My recent visit to Xisto’s office & Shridhar’s (Xisto’s founder) hiring spree made me realize a lot of things about state of .NET in India. It can be easily called as “Rakhi Sawant of computer languages!” It’s so popular that every other guy wants to “do it” 
. Kudos! to Microsoft for ensuring that its technology penetrated the Indian education system however I wonder that what stops colleges from teaching open technologies?
I’m no programmer and have no intention of having any sorts of heated discussion with those who “live & die” by .NET [i'm not even talking about you... read on to understand what I'm trying to say]. David Barrett in his post “Why we don’t hire .NET programmers” has expressed exactly the same thing that I felt while taking the interviews. You can say that I’ve developed a disliking for .NET just because every other guy wants to learn it and start coding even though they aren’t passionate enough. Fuck passion! they want to learn it just because some guy told them to learn .NET as it’ll help them get a job! Unfortunately! they do get a job! The guys coming for interview said only two things -
- I know .NET
- I want to learn .NET [even guys applying for the position of designer & network admin]
When we asked them “Why .NET & no other language?” They were as silent as Indian cricket fans who saw Indian lineup crumbling down against South Africa & West Indies’ bowling attack in Cricket World Cup. Some even said “It’ll help me get a job”. Why?, Java, PHP, Ruby and other open languages… can’t these languages get them jobs? Some even didn’t know that what PHP is, I wonder that what kind of programmers are they, even though they have a Facebook account, they don’t know that its running on PHP.
Thanks to various institutes like NIIT, almost 80-90% engineering colleges and millions of parents who want to die in peace once they see their raj dulara/dulari write few lines of code as able-bodied computer engineers [i'm sure various computer engineers from Uttar Pradesh will agree to that -- for you to understand this statement, you'll have to understand the psycy of Indian parents & specially parents from UP -- btw, i have roots from UP too, I'm no racist!], India is producing “amazing robo coders” who’ll just do what they are taught [by someone who learned the language in the same institute] and won’t choose to use their brains. I guess its because it wasn’t programmed in .NET for them!
I’m sure .NET is a powerful language but it’s no good if one just mugs it up, one has to be passionate to learn things and it stands true for every other computer language, heck! it stands true for everything in life! Coming to the consequences of having such wonderful .NET programmers -
Since the people mugging it aren’t technically & logically sound, they end up making crappy software which in turn strengthens India’s image as “low or bad quality service providers”. If things will keep on rolling like this, I’m sure India won’t be the obvious choice for various companies that plan to outsource their development work & rest you all can imagine, it’s not a post about outsourcing.
I just hope that colleges in India decide to take up other open technologies and start to teach good lessons on entrepreneurship as well, only then I guess things will start to look a little better & sane.
You hit right to at point dude..
So true, that our education system needs some fundamental changes. Moreover, parents’ thinking is so conventional that it plays a major role in resistance towards change.
Institutions, like AICTE / UGC etc, which are supposed to bolster the education system, are just there to stop modifications in curriculum. Also, professors are a problem in colleges.
However, i have met passionate people who – kind of – circumvent the system for their own benefits and still hone their skills in right manner. What other than open source technologies can be a better examples for what should be taught to students.
I am glad you mentioned all this in an article so easily.
Well, I don’t really understand with computer codes are. But I guess the point is the ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ dilemma that our society is undergoing. Like you said, it isn’t about computer languages, it is about passion! Somehow, we as a people have become less passionate about life! I know sooooooo many people who took up mass media for graduation ‘to get a job!’… Out of the hundreds of Mass Media students I have met over the years (and others as well, for that matter!) I can count the number of people who showed passion in their aim on the fingertips of one hand!
On a whole, it is a sorry state of affairs and even a little bleak…. Was this why a human mind was made as complex as it is?
Exactly! People don’t know shit about their options and just follow what everyone else is doing. This spreads the fire. “Lack of awareness” is everywhere about so many subjects and this is one of the example. They have this conventional thinking of getting a job by pursuing some shitty courses which are popular among shit heads. They don’t realise they can be big, make big things and earn big money with open source and some don’t have the guts to do something unconventional. I am talking about a couple of my friends here, nobody actually had faith in them self to do something like this (I was confident they could do well). They ended up joining a regular day job. If someone who wants to get the real taste of life in an unconventional approach, this is thing to do with their career. Open Source Rocks!
Thats very true. I have done PG in computers and I know how bumb people can be. For example in an interview a student said to the interviewer (when interviewer was asking questions on C). Sir, please don’t ask pointers. I don’t know what pointer is? MY GOD…..
The killing part was – He got selected in the same company.
No Passion, No excitement, No Creativity. This is what Indian engineers are all about. They always need someone to tell, what he/she should do.
I always wonder why people go to NIIT? Youtube is 100 times better than NIIT in terms of knowledge and lectures.
I cannot believe, you are posting this story now…. LOL! Majja aaya..
@satyam , @maithili, @ashfame, @sudeep, @shree – LOL! I knew that it will be you guys who’ll take time to comment on this one. Without a doubt you are some of those guys who are passionate about what you do in life… and that’s the reason why you also feel the same way as I feel.
When I see or is made to see shows like “Roadies” then the blur line gets even clearer… the youth of India is heading towards the black hole! We have bunch of monkey’s around us with no clear focus… anyway, enough of ranting and time to focus back on work
@shree – answer to your question – HAAN!
You can’t blame them, that’s the mango people crowd. I don’t expect more from them.
