The House of Blue Mangoes

Author:       David Davidar
Published:   2002
Publisher:    Penguin Books India
Paperback: 432 pages
 
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The saga of Dorai family spanning over 3 generations during the last 5 decades of British Raj (1899-1947),  set in a fictitious district in Madras Presidency (now the state of Tamil Nadu plus some regions now in Kerala, Karnataka & Andhra) . The scene of  India's struggle for freedom plays in the background, subtly touching  the lives of the main characters.
The book is in three parts. The first part is about Solomon Dorai, a strict but just and benevolent headman of the village Chevathar. The second part is about his son Daniel Dorai who becomes a renowned physician and establishes a new family settlement Doraipuram near their ancestral village Chevathar. Kannan, the son of Daniel Dorai , a successful manager of a Tea Estate owned by an Englishman in Pulimed, is the main protogonist in part three. He becomes a "pucca brown-sahib". But once he realizes that Englishmen will never consider him their equal, he resigns and returns back to his roots in Chevathar.
The plot is simple with no dramatic thrills or turn-arounds. Issues described in the story through excellently etched characters are very realistic  - caste wars, father-son disagreements, family politics, love marriage breakup etc.

There are several British characters - Father Ashworth, Chris Cooke, Harrison who  play a very significant roles in the the lives of Solomon Dorai, Daniel Dorai & Kannan respectively. However I cannot help feeling that they are mainly introduced with the global readership in view.

The narration is very vivid and holds your attention throughout the book.
A very good book  for light reading, though in my opinion the rave reviews from all over the world quoted in the back cover and first few pages of the book are somewhat exaggerated.

A few impressive extracts from the book:

1.  "At the moment of his triumph, he had escaped the world, the hundreds of little things we say and do to ourselves bind us down, make us helpless little worms, who on their deathbeds only remember and lament what they always wanted to do, but never had the courage for. Think about it, anna. What a waste of life, no matter how pitiful or earnest or triumphant it has been. Do you really want to die, and in your last moment go into the dark thinking only of what might have been".

2.  As Father Ashworth put the pages in order, he read what he had written -  At the heart of every religion in the world  is the divine mystery. 
The problem that the teachers who have contributed to the evolution of each faith have always been confronted with can be simply stated:
How to plumb the divine mystery, describe it, explain it to themselves and the followers of the faith ? It is a problem almost without solution, for how do you describe God ? There are no facts that can adequately explain the Supreme Reality; none but the greatest seers are granted the intuition to experience the Divine.
As a result, each religion has evolved a host of symbols and myths and conventions and dogma, to make its central mystery better understood. Over the centuries, these have obscured the central mystery to the impoverishment of faith. And the priestly class has only itself to blame for obscuring and misinterpreting the Truth, perverting religion for its own selfish ends, setting brother against brother, saint against saint, dogma against dogma. Is Krishna's memorable message to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra any less important than Christ's Sermon on the Mount or the Buddha's explication of the Eightfold Path? No, a thousand times no ! Men of vision of all faiths need to explain to their followers that the goal of every religion is same - to achieve the transcendent state, experience the one true Reality, understand fully the eternal Truth..."

3. As she prepared the meal that evening, a memory of Aaron insinuated itself into Charity's sense of well-being. Instantly her mood grew less buoyant. Where was her beautiful boy, she wondered. What was he doing now?  She shook off her gloomy foreboding. Aaron will be all right; God is watching over him, and one day he will return. As she bent to light the fire she gave thanks for her perfect day. Even the shadow cast by Aaron had its place in it: too much happiness wasn't good for you; it was bound to be followed by great sorrow, as the world tried to keep the balance.

4. "It's ironic, I kept running away from the place, but it grew to be most important thing in my life....." ........."Isn't it curious how we always realize the important things when it's too late? Perhaps that's His way of reminding us how useless and significant we really are".

