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04 November Sports: Glad, Sad ???While I was a kid, I read in a book a definition for sports that I really have liked much. The definition was that it is the activity of two or more parties or individuals who compete following some rules, I really liked the feeling of that, until recently. According to that definition, I was enrolled in some kind of sport while I was in the faculty, and I am still until today, the sport of the ACM programming contest. The ACM programming contest qualifications consist of more than one step, that there is a local contest in each faculty, that qualify a team or two to the regional contest, that qualify one team (normally) to the international contest. I started this -with my friends- almost three years ago, when I was a second year student in the faculty. The first qualification contest I was enrolled in was the local contest at that time, where I was with my ever-lasting friend and soul mate, Haytham, and one of the elite ACM contestants at that time, Mohammad Meshref, where we were fifth at that contest, when I was really happy for the winners, they really deserved getting it. The second contest I was joined was the next local contest, where my team got the first position (consisting of my, my dear Haytham, and Mohammad Saber) where we by then was qualified to the regional contest, and when I felt a feeling that I yet cannot describe. I felt that I was supposed to be glad, I felt I was proud of reaching this, I felt I was really glad that my team mates were glad for the winning, but before every of that I really felt sorry for the teams that didn't wing the game, specially my dear friends Amigos. In the next year, also in the local contest, I was somehow more mature, and my dear friends Amigos were, too, that my team (this time: Haytham, Abdelra7man Magdy, and me) came to the first position, while the Amigos were in the second so we were both winners, and I was really just glad that time. The next year, which was this year, more specifically yesterday, the local ACM contest was held in the faculty, were my team also came to the winning position (Haytham, Moussa -an Amigo-, and me). My feelings by then was really complicated, that I really was glad that our team could make it with much few training, that we couldn't expect to win, I felt proud of a junior team who were actually competing, I felt sorry for the teams who didn't win in the game while they really worked hard for it (harder than our team). Finally, I would like to mention that my teams' winnings for the game came from our respect for the other contestants that everybody should give it his best. What really relaxes me in this is that the "glad" feeling was a common factor for all the situations. What is not relaxing in this is that this sometimes can cause sad feelings to others. Freak feeling sports have given me, and freak me being glad were I was supposed to be sad, and feeling sorry when I was supposed to be glad, but after all this is sport, and that is me... 18 April Beyond the objects
"Spaghetti code"...
"Structured Programming"... "Object-Oriented Programming"... These three classed will be the answer given by an experienced programmer to the question asking him about the paradigms of programming and their evolution by the time. I believe that every programmer should know that the existing of the Von-Neumatic Computers itself enforced the existing of the spaghetti code programming, throw the machine code or the its linear evolution, the assembly language. With the first compiler in 1954, the first high level programming language ALGOL saw its first light, opening the doors for another paradigm to be planted in the programming history and heart, the imperative programming, or the structured programming, which most people used to call it procedural programming. Much programming languages appeared in this paradigm later some are still alive -like COBOL. C,...etc- and some are obsolete -like APL, B, Jovial,...etc- until 1964 when first Simula appeared, which was a half way to the object oriented paradigm. Through that time, The ALGOL developers used its basics to make others versions from it, which are the B, and C, and finally, they put the true basics to the object oriented programming as we know it today in the C++ in 1980 -known then as "C with classes", and named C++ in 1983-. From that time until today, developers seemed to be satisfied with the object oriented model first introduced by Simula, that it really simulates the real life in that everything is an object. Since then, there are obvious trials to make the evolution within the model itself, like making a fully object oriented model - first introduced by Oak(1990) which recently became Java(1995), and then fully implemented in C# in 2000. A more experienced developer will know another thread of evolution of programming languages, which first appeared in 1970 by the Prolog, which is still unique to it, having its own paradigm, the Logic Programming paradigm. An even more experienced developer will suspect the trap, that if those four paradigms were the only paradigms available, so why there would be this much quantity of programming languages in life. The answer to this question could be very long topic talking about the syntax and semantics of different programming languages, but this will make another question that is to classify some programming languages like LISP(1958), Haskell(1987), Scheme(Caml), Objective-C(1983), XSL(1997),.....etc. The answer to this question could also be very long discussion, and could be the answer to the question of the difference between a procedure and a function. The procedure is a set of instructions to be performed as a sub-program or module, while the function is as math says, some magical box to take input and generate output, more specifically, the function cannot depend or make changes to any global data, and it should always give a return value. This difference will give definition to the model that LISP, Scheme, Haskell,...etc lie on, that they are mainly functional programming languages that everything they know should be only functions, without neither global data, nor procedure. The previous paragraphs gave us five different programming paradigms that I knew or read about, but they doesn't mean that they contain all the paradigms that exist or may exist, for example there is still the Meta-Programming languages (known as ML, or pure functional languages), macro-based languages, declarative programming languages (like SQL, XML, VRML,....etc). I am totally with putting guidelines so that people can easily be familiar to most of the programming languages, knowing their paradigms, but what I mostly fear is that these guidelines becomes laws so that everybody starts to follow disregarding of their pros and cons, but I am assured that as long as a human may exist, evolution and creativity may exist. Finally, I want to mention that a new era of hybrid model programming languages started to appear recently, that for example C# 3.0 started to be object-oriented, functional, and descriptive language, and I will not wonder if C# 4.0 had its own inference engine become a logic programming language.
