The TT Incident

This incident is about those moments of pure magic that sometimes happen when two individuals have light bulbs go on in their head at the same instance based on a series of earlier shared experiences and context. No, not the soul mate sort. To convey the expression requires introducing you, the reader, to the back story. In essence this post is about me and Naman’s library adventures. It is a set of confessions which I hope will not get us kicked out of the library now that there is a change of guard.

Naman’s animosity with the library began sometime in the fourth year after Mr. K’s incompetency started getting on his nerves. Then, quite justifiably, he got banned from using the internet in the library for 5 days for stealing Mr K’s IP address for one full day and causing his work to stop. Although Naman claims he did not know whose IP it was he didn’t mind the happy co-incidence. That was the prick in the balloon! I have always been somewhat annoyed with the library’s arbitrary rules, how the staff is a stickler for them even under special circumstances and how easy it actually is to circumvent them. This was also, then, an experiment in how far we could go without being caught, although all these are just excuses to deny the fact that we wanted some childish fun and narcissistic attention. Our library violations begin with this SMS from Naman to me, dated August 31, 2011, 11am:

Who is the most fucking awesome? Bet #1. Who can get the most outrageous food items in library till they get caught. In other terms, who can smuggle food inside rc the longest before getting caught.

It didn’t take too long for Naman to start. He arrived a few days later into the library, all smiles, pockets bulging. Out of one packet same a sandwich. Mr. V. wandered in and set a crumpled plastic cup in front of Naman. I have to admit that I wasn’t too impressed yet. But then out of the second pocket came a plastic bag with tea, and he poured it into the cup and coolly had his breakfast in the library. In all his smugness he went and publicised his achievement :) Not to be outdone, I convinced certain people to go eat pizza with me that very night (this is a lie). When Naman wanted his delivered to him, I took it seriously and delivered it in the library. One Margherita eaten right under the watchful eyes of Dr. K.

Score TFA 1 - 0 library. (We are called Team Fucking Awesome because we were at that point inspired by Julien Smith’s The Short and Sweet Guide to Being Fucking Awesome and took it very seriously)

In time our food escapades fizzled out and we returned to the standard supply of biscuits, chocolates and chips to keep our hands busy while our minds (sometimes) churned over (a bit of) academic knowledge. Our dream still remains incomplete though: cook a packet of instant noodles in the library and consume it there.

Another day, a group of third year girls walked into the library after having celebrated someone’s birthday. They came armed with those annoying birthday trumpets (sometimes sweetly called a bhoppu). We had a hoot blowing raspberries loudly in the library, where silence is a law of nature. Hardly content with this, we stepped outside and (amongst raucous laughter) recorded this sample:

Then we went back to the library and forgot about it. While leaving we ensured this was played loudly and completely, but acted as if we didn’t know what was happening. Thus we left, taking a bit of everyone’s stress with us.

TFA 2 - 0 library.

Every one of these incidents have been during an exam, when the library is filled with students studying for their exams. I am not sure how it reflects on our character that we perform these acts when we should be hitting the books or letting others study in peace. We like to think we’re just injecting some fun into the otherwise serious atmosphere.

Towards the beginning of the final semester – Feb 7, 2012, 8:20pm to be precise – I had come for dinner and was going directly to the library. Naman had been playing table-tennis and directly arrived for dinner. He was using my rackets and ball, so he handed them over hoping I would lug them along everywhere I went. After a bit of discussion over who should keep them, he made the (rational) point that I should carry them and put them in my bag.

There was a flash moment, the kind of epiphany that was experienced by Einstein or Newton, when all their years of thinking collapsed into one beautiful result instantly. I had table-tennis rackets and a ball, I was going to the library… I had to just utter ‘Hey’ and it clicked instantly in Naman’s head too. We high five-d each other and let out a huge laugh, reveling in how the perfect next library prank had formed. The whole café was staring at us as we started in jubilation. The idea was set up, time for execution.