5.  'Watch how you speak to me, you young whippersnapper. Do you mean to tell me that you haven't spent your working life fitting into a straitjacket devised by someone else? You look like a fellow who doesn't put up with nonsense, so it must have been even more of a trial. Look at you, enunciating your words carefully, polishing your English manners, playing right into the hands of those who seek to keep you down. Why the hell should you not say Les-ester or Wor-sester or Chol-mon-de-ley when not one Englishman of my acquaintance can pronounce an Indian name correctly? And why should you not spit in public when the honking of a white man into his handkerchief would drown out a tiger's roar? And do you really think the English oak is sturdier than the banyan and the thrush superior to bulbul? And that the lotus is inferior to the rose? Is Tamil less than English? Why don't these things make you angry?' [ This is Harrison a bitter Englishman berating Kannan for holding Englishmen with high regard. This could also serve as a reproach to the people who blindly ape the west and think anything American or European is better than Indian]

6. 'But is that what you really want to do? I know things have been rough around here but you are a good planter, Cannon. You could have an excellent career on the estates.'
'I thought so too, sir, but sometimes you keep putting off the inevitable, knowing all the while that the decision has already been taken a long time ago, often without any conscious thought. It's always been there, you've just taken a few twists and turns in the road before you arrive at it.'
'Now you've lost me, with all this talk of destiny. What do you chaps call it, karma?'
'Not bad at all, sir', Kannan said with a smile.
'You've never seemed more Indian to me than you did just now,' Michael said.
'But that's the whole point, sir. I am Indian, and I expect we just forgot that for a while.'

Becoming Agile in an Imperfect World

Authors: Greg Smith, Ahmed Sidky
Published: 2009
Publisher: Manning Publications Co.
Paperback: 408 pages
 
The authors of  Manifesto for Agile Software Development  unambiguously acknowledge  the value of processes and tools, comprehensive documentation, contract negotiation and following a plan, even though they place more importance on individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration and responding to change.
However many agile zealots are totally closed to the idea that there may be something good in traditional software process development and demean anything related to it. So it was a real pleasant surprise to come across this book written by two agilists - Greg Smith and Ahmed Sidky, who do not believe in throwing the baby out with the bath water in their enthusiasm to introduce agile methods in an organization.

There are many good books on agile principles and techniques. But this is the first book I have come across which lays out a detailed and systematic roadmap from the culture of  traditional software development to that of an agile culture. The need for such a book has been well recognized by Mary Poppendieck, an authority on lean software development, who has written the foreword for this book.

The book consists of 23 chapters, spread across eight parts.
Part 1: Provides  a foundation for understanding what agile is and introduces a case study  that is hypothetical yet based on authors' hands-on development and consulting experience. It is a story of a fictitious yet close to real-life company Acme Media, which runs throughout the book to illustrate the transition from a  traditional to an agile environment.
Part 2: Helps to put a process in place which support adding agility to the organization's existing methodology. It proposes an assessment methodology which can help to  understand the potential for improving  the existing development lifecycle. The importance of getting buy-in across the company - the executives and the team-members - is stressed and a blue print  to achieve it has been described. Tips on how to evaluate and select a pilot project for agile development are also provided.
Part 3: Talks about the project feasibility study , envisioning the product to be delivered, selecting and  aligning the  team-members to the project goals.
Part 4:  This part is about prioritizing the features, and creating a product backlog with user stories and estimating the user stories at the right level with the right people.
Part 5: Discusses discuss how to create an overall release plan and how to enriched it  before each iteration begins. It also has a discussion about obtaining team commitment for the iteration by involving the team members in the detailed iteration planning process.
Part 6: This part recommends having an iteration zero first before starting the development iterations. This can be utilized for setting up the development environment, finalizing vendor contracts, and preparing  the team for the project. The next chapter in this part deals with the development phase iterations and demonstrates the agile principles in the case study project . This part concludes with a chapter on testing in an agile environment,  which going beyond customer validation, discusses  unit, integration, and exploratory testing.
Part 7:  Agile projects operate in a very dynamic environment. This part first deals positively adapting  to the  project situations,  like features being larger like expected, changing business requirements, discovery of technical constraints, team member unavailability etc.. This is then followed by discussion on final testing, release, deployment and conducting retrospectives.
Part 8: In this final part the authors discuss how an organization can move from project level agile adoption to enterprise level agility.