02 April Programmer vs. Human "You're a programmer if you stress of the words IF-THEN-ELSE much…" "You're a programmer if you started to think that 1+1 = 3 can actually be true if you needed so…" "You're a programmer if you once tried to search for a period for the objects around you…" "You're a programmer if you once tried to push ctrl+F in a book you read..." "You're a programmer if you once thought that you're computer was like if it was mimicking you..." "You're a programmer if you once asked who talks to you to parenthesize their talk..." "You're a programmer if you looked at a beautiful painting and liked it for a reason..." "You're a programmer if your only expression about a great piece of poetry is that it's strong..." "You're a programmer if you once tried to find the governing equation for how much you love your parents..." No wonder that the title to my post is confusing, that normally, the programmer is made of flesh and blood, so he normally is a human, but what I really mean is that not flesh and blood is what makes a human, it's something much more important... What makes a human is his spiritual feeling when he looks at a great painting, feeling it higher, just without knowing why he does, but he's happy for it... What makes a human is a mistake he makes in life, that can make him learn new things... What makes a human is accepting these mistakes from others, without calling them bugs... What makes a human is believing in that not everything is computable... What makes a human is believing in rules that it is more guidelines than being actual orders... in short, what makes a human is his belief in his mind and his spirit... at last, I just want to tell every programmer to take care if they thought their computers are mimicking them, as by then they will actually be mimicking them... 22 June ITWorx :: Technical InterviewJune 22nd; 11:55 :: We - Me and Moussa - reached ITWorx, with Ramy there before us, to have a technical interview with a PL named Ahmad Farrag, to know our real abilities to make the placement for us, after we choosed to divert away of the QE track to go back to what we really are, developers....
We went there, finding Ramy, so we decided to go searching for Ahmad Farrag, finding his place, with him not there, so we went directly for Nehal, telling her that we are now here, so we are ready for the interview, and so she told us to go waiting on our machines so when Mr.Ahmad comes -or finishes the meeting he is in. We did that, went to our machines, and just kept talking about anything, until Nehal came with Ahmad, who took his first victim to the interview, which was me.
We went up to the blue meeting room, I sat on the table in front of Ahmad, who at first talked to me about himself and the project he was leading, just to make me relax, and then he started his interview, my second real interview. First, he started reading my CV in a haste, and started his talk asking me about the .net,
What is it, what is .net ? I replied saying some of the .net components ( I brainstormed then the JIT debugger, the class library, the languages, and that what I remember I said then :D, explaining each ) , and where the idea came from, including the interoperability and so on, and that talk leaded us to the next question...
About the asp.net, What happens when a user requests a .aspx page ? I replied to him saying that the IIS -which will take the request, being the http server- will know the request is for a .aspx page, and so it will know that this extension is assigned to be handled by some dll, he asked me about the name, I told him that I can't remember, but I told him that this matter is assigned to an ISAPI, internet server API, and he told me its totally true, that the dll name is aspnet_isapi ;). Lets go back to the aspx page and the dll (aspnet_isapi) which will know the details of the request, that it will then take the aspx page with the code behind, or the compiled dll, to use them to generate the html page product (or whatever the content type of the page, and that appealed to him that I know it ), and that was the general talk of the asp.net, and here follows the next...
