy – but it’s about time that we as a nation thrive on doing things that are not necessarily easy. I think that there is a lot of potential for business between India and Japan, provided we understand each other’s cultures and young Indians seize the opportunities that are available in IT and other sectors in Japan.

Shitsurishimasu (Good Bye)!

There are two steps involved in mastering C#.NET – first imbibe the language elements of C#.NET and then use them to harness the power of .NET technology. Part I is about the Language Elements of C#, whereas Part II is about the Technology Skills of C#.NET. These books will help two categories of readers – those who wish to find out how good C#.NET programmers they are and those who wish to find out how good are the candidates who claim to know C#.NET. These books will help you test your skills in C# language as well as technology areas. They are very helpful for job interviews, vivas, examination etc. You can purchase them online at our KSET Quest Store.

• Test Your C#.NET Skills – Language Elements
• Test Your C#.NET Skills – Technology Skills

Most of us lead a life running about our daily chores with little or no excitement. Same cannot be said about peopl working on creating world’s largest particle accelerator - The Large Hadron Collider being built more than 100 meters underground at border between France and Switzerland. The goal of this effort – which is global in nature is about unravelling the mystery of elusive subatomic particle – Boson with an ultimate aim to unravel the secrets of origin of universe, Grand Unified Theory, and many other unanswered questions about the universe as we know it.

Today there was a article on this in local Marathi newspaper by eminent science writer Dr. Bal Phondke. Wikipedia contains very good information on the same. For all those who have a scientific bent of mind, take a look at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

The experiments are expected to being in just a few months so stay tuned for more updates!

We are glad to announce the launch of two new Quest courses

- ASP.NET Programming Through C#
- ASP.NET Programming Through VB.NET

Based on pre-orders we can clearly see that these were the most eagerly awaited

Quest titles. We have made every attempt to make it useful for beginners and professionals alike. ASP.NET Programming is Microsoft’s flagship techonlogy that has become immensely popular over last 7-8 years. It exploits the true power of .NET languages – C# and VB.NET and makes it fun to build professional web applications. We are sure you will find these courses useful and enjoyable.

C programming language was instrumental in taking the art of programming to masses. More than 35 years later, Web Services are transforming the way we do programming, in an equally, if not more, dramatic manner. Procedural programming gave rise to Object Oriented Programming. With the spread of TCP/IP networking, Web Services now enable you to build software in truly distributed and reusable manner. In short, they represent libraries on the network. In this journey, we will show you how the web allows companies and individuals as diverse as people on this planet to create software for the coming decades.

http://quest.ksetindia.com/product_info.php/Product/eBook_Creating_Web_Services_Using_.NET

After a long wait, long promised book – Go Embedded! will be available for sale in a bookstore near you. It includes in-depth coverage of following topics:

• Embedded C Programming
• Operations On Bits
• Introduction to Embedded Systems
• Embedded System Boards
• First Embedded System Program
• Blinking LEDs
• EEPROM Programming
• Flash Programming
• Programming With Sensors
• Interrupts & Timers
• Serial Communication
• Serial Communication Using Interrupts
• Building Interactive Embedded Systems
• Working With RTC Using I2C Bus
• Build Process Internals
• Working With Makefiles

Buy it online at http://quest.ksetindia.com/product_info.php/Product/Book_Go_Embedded

Dear Sir/Madam,

Quest Team is proud to announce launch of one more course to it’s Foundations of Computer Science series – Quest – Data Structures Through C++.

It includes in-depth coverage of Data Structures and necessary C++ topics like:

• Linked Lists – Singly, Doubly, Circular
• Queues
• Binary Trees
• Tree Traversal
• Searching
• Sorting
• Graphs
• Depth & Breadth First Search

etc…

We are sure that you will find this course very useful. If you wish, you can order it online at:

http://quest.ksetindia.com/product_info.php?products_id=42

With Warm Regards,
Quest Team

KSET Pvt Ltd is proud to announce launch of two more courses to it’s growing list of titles

• Quest – Java Programming
• Quest – C# Programming

Both these courses include in-depth coverage of Java and .NET platforms with topics like:

- OO Programming
- Interfaces
- Generics/Templates
- Web Services
- Network Programming
- Stream I/O
- Annotations and Attributes
- Using XML etc…

We are sure that you will find these titles useful. If you wish, you can order them online at:

http://quest.ksetindia.com/

http://quest.ksetindia.com/product_info.php/Product/Quest_Java_Programming

http://quest.ksetindia.com/product_info.php/Product/Quest_CS_.NET_Programming

This was a seminar on Pointers and C. Karad is picturesque town surrounded by Sahyadri mountain ranges on the western coast on Maharashtra. We reached there in the afternoon after a 3 hour road journey from Pune. The road is part of ambitious GQ (Golden Quadrilateral) project and highway is NH-4. Tunnels and other engineering marvels make you feel that we are surely going to benefit a lot when infrastructure is made available.