We just need some other revolution so that this 9-6 regime , living life as it is crowd just leave the IT industry for hackers. RIP .NET
Mate,
Very nicely you have put across your points. This stands true for everything that you learn and study. Yes with dotnet people take it as a job opportunity. The passion and approach to learn and hit the right thing is missing. Having said so this stands true for everything, as people always have a tendency to take a shortcuts in life.
I think one should be focussed even it is C or C++, and if people are good in that, you will not have to regret in life.
Ok I couldn’t resist from commenting on this one
And not because I work at Microsoft, but from a conceptual perspective, as a software engineer!
I think you (and much more so – David Barrett in the link you pointed out above) are confabulating different things.
I can emphatize with some of the issues you pointed out above but they have nothing to do with .Net. I’ll come back to them later.
However, the blog you pointed out – I couldn’t but help and smile at it. It sounds so juvenile. I’m not trying to be a moron here but I do believe I’m a reasonably decent coder
and I do happen to know a few things about programming languages and platforms.
Let me clarify.
1) .Net is not a language. C# is. F# is. C++ is. Java is. .Net is a development platform.
2) Between object-oriented languages there’s really nothing to choose between Java and C#. Both of them provide implementations of standard OO concepts. In fact C# is fast evolving and acquiring lots of attributes of functional languages as well.
3) The blog argues against .Net because it provides the best tooling! Really! Doesn’t that sound funny – Arguing against a platform because it’s better at something!
Sure you can open notepad and code-up a .Net app from scratch but why wouldn’t you use a tool that makes your job easier?
I guess there’s some machoism and glory in being the rough guy who doesn’t believe in using tools but relies on doing everything by hand – is that it? Is that the argument? Well, sorry, I don’t want to argue against that
And again, let’s be clear, the tooling (read Visual Studio) is not .Net. You don’t need it to write a .Net application.
Coming back to your points – I fail to understand how using ‘open technologies’ (whatever that means – .Net is totally open for that matter – it’s a draft standard subitted to international bodies. All of .Net code is available to developers, except you can’t ‘steal’ it.) will prevent the colleges / teaching institutes from teaching crap. I have personally met equal number of bad Java programmers in interviews.
What colleges need to teach are concepts and fundamentals not specific technologies.
@Tushar – First!!! Dude! yeh sab chor… how are you & where are you?
Second
– thanks for clarifying a lot of things about .net. However, I’m sure that the core of the post was more targeted towards how the education system sucks, the kind of crop that is coming forward.. as in the youth… their usage of brain and common sense. What triggered me to use this title were few events..that i’ve already mentioned in the post 1) crap students coming up with .NET Raag even though they didn’t know what .NET is all about… I just got pissed off because of that & 2) had to come up with a funny tittle 
To clarify things from my side as well (just want to make sure that you don’t make false assumptions) – I’m definitely not of the league that finds it cool to refer Microsoft as M$ or Microsh*t or what not… in fact, I’ve always considered it as a company one should look forward to… (i’m running an IT company – so Microsoft is just one of the best examples for me to follow) …. & i’m using a “Licensed version of Microsoft Windows 7″ while writing this comment
Regarding your defense about .NET & C# – I don’t have anything to say because you’ll be a better person in all the senses… not only you must be awesome programmer, you’ve been one of those guys whose points I can agree to without questioning much….. you may ask why.. then the answer is … Respect!
[Hail mogambo 
]
However, I’ve failed to understand that how is it “Open”, is the source available for others to “use”? ["steal" will not be a suitable word - since over here by "open technologies" I meant "open-source" --- its like saying that "you can steal air"]
Why you see bad programmers in Java or any other language is because of the fundamental issue… “Kaash mera raj dulara bhi Microsoft or Oracle mein ho” or “ye agar computer engineering kar le toh mere saare paap dhul jaaein” types attitude of parents. If students will learn things from heart or with passion and not by force or pressure… there will be hardly any chance of them coming up as bad programmers.
Other than that, thanks to institutes like NIIT which are not educational institutes rather a Factory where programmers are made… where one can have full doubt on the teacher because teacher themselves aren’t too confident… i’ve seen cases where students are offered the job of a teacher in the same institute because they couldn’t get them placed elsewhere.
Not in a sarcastic way at all — “Kudos to Microsoft to ensure that they could get their technologies tied up pretty well in the education system or could partner with these institutes to ensure that everyone talks about .Net only” — you may ask why, here’s the answer — If I could get developers to work on my framework by hook or crook then I’ll do everything to get them working on it…. it’s the colleges who have to understand that what they should be really teaching and how they can fix the education system.
BTW, can I develop applications on .NET without shelling out a single penny from my pocket? I’m not sure about it thats why I want to ask this.
keep an eye on the next post – it’ll be about how Govt. of India can take steps to reduce piracy
That’s a very nice article , bit opinionated but then whats the point of an article if it doesn’t inspire some squabbling. You are absolutely right about the issues of churning out coders like T-800 terminators from an assembly line. It’s becoming pathetic. I am a web consultant i.e coder and designer and as such have come across many things that make me wonder as to why that person even joined this line of work.
When fathers ask me as to whether their children should go into web related work, I always tell them only ‘if they want to’.
In their defense though I would like to add one thing. You must understand that many of these kids aspire to be one of us, big city folks making money having a life which is open and liberal . Speaking English like its our mother tongue and going to malls to drink wheat beer. Its difficult to make them understand that , that’s not a target they should acquire by any means necessary. That is something they should try and achieve by excelling in whatever they are good at.
Also , they must understand that the grass always looks greener on the other side. A good town life is much better than a bad city one.