Your CV Says you gave a course in the XML in your college, can you tell us about it, what did you give ? I told him that I gave a general overview for the web at first includin HTML and CSS, then started with XML and XML namespaces, going further for XSD, DTD and so on, and then XSLT, and finally some other friend gave the Cω. He then asked me about me about the XSLT, what is it. I told him that it is a language that is somehow different from other XML technology that it "runs", and has an engine, and it has if, while and so on, and it's main goal -"aiwaaa, eih b2a its main goal" he says :D- is to take the xml file and convert it to another xml file with another schema, or to any other text based files, like plain text or anything, and that was great for him.
He then started talking with me generally about the applications I made before and if I made a database application before, and he found the answer in the CV, with a general talk about the ADO.net, with asp.net, including the web datagrids, the page roun-dtrip in the asp.net applications, with the session, and view state and so on.
The conclusion at last that his impression was great, and that I have to take one two choices -again, this time all alone-::
1- To be as usual trainees, work for internal work for the company, having a low commitment expectation and so on, that they expect from a trainee to say goodbye at anytime, for no reasons, and he also can be much late and so on.
2- To go into the real work, work for the client, have a tight commitment, with the need sometimes to work in the night for completing a job and so on.
Frankly, I got scared, scared from what every human fears "The X", or "The Unknown", that I don't know how these people works, and what's the level of load they have, and so on. Also like a "balanced normal" human, I couldn't let the fear take me, or else then I will said to have the "XPhobia" -Ramy and Moussa will understand :D-, and I decided to take the challenge, and join the real develpment team, ed3ouli ya gamaa3a. I finished the interview so, and got down for Moussa and Ramy, assuring them about what happened, and took Moussa for him, as he requested. Then I got down for Ramy again, assuring him more for the interview, and so on, and wasn't too late when Moussa came, that he did good, e7l, and Ramy went this time up. First Moussa came, he took me to the cafeteria to make a nescafe, in fact, I needed one too. We kept talking about what happened to him and me in the interview and so on. Unfortunately, he didn't have the opportunity to take the decision, like I did, and so Ramy, who came after a while and we knew that from him. We waited for a period of time, when we then went down for Nehal to know our situation. She went searching for Ahmad, when she came after a while saying that I will be wating to work with Ahmad's team, and Ramy and Moussa will wait to know which of them will stay in the free zone to work with another project leader, and who will go the branch in the sixth desctrict to work there, and that was the end of the day there when we went off; ed3ona ya gama3aaa 18 June ITWorx :: First DaySaturday 16/6/2006 ; 8:36 pm :: A call from a stange number, that I didn't see before; I replied; the call was from Ayssel - HR@ITWorx - the call was a confirmation from the appointment of the first day of the training in ITWorx, it was 10:30; in the next day
Sunday 17/6/2006 ; 10:28 am :: I reached ITWorx building after a long walk, when they refused to let the Taxi into the free zone ( el mante2a el 7orra ), where ITWorx is in, I went to the reception, telling here that I am a new trainee, who should start his training today, and that I am waiting for Ayssel or Nehal (HR) for knowing what to do, she - Miral, the girl in the reception - to wait for her to call one of the HR, it wasn't so long when Icil came to take me to a tour in the company, with a new employee in the company (for an administrator position) first she showed us the ground floor having the HR department, and the developers cubes, then we went up to the second floor, where another area of cubes, and the Gym, that is used now as a prayer area, as the 2 floors that are being built as an upgrade for the building took the mosque and the cafeteria of the company, but she assured us that the two floors will be ready in the next October ( :'( ). After that we went to the underground floor where some management offices were there. Then we came up again to the reception area to wait for Nehal to take me to where I am assigned, and she took Ramy who was there when we are back to the tour. Not long later when Nehal came with another one from the HR ( Marwan, a new comer ) to take me to Sherin el-Qady, my leader in the training, where I am assigned, in the Quality department. When I went there Ramy was there that he was assigned to his machines, and then I was back to the reception, where Moussa was there, so both of us were waiting to be assigned to our machines. Some time passed, then some one came and took Moussa to assign him to his machine, and I stayed waiting aloone :(. After some time, Moussa came to take me to a meeting room, where we (the three) were there, with Shereen to tell us about the company, its projects, objectives, and the Quality department that we were assigned to, and finally the conclusion that we had to choose what we wanna be, either::
* QE :: Quality Engineers, who mainly make the testing oparation during the whole software life cycle. This has many sub-operations, such as writing the test scenarios, monitoring the requirement elicitation process, and "testing" it, making utilities for testeres to work with .... etc.
