Mera Pehla Project - adhura nahi raha.

Arrive Online….that is the name of my recently concluded project here at IBM. And how appropriate it is for me, considering that it was my first ever project in my professional career. And being a web developer, I can actually say, “I have Arrived, Online!”

On the occasion of the successful release, I am both delighted and pleased. Last night, I logged on to internet at home and hit the URL(Check it out here). And there it was, the pages that I had developed with my own hands, now on the internet, ready to be used by thousands of people and making life that much simpler for them. Let me tell you, the feeling is absolutely fantastic. Probably this is what job satisfaction feels like. I know I have written blogs earlier which are published, just like a website. But this is something which will actually be useful to lots of people.

I am not going to get into the technical details of the project, but as I was just chatting with Prabhat, he suggested that may be I should blog my experiences. Not a bad idea. So here’s the whole story.

It all started one fine day in October, when I was on “bench” and had no work at all. “Tring-tring” rang the phone, and that was my call of reckoning. The news was that there was someone who wanted me to join his team and work on a new project. I was introduced to the team, and thus began the journey. Starting from acquiring the requirements from the client, designing the pages, working out the nitty-gritties to learning all the processes that one has to go through while coding, every phase of the project was new to me, so I was continuously learning something everyday both on the technical front and also the ways of IBM. There were lots of ups and downs, delights (when some new idea begins to work) and the frustrations (when something goes wrong and you have no idea why it is so), it had the whole package.

When I was in the college, and we had our placements going on, I often wondered why these IT companies are recruiting on such a large scale. This was true with every company, and across the country. I also wondered why there are hundreds of such companies out there, and how do they all manage to survive. Every third human being in Pune is an IT professional, and I am sure the case is the same in places like Hyderabad and Bangalore also.

Today, I realise how tough it can be to design a software application. It took us almost 4 months to build an application that had basically just two main functions, and some 20 odd pages. Considering the rate at which internet is exploding, no wonder the industry has such huge requirements.

P.S: Why this title? Well when we were working on a dummy project during our initial days at IBM, the person who was incharge was giving us a tough time. One day, he explained that almost 80% projects in the industry end as failure, either due to financial constraints or due to time constraints. Ofcourse we never validated his theory, but today I feel like going up to that guy and say.."So you were saying...". He is onsite now, so I am deprived of that sadistic pleasure :-D.

Also, there is a reference to K2H2 too, SRK was all over TOI today, courtesy filmfare. Speaking of which, Hrithik Roshan Best Actor for Dhoom-2!!! Gimme a break...