A very well written book containing lots of useful techniques  and templates which can be easily adapted to the organization's need.
However the case study described in this book though it illustrates the agile concepts well, seems rather smooth sailing. It could be enhanced with examples of more critical  and problematic situations, normally encountered in real life projects.
Nevertheless I would highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to transition from the traditional way of software engineering to a more agile way.

Download the Table of contents and  two sample chapters of this book  from http://www.manning.com/smith/

Profiles of the Future - An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible

Author:      Arthur C. Clarke

Published:  1965

Publisher:   Bantam

Paperback: 240 pages

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The author Arthur C. Clarke a renowned science fiction author who was also a distinguished scientist and inventor wrote the first edition of this book  way back in 1962 . Subsequently he updated it a few times to sync up with the latest developments in science and technology. The 1965 edition which I just finished reading, was purchased by my dad in mid-sixties. And having  just glanced at the cover of this book off and on over the last 40 years, it is only recently I chose to read it.

It was a cumbersome read in the sense that the book being almost as old as me , the binding had become weak and  its pages were falling apart every time I  turned them ! But what a  fascinating forecast of  what future has in store for us !

The predictions made by the author of the future are very imaginative and yet have a firm grounding on the laws of science and technology. He talks about - the fourth dimension, conquering  the laws of gravity, the exploration and colonization of  outer spaces,  mining the seas for energy and minerals, pulling asteroids to Earth to supply needed materials, breeding smaller size and more efficient men who consume

less food etc.

 When you read  this book , you will be astounded by author's vision. Some of his predictions have already come true, some are closer to becoming true and some are still  in the realm of fantasy.

 Here I would just quote a few extracts from Chapter 16 of this book - The Voices from the Sky. Just bear in mind that he wrote this in early 1960s

1. "In a few years every large nation will be able to establish  (or rent) its own space-borne radio and TV transmitters, able to broadcast really high-quality programs to the entire planet."

2. "The advent of global TV and radio coverage will end, for better or worse, the cultural or political isolation which still exists over the whole world, outside the great cities."

3. "... the time will come when we will be able to call a person anywhere on Earth, merely by dialing a number. He will be located automatically, whether he is in mid-ocean, in the heart of a great city, or crossing the Sahara."

4. "The business of the future may be run by executives who are scarcely ever in each other's physical presence. It will not even have an address or a central office - only the equivalent of a telephone number. For its files and records will be space rented in the memory units of computers that could be located anywhere on Earth:"

5."And so the captains of industry of the twenty-first century may live where they please, running their affairs through computer keyboards and information handling machines in their homes"

6. "The time will certainly come when surgeons will be able to operate a world away from their patients,..."

7. "Modern facsimile systems can automatically transmit and reproduce an equivalent of an entire book in less than a minute."

Wow ! Clarke  had  predicted - sattelite TVs, globalization, mobile phones, internet, telecommuting, telesurgery, e-books at least 20 years before they became a world-wide reality.

And I am glad that he lived to see these predictions come true in his lifetime. He passed away just two years back in 2008 at the ripe old age of 90.

However I could not say the same for my dad . He passed away in 1981. He was just 53.  I am sure he would have enjoyed the realization of the predictions he read in this book which he bought in mid-1960s.

I highly recommend this book to all the science and technology enthusiasts  and lay readers who have a flair for imagination.