At the venue, two projectors, two microphones etc. were arranged for. Close to 400-500 students were patiently waiting for the seminar in an orderly manner. This is something we have noticed over last couple of years. Students in smaller towns are more hungry for knowledge than their counterparts in larger cities. Despite all odds like loss of power to laptop, electric shock in audio system, we were able to carry on. Again – students were very patient and understanding. Post seminar, everyone was energized enough to create a stampede of sorts for meeting with us.

We told the students what we have been always saying wherever we go – rise beyond the realm of languages and get your hands dirty with technology while you are in college. If we have to continue to lead in the IT sector as a nation, absorbing advanced technologies early in your career is the key. During college years, team spirit and freedom to try new things would certainly spawn entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

Myself and Yashvant will be there at Seattle for Global MVP Summit 2007 for about weeks time.

http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/MVPsummit

This Sunday Shashi Tharoor wrote in Times on The Elephant who became a tiger. I haven’t read anyone write on India’s changed image in the way he has explored. Fantastic treat for everyone:

http://timesofindia…/SUNDAY_SPECIALS/…/SHASHI_ON_SUNDAY

It’s a common misconception that only those with electronics background can learn embedded systems. Although sutdents with electronics background do have some advantages – learning embedded systems meaningfully requires good knowledge of electronics, computer architecture, operating systems and sound programming skills. Naturally no one is born with these skills and most colleges in India today don’t impart such skills as a part of single course. Like most other things in computing one can aquire this knowledge if he/she is willing to work hard for it.

Professional Programmers papers by Alexander Stepanov, father of “generic programming” (also known as Templates, Generics, STL). Fantastic reading material. Very inspiring.

http://www.stepanovpapers.com/

RC model helicopter prices have reached a point where all sorts of challenging (i.e. crash-prone) robotics projects become affordable. This document explains how to build a 300 g, 3D-capable helicopter with embedded Linux and Bluetooth datalink for less than 500 EUR.

As a proof of concept has been built which allows the helicopter to be remotely controlled over Bluetooth with a PC joystick. Really nice effort and truely awe inspiring
http://perso.orange.fr/pascal.brisset/chromicro/doc/chromicro.html#id2789228

If you haven’t been paying attention to the amount of e-waste that gets generated – here it is for you. RoHS – Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive. It’s a EU (European Union) directive – not a law. It talks about six important harzardous materials used in various electronic and electrical goods. Most equipment manufactures are complying to this directive voluntarily. So if you want to keep your backyard clean of e-waste, check if the next laptop you buy is RoHS compliant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Directive

We spoke at NSIT InnoVision 06-07 yesterday afternoon. The event was a mixed bag. We met some good people at NSIT like Dr. M.P.S. Bhatia and Prof. Dhananjay Gadre. Both were quite energetic and enthusiastic about what they were doing. Prof. Gadre was quite blunt in his criticism of Services companies, esp. the leaders in India. In his opinion they are primarily responsible for degradation of science education in this country. There was a gentleman from TCS who countered his views and said that if it wasn’t for these companies there wouldn’t be any jobs for lakhs of young middle class students in this country.

I agree with both these views. In fact the abundance of jobs in present times has definitely led to frivoulous standards of education. However, if it wasn’t for these jobs millions of average students wouldn’t have had high paying jobs that they have today – let alone careers. Although IT revolution of last 15 years have changed the face of the country in short term and brought much needed properity in bigger cities, it’s imperative that unless we raise the standards in our educational institutions – other than just give autonomy, we have serious troubles in medium to long term. Engineers in this country have unfairly smooth roads to tread upon right now. They shouldn’t forget however that unless they raise their standards through lifelong learning the roads will be full of potholes in coming years.

INAST-4C launch aboard India’s GSLV-F02, failed. It’s a bad feeling for Indians in general and professionals like us in particular. In last 10 years ISRO had a clean slate with all successful launches to it’s credit. However, this is “rocket science” after all and things can and do go wrong. I feel bad for those engineers and scientists whose years of efforts have gone down in a failed mission like this. I hope that India’s press does a bit more than just reporting “307 crores went down the drain”. In such times, I think we should strengthen the spirits and morale of our great team at ISRO.

http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Jul10_2006.htm