Random Chusses…

So I read this book called Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham. He’s regarded as a kind of a pioneer in the internet business. He’s the person who created the first web based application, later called Yahoo Stores. Anyway this is a pretty good book with a lot of worth reading essays. And its not that big either which is one of my criteria for books. He’s a great essayist, even has a site on which he posts essays from time to time. You may not agree with some of his ideas but its still very entertaining.

The book starts with an essay on nerds and why they’re not very popular in the American school system. Well its because they’re smart and American kids don’t like smart kids. Also smart kids aka nerds don’t have the time to try to become popular because popularity requires continuous effort. I’ve never been to an American school so I can’t say how much of it is true but it seems feasible. In my school, smart children were always popular and they never had to work for it. Next there’s an essay on Hackers and their origins and what they have in common with painters. And why they’re so elite. Then he discusses censorship and why it exists and what can be done about it.

Then there’s a great essay on web based software and how it has and will change the world. The grave differences between desktop application development and web based application development. How, while developing web software you can use any language you want because the software resides on your own servers and the clients don’t even need to know what language or framework you’re using. All you’re basically doing is serving HTML to the client’s browser and that can be generated anyway you want. So no need to use C++ to call Win32 API functions anymore. You can create your own language if you want. And that brings us to computer languages and how high level languages differ in their power. C++ is not as powerful as say, Java and LISP is apparently the most powerful language of all time. He made his fortune on LISP and according to him one of the main reasons he was able to out do his competitors was the power of LISP. So if you’re starting a startup and want to crush the competition, use the most powerful language you have.

Then he goes on to define the characteristics of the next big language which will be in use in a hundred years. All in all it was pretty easy and interesting read. I think I’ll read a couple more books this Eid weekend.

So it was Eid in Pakistan on the Wednesday, 1st of October. A day of unusual solidarity when the whole nation celebrated Eid on the same day. There have been times when there have been 3 different Eids in Pakistan but this time Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman made sure we only had one. So late on Tuesday night at 11pm he announced rather unexpectedly in a long winding, boring ‘address’ that there would actually be Eid on Wednesday. Even though the provincial committees had already declared that there had been no moon sighting during the small window of opportunity but apparently they found the chand hiding behind some bush at 11pm.

The story is, that the NWFP pathans had apparently decided to have Eid on Wednesday and since the ANP government there is allied to PPP they somehow pressurized Zardari into declaring Eid on Wednesday. Which actually wasn’t a really bad thing cause I’d already traveled back to the city of the saints on Tuesday after taking the day off from work. Since the folks at Daewoo had already sold all of them tickets I had to drive my petrol drinking monster of a car for around 350 KMs. At Rs. 82/L lets just that it was probably not a very wise decision. I could have gone to Niazi and tried my chances there

Eid is traditionally a day of happiness and celebration in the Muslim world. They say, its supposed to celebrate the good deeds done during Ramadhan by Muslims and thank Allah for this oppurtunity, but mostly its just to celebrate the fact that life returns back to normal. Most Muslims just breathe a sigh of relief. No more starving and praying all day long or waking up at crazy hours to eat parathas and ommeletts and then going to work half asleep. Employers are glad the work timings are back to normal. Their minions have no excuse to slack anymore. The torture ends just as we almost got used to it. Its a day of freedom for most Muslims and they celebrate it grandly by not waking up for the fajr prayers and then missing all the rest too. But they do put on their best clothes and go for the Eid prayers. So thats something I guess. Then there’s the going out and meeting friends and family members, eating sweets, singing and dancing etc. The poor are also supposed to be remembered on this auspicious day but people rarely care about them which is sad. Anywaaaay there’s still three days of rest left and then its back to work on Monday (sigh)…