Einstein and the Special Theory of Relativity

Author :    Ajoy Ghatak
Published: 2010
Publisher: Viva Books
Paperback: 170 Pages


Modern physics especially the Theory of Relativity  had  fascinated me in my high school, though I did not really understand it very well. And for quite some time I had been on  a lookout for an interesting and well written  book which could help me understand it without trivializing the subject too much . And this book by Prof. Ajoy Ghatak, of IIT Delhi, perfectly fitted my need.
Interestingly this book starts with a  summary chapter which explains in 10 pages the  concept of  Special Theory of Relativity (completely equation free !) with simple examples. For a layperson this is more than enough. And if one cannot grasp what is said in this chapter, one need not proceed further ! But having a Ph.D in Engineering which  made me capable to stomach a reasonable dose of mathematical equations  I dared to venture forward.
The main book consists of four chapters.
In the first chapter author has given a brief life sketch of Einstein and briefly discussed his numerous contributions. This is quite an interesting chapter which also gives some insights into the personal life of Einstein , how he collaborated with other scientists, the story and controversies surrounding his Nobel Prize.
Chapter two discusses the first principles of  relativity - Constant Speed of Light, Time Dilation and Length Contraction , supported by interesting narrations of Mu-Meson experiment, Michelson Morely experiment.
and the the Twin Paradox .
In chapter three the author derives Einstein's world famous equation E = mc**2 in a fairly easy to understand manner.
Derivations of Lorentz transformation equations are provided in chapter four.  In my opinion this chapter though dealing with a very important topic was rather unnecessary in the book of this kind. It sort of breaks the whole flow of the book and conveys a sense of abrupt ending to the book. Besides there is nothing in this chapter which adds to the understanding of the concepts so well explained in the previous chapter.
The book has lots of examples, illustrations, problems and references which will vet one's appetite to know more about the subject of Relativity.
A very interesting book for those interested in Physics and comfortable with moderate amount of Mathematics. It is somewhere between an academic tome and a popular science book.

Software Engineering Best Practices

Author:       Caper Jones

Published:   2009

Publisher:    Tata McGraw Hill

Paperback:   688 Pages

If software engineering has to be recognized as a true profession like other conventional engineering fields  it has to inculcate the discipline of better measurements, better benchmarks, better quality control, and better security  during the process of software development. Thus opines Caper Jones, the author of this book who is a well-respected authority in this field.

He also says that majority of the best-practice claims in software engineering fields are not based on solid measurements using valid metrics. In this book he attempts to remedy the situation by describing the best practices where the available quantitative data proves their effectiveness at least to some extent.

The book consists of nine chapters. I have summarized their key points below, heavily drawing upon author’s own summary in the introductory chapter. 
Detailed table of content is available at McGraw Hill website.

Chapter 1- Introduction and Definitions of Software Best Practices: The author proposes a rating on a ( -10 to +10 scale) , based on the measured   percentage productivity and quality improvement data collected by him and his team. He then ranks 200 practices ( which includes methodologies and results also) in software engineering which he has observed in 13,000 projects  ( all types and sizes)in 600 companies over a period of 20 years on this rating scale. Based on the ratings these practices are classified as Best Practices (rating > 7.5), Very Good Practices, Good Practices, Fair Practices, Neutral Practices, Unsafe Practices, and Worst Practices.   However also recognizing the fact that the best practices may vary depending upon the size and type of projects, the author also lists best practices of small projects (1000 Function points), large projects (10,000 function points), IT projects, embedded system  projects.
You can read this chapter online at McGraw Hill website.

Chapter 2- Overview of 50 Software Best Practices: This chapter deals with development best practices, maintenance best practices, management best practices, and sociological best practices such as those dealing with layoffs. Other best-practice areas include security control, quality control, risk analysis, governance, and renovation of legacy applications.

Chapter 3- A Preview of Software Development and Maintenance in 2049: This chapter envisions the software engineering scenario in 2049. It looks ahead to specific technical topics such as role of data mining in gathering requirements and the possible availability of substantial libraries of certified reusable material. Also possible are intelligent agents and search-bots that will accumulate and even analyze information on critical topics. In author’s view significant improvements are needed in security, quality, and reusability to keep pace with hardware and network evolution by 2049.