* QA :: Quality Assurance, where it is targeted to check if the program code is compatible with the company standards and CMMI standards.
* Switch to the develpment department.
In fact, we were really really muddled
After that, I was assigned to my machine, within other senior developers ( Hassan, and Amr ), and someone in the technical team was with me to operate the machine, telling me the domain, the password, and so on, I logged in, changed my password, and then he openned the outlook express, showing me my email account @ITWorx ( in the intranet, don't know if it is operational here ), and then was the surprise, Ayssel was after us, with a basket called "the welcome basket" having some small peices of pizza and cake ( some, not few ), and a mail was sent for everyone that a welcome basket is now there in the position ...... . All around us were very happy ( for sure, not by us, by the baskets :D ), and they kept talking to us to feel easy, and remove any tension that could be left. After that we -Me, Moussa, and Ramy- kept talking about what we gonna choose, we had a main goal that we wanted to make something new, to learn new things, and that leaded us to choose the QE, but the main problem if ITWorx will concider this choice final ever, and our real careers @ ITWorx (If we continued in it in our real careers) should be in the same feild, and that what we really didn't want. We finally decided to go to Shereen, we told her all our thoughts, and she assured us that we can change our career anytime before we really start it, although the management will prefer to put us where they started investing for, and so we were assigned to the QE position. She gave us then some sheets to read about the software testing, to know more about it that this will be our training, and we started it ( after the prayer ).
We kept most of the rest of the day reading these sheets, in a sofa in the second floor, that is in a balcony like place, that looks at the reception, and with the glass glass we could see the streets out there. After time that can be told as long, Shereen came, and told us that she is ready to assign us to our work, as there are some ongoing projects that we may join, some concerning Data Warehousing one for a Saudi client, one normal website, one reporting application for a Swiss client, and one web development using Vegnette(still don't know what is this), and she left us thinking. We the three kept thinking on what to do, as we will be sepserated in all the ways, so we decided to make a toss to see who will go where. So, me and Ramy were assigned to the Data Warehousing, and Moussa was assigned to the reporting project ( Actually, he wanted the data warehousing :D ). We told our decisions to Shereen, and kept talking about the next days ( sill on the sofa ), and at 4:00 pm, we went down for Shereen to introduce us for the PLs (Project Leaders) where we were assigned, but they were all in meetings and so on, so it wasn't possible that she introduces us to them, and so we had our freedom that day to go, and we acually did, and that was the end of the first day 23 July إجازة سعيدة في ليلة الخميس، يفتح وليد باب المنزل سعيدا برؤية أولاده بعد أن غاب عنهم لساعات طويلة باحثا لهم عن حياة سعيدة، و كالعادة يهرع ابنه طاهر ناحيته طمعا في قبلة أبيه الذي يرضيه، ثم يدخل مسرعا ناحية الأم آمال فيقبل تلك الكائنة بين يديها التي تشبه في ابتسامتها الملائكة براءة،ابنته ملك التي لم تبلغ بعد من العمر الشهور الستة، ولكن ما هذا، يبدو أن في جعبة وليد مفاجأة ويود أن يخبرها لعائلته، وهذا ما أدركته آمال من ابتسامة وليد التي جلت فيها سعادة قلبه، وبدون أن تسأله، قرأ وليد التساؤل في عيني زوجته، فأجابها:
"غدا بإذن الله، وبعد صلاة العشاء مباشرة، نعد حقائبنا لنتأهب للسفر في رحلة قصيرة إلى شرم الشيخ" لم يكد وليد ينتهي من العبارة حتى قفز طاهر فرحا، وحلت ابتسامة السعادة بدلا من التساؤل في عيني آمال...