The equipment was rolled in, the surveillance was set up and the stunt done that very night. Too bad the library was filled mostly with geeks at that time. Hardly anyone raised their heads to pay us any attention.

TFA 3 - 0 library.

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Why Indian students should attend college

In recent months, the number of posts extolling dropping out of college, or of people recounting their experiences (mostly positive, probably because the negatives won’t share) has increased substantially on Hacker News (I believe Steve Jobs effects on humanity extend here too). Meanwhile the The Story of Average Indian ‘Techie’, What’s your GPA? and other posts bring to the fore some things I do agree with:

• Most computer science curricula are outdated or just poor quality
• The majority of students are in it for the money
• The professors are almost always bad

In fact I didn’t particularly like most of my CS courses either. There were a few gems like System Software and Computer Networks at DA-IICT, but the rest were totally out of sync with the real world. So if you are a precocious hacker should you drop out of college in India? (Assuming your Indian parents will let you do that!)

NO!

Try your utmost to get into a good college with good infrastructure. Here is why you would want to do so. Not only is the infrastructure itself important, it also attracts the smartest people. Do well in college while improving your own skills and knowledge.

My reasons are based on personal experience, and in ways document some of my shortcomings too :P

Like minded people

Unlike the dense technological concentration of Silicon Valley, India doesn’t have technological hotspots. Even in Bangalore, very few people are passionate about technology and are hacking on open source software or launching startups (while this is pretty high in India terms, it is nothing in Bangalore terms). FOSS talent is instead concentrated in the students of engineering colleges. (I focus on FOSS because it’s a good way to filter out passionate people.) You will get to discuss problems, hack on code and be inspired by these people. A concentration of geeks also leads to geek events like hackathons. During various college fests there will be programming contests and so on. You’ll get to have fun. Finally there will be a lot of smart people doing things other than computer science. But they will be equally as passionate as you are, they will be liberal and forward looking and it will be a pleasure to interact with them. Oh and please don’t think of every person you approach as a potential future employer, employee or general networking and increasing contacts kind of person. Sometimes you (and certain people in the Valley too) just need friends. Face it, do you want to spend the next few years talking to your mom about why REST-ful APIs are the bomb or why this is funny?

Facilities

High-speed Internet access in India is still not too common, but colleges will usually have a great LAN setup, a lease line to the Internet and generally good connectivity. Use these to experiment with your peer-to-peer applications, host websites, or write the next great DDoS program (I’m not advocating this). That said they also may have ridiculously bureaucratic system administrators, censorship and the like. You just have to deal with in (and in some cases, circumvent).

Your college will also have a certain ‘relic from the past’ which is far more useful than any of our modern day, 140 characters technology. The library. Specific technology education is always best done via Internet, but general concepts and deep theory is still found in books. Use it well, you will regret the day you leave college and books will have to be purchased. (To overseas readers – there is hardly a public library system in India.) Oh, and do remember the fiction section.

Motivation and Persistence

When you are working on personal projects it’s very easy to give up or change tracks. You also tend to focus only on the things you like. College courses will force you to persist at subjects you don’t like, and keep you onto one thing for 3-4 months. Valuable lessons when your first commercial project is 90% done and you don’t want to polish it up because node.js just came along and is much more fun to play with. Do a great and challenging final project and end your education on a high note.

Find some other interests

Your life isn’t going to be just about CAP theorems, cache invalidation and naming your projects. You will have to interact with society. Take a humanities course. Learn to loosen up a bit — travel, listen to music and play sports. Waste time with friends once in a while. Don’t burn out before you’ve even started. Your whole life before 25 should not be spent being a workaholic. Sometimes I think the Valley propagates Minimum Viable Product, pitching to VCs and beer and pizza far too much. You don’t want to end up like this. You might also want to try some of these things.

So if you were thinking of dropping out, just give it a second thought. If you are still convinced you should drop out, do it. But please let me know at nsm.nikhil@gmail.com why you did so.

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