Chapter 4- How Software Personnel Learn New Skills:  Seventeen channels  - for e.g. paper books, e-books, software journals, e-journals, blogs, wiki sites, commercial education, in-house education, academic education, live conferences, on-line conferences and webinars -  available for transmitting and learning new software engineering information are evaluated in terms of their learning effectiveness,  cost-effectiveness and  long term evolution.
This chapter also suggests curricula for software engineers, software quality assurance personnel, software testers, software project office personnel, and software managers. The author highlights the lack of strong focus on topics like sizing, estimating, planning, metrics, security, quality control, maintenance, renovation, and software engineering economics in the academic curricula.

Chapter 5- Software Team Organization and Specialization:  This chapter shows the results of many different kinds of organization structures, including pair programming, small Agile teams, hierarchical organizations, matrix organizations, and geographically dispersed virtual organizations. It also shows the most effective ways of organizing specialists like software quality assurance, testing, technical documentation, and project offices.

Chapter 6- Project Management and Software Engineering:  Critical management functions that can cause software engineering failures if not done properly – like sizing, planning, estimating, progress tracking, resource tracking, benchmarks and change management – are dealt in this chapter. Author suggests that any software project of non-trivial size should collect both quality and productivity data that can be used for baselines and benchmarks. He argues strongly that failure to do so is a signal that “software engineering” is not yet a true engineering discipline.

Chapter 7- Requirements, Business Analysis, Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, and Design:  This chapter discusses the most widely used methods (including Agile methods, UML) of dealing with requirements and design issues and shows the classes and types of applications for which they are best suited.

Chapter 8- Programming and Code Development:  As of 2009, there are about 2500 programming languages and dialects. In this chapter the author discusses the maintenance nightmare created due to such plethora of languages. He suggests having a National Programming Translation Center that would record the syntax of all known languages and assist in converting applications written in dead languages into modern languages.
Information on the kinds of bugs found in source code, and the most effective “personal” methods of defect prevention and defect removal that are carried out by software engineers prior to public activities such as function and regression testing are included in this chapter.
This chapter also discusses methods of measuring programming productivity and quality levels. It challenges the traditional “lines of code” (LOC) metric since it penalizes high-level languages and distorts economic analysis.  Besides LOC metric does not take into account the non-coding activities like requirements, design, screen, or documentation which constitute more than 60 percent of total development expenses. The alternative is slow and expensive functional metrics which can handle all such activities. However new high-speed functional metrics are starting to appear.

Chapter 9- Software Quality: The Key to Successful Software Engineering: This chapter attempts to cover all major factors that influence software quality, including both defect prevention methods and defect removal methods. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of formal inspections, static analysis, and 17 different kinds of testing. In addition, the chapter deals with various troublesome metrics those degrade understanding software quality – for e.g. the popular “cost per defect” metric which actually penalizes quality and achieves the lowest cost for the buggiest applications.
The main theme of the chapter is that quality is the driving force that has more influence on software costs, schedules, and success than any other but poor measurement practices have made it difficult to carry out valid software engineering economic studies.
This chapter also challenges two common definitions of quality. The definition that quality means “conformance to requirements” is challenged on the grounds that many requirements are harmful or “toxic” and should not be implemented. The definition that quality means conformance to a list of words ending in “ility,” such as “portability”, is also challenged on the grounds that these terms can neither be predicted nor measured.
The chapter concludes that an activity that cannot measure its own results is not a true engineering discipline and so it is time for software engineering to study critical topics such as defect potentials and defect removal efficiency levels. Otherwise “software engineering” is a misnomer, and software development is only a craft and not a true profession.

This book is a result of extensive research by Caper Jones and provides lots of data and information.  However there are several instances of repetitive information (for e.g. project taxonomy description) in this book, which could have been avoided. Also I felt that Chapter 3 (A Preview of Software Development and Maintenance in 2049) was rather unnecessary.  These have increased the bulk (and the price??) of the book .

The book serves more as a pointer to best practices rather than providing in-depth understanding and know-how of implementing them.  I was expecting more case studies in the book of this type. Besides  I came across very few best practices which I was not earlier aware of.

On the whole a good reference book, especially if you need to do some research or need some facts and figures for arguing the case of a best practice. But I don’t otherwise consider it as a MUST Read book.

Laughter is the Best Medicine

Publisher:   Reader's Digest

Published:  2006

Hardback: 416 pages

Seeing the lighter side of things and laughing away your troubles is the one of the crucial ingredients to a happy  life. Picking up this book when you are in dumps and randomly reading any page (of course you can read it cover-to-cover too) from it will drive your blues away. This is one of the best anthology of humorous pieces I have read in recent times.

There are more than 1000 cartoons, jokes, one-liners, poems and prose extracts, plus dozens of  classic TV and radio script extracts - from The Office, Fawlty Towers, Dad's Army and other comedy shows.

These humorous pieces embrace a wide variety of topics - The Ages of Man, The Body, Food, Booze & Smokes, Love & Sex, People & Places, Money Matters, Transports , War & Peace, Law & Order, Games & Sports, Arts & Entertainment, The Political World, Home Life, Work Life, Pets & Other Animals & Spiritual Life.

You can  find quotes by some of the wittiest people like Ronnie Barker, John Cleese, Tommy Cooper, Les Dawson, W.C. Fields, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Ricky Gervais, Tony Hancock, Edward Lear, Groucho Marx, Spike Milligan, P.G. Wodehouse, Victoria Wood and many more (over 200 humorists). There is a  also a section with brief biographies about these laughter makers.

Browse a few pages of this book at Amazon site.

Just one minor downside to this book - the humor in about  5-10 % of the selections  may not make sense for those who are outside UK. At least it went above my head for me. But what the heck ! Enjoy the rest 90 % !

Strongly recommend it for anybody's bookshelf. Unfortunately it can't be in mine. The copy I read was borrowed from the library which I must return tomorrow. However I have noted down some of my favorite pieces. I was half tempted to post at least a few of those here. But I feel rather lazy to do so. Besides my sense of humor  may not match yours. So just get hold of the book by hook or crook and enjoy !

Gut Feelings - Short Cuts to Better Decision Making

Author:                   Gerd Gigerenzer

Published:               2007

Publisher:                Penguin Group

Paperback:             288 pages

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Have you  read Malcolm Gladwell's bestseller Blink ? I have not read it yet, but I think this book Gut Feelings which I  just finished reading more than makes up for it.  Because a critical source for Malcolm Gladwell's Blink was the breakthrough research on intuitive thinking carried out by Gerd Gigerenzer who is the author of this book.

This book  warns you from getting stuck in analysis paralysis mode and strongly advocates the necessity and urgency to take decisions based on your intuitive gut feelings given the limited information and time you have at your disposal. Such decisions, the author argues , are generally as good as if not better than the decisions taken with tonnes of data and information.

According to the author gut feelings (aka intuition, hunch) refers to a judgment

1. that appears quickly in consciousness,
2. whose underlying reasons we are not fully aware of, and
3. is strong enough to act upon

The rationale behind working of gut feelings consists of  two components

1.  simple rules of thumb (heuristic), which takes advantage of
2. evolved capacities of the brain.

As per the author the goal of this book is to first explain the hidden rules of thumb underlying the intuition and then to understand when the intuitions are likely to succeed or fail.

Some  such  rules of thumb behind intuitive decision making are:

• If a person looks at one alternative (longer than at others), it is likely the one the person desires.
• In an uncertain environment, good intuitions must ignore information.
• Recognition heuristic - If you recognize one object but not the other, then infer that the recognized object has higher value.
• Health care heuristics - If you see a white coat, trust it. Don't ask your doctors what they recommend. Ask them what they would do if it were their mother.
• Default Rule - If there is default, do nothing about it
• Social instinct heuristics - Do what the majority of your peers do. Do what a successful person does.

 Such common sense heuristics and many more are discussed with convincing examples and case studies throughout the book.

Overall a very interesting read, though at certain places it tends to be  somewhat repetitive.