و لم يمض من الوقت الكثير -أو ربما فعلا قد مر الكثير، ولكن السعادة التي قد ملأت القلوب لم تتح لنا الفرصة لنشعر به - وقد خلدت تلك العائلة الصغيرة السعيدة إلى النوم، ثم استيقظوا يوم الجمعة، ليجدوا - كما اعتادوا دائما - آمال قد استيقظت قبل الجميع و أعدت لهم الفطور الذي يجمعهم دائما مع كل صباح، ولكن هذا الصباح كان طعم السادة فيه مختلفا، فقد مضى وقت الفطور و بدأ وليد و طاهر الاستعداد للصلاة، و بدأت آمال في الاستعداد للرحلة، و...
لست أدري كيف يمضي الوقت بهذه السرعة، فها هما وليد و طاهر يعودا من الصلاة ليساعدا آمال في إعداد الحقائب تارة، و في الأعتناء بملك تارة، و مرت الساعات المتبقية و كأنها دقائق علينا و نحن نتابع سعادتهم، و مرت عليهم و كأنها سنين من شوقهم للحظة السفر التي كانوا يتمنونها منذ أمد بعيد، وبكل الحالات، مر الوقت لنجد الآن وليد و عائلته في السيارة في بداية رحلتهم نحو قضاء إجازة سعيدة تعيد إليهم النشاط لعام كامل، و مع أول استراحة في الطريق، نزلت العائلةلتبدء إجازتها فها هو ذا طاهر يلعب و معه وليد الذي يبدو عليه و كأنه قد أصبح من عمر ابنه، و تنظر إليهم آمال من السيارة و على شفتها ابتسامة هادئة، و تحتضن يديها ملك بحنان وخوف لاتدري هي كنهه، و لم يطل انتظارهم حتى انطلقوا من جديد، فشوقهم للبداية الحقيقية كان أعظم، و مضت الرحلة في سلام، فها هو ذا وليد يركن السيارة، و تنتظره آمال والأولاد أمام بوببة الفندق، و لم يطل لنتظارهم حتى جاء وليد ليصطحبهم لغرفهم ليجدوا قليلا من الراحة بعد الرحلة الطويلة، و يمشي وليد بالفعل ناحية الفندق،و...
ما هذا، فوليد لا يجد سوى طاهر بجانبه داخل قاعة استقبال الفندق، و آمال ما زالت في نفس المكان الذي كانت تنظره به، فينظر إليها وليد في تساؤل، فتحسم هي ترددها برفض ذلك الشعور الذي أصبح أقوى من ذي قبل، و تتقدم بخطوت بطيئة لداخل الفندق، و لم تكد تدخل قاعة الاستقبال حتى تبدأ ملك في البكاء، لتكتشف آمال أنها قد ضمتها بقوة آلمتها، فتخفف من ضغطها وتنظر لوليد حتى لا يزيد قلقه، لتجد نظرة التساؤل في عينيه قد استبدلت بنظرة ارتياع، مع انطلاقه نحوها مسرعا، لتدرك هي في تلك اللحظه مدى صدق شعورها بالخوف، فهناك صوت سيارة مسرعة تتقدم ناحية الباب الذي تقف هي أمامه تماما، و لم يسمر تفكيرها طويلا حتي وجدت جسدها ينتفض من قوة و سرعة انتشال وليد لها من أمام البوابة، لتجد السيارة الطائشة طريقها خاليا حتى منتصف القاعة التي استقرت فيه، و....
06 May Sorry, I am not this who I want to be...Within the dreams of any of us, there exists on the top of it the dream of perfection, and I am one of these,... But as I believe its impossibility, I prefer to have another dream to be the best I can. To my best friend: My Friend: My Friend: My Friend: My Whole Friends: my only excuse is that I love you all, I really love you all till the furthest limits available, I love you all so that I can give you my life thousends of times and being happy that this helps you get anything you want. 27 January The Impossible manSince I was a kid, All of my elders used to tell me that it is always known that there are three impossibles that the arabs know in this world... The Ogress.... & This was the first shock that I take from the savage world, but I didn't give in... I tried to ask the history of this world about the true friend, As these words drilled the wound much