Under the radar

Google's dominance in this e-world has become insurmountable, so much so that mergers and acquisitions that weren't dreamt about earlier are being talked about now..and all this to put up a semblance of resistance against the big giant.
Rumours about a possible Yahoo takeover by Microsoft, Yahoo offering about 30% of its stock to take up Myspace (totally illogical!) and now stronger rumours about Yahoo and eBay merging (this merger makes a lot of sense with all the "synergies" they can bring in together) have all been going around. All this to stop Google from occupying our minds, our hearts, our breath and maybe even our death :)..Imagine Google keeping details about you, various stages in your life, your death, your grave and playing it in a video? Possible?

Coming to which reminds me of the dinosaur...there was no living being capable of challenging it in a fight..What finally undid it was it's sheer size. Size does matter!
Google's big size has given it visibility and many others anxious goosebumps. Our friendly neighbourhood search engine now seems more like a monster chewing on all our private data now. There are so many privacy allegations against it now that I have lost count. Issues with Belgian authors, problems with Gmail, current Street view privacy encroachments and a European embargo against not retaining data for more than 18 months are a few I can think of..oops, i forgot YouTube!...Was all this not there b4, I feel it was...what's bringing it out now is the fear that if we let Google grow, it might become that 'evil' uncontrollable monster. Privacy is undoubtedly an issue of concern, but it is being blown out of proportion with respect to Google. All this because of it's growing size? Will Google's growth be it's worst enemy?

Patronize Patternize

Patterns, Patterns, Patterns -- that's what I have been doing the last couple of days...This was in preparation to a "OO Design Pattern" test that my organization wanted me to take when I moved to a new position. Being a self-proclaimed OO expert, I couldn't take a chance of doing badly in the test, so literally went on a pattern hunt and the jungle I found there was more dense than the Amazon!

Design Patterns were available only in "dozens" which made me squirm with disbelief...Nothing against GoF, but they seem to have summarized every observation of theirs into a pattern which just added to the "overload" from a quiz perspective. Even Null Object, Debug were patterns! I thought they were "basic" concepts...giving them the 'pattern' name was just an overkill...Reminds me of the patterns inside our company that we have...We have a "pattern template" which is a pattern to write patterns...Can anything get more ludicrous?

Patterns were patterned (read conceptualized) to give our code structure, readability and extensibility...Many would put extensibility over structure and readability, but I think otherwise. In the 10 years I have been in this software world, I have seen very few instances where we really extended our initial codebase..On the other hand, I have been thrown around in projects and have had to pick them up in no time in no time...Readability and Structure I have seen have been very useful in getting me up to speed with the projects more than my ability to recognize patterns in code...Infact, sometimes patterns even obscure your code and almost make it un-understandable. Imagine mapping six classes or more to come to the real implementation in your head..I am not stretching my imagination here...these are situations that I have encountered and situations I hate. When I fall on a wrong trail, I have to retrace my many steps and start all over again..Not a pretty exercise.

Patterns were meant to simplify a coders life..so if you are complicating truth and life by hiding it behind layers of patterns, it might not be the best way to write code. And also, calling every bloody damn thing we see in this world is not a good PATTERN!! Maybe, we should represent GoF as Gang of Five (me being the latest addition)..Good Pattern?

I like Singleton, Proxy, Facade, Factory, Bridge, Observer, Cache and Command. I think everything else is a derivative or is just not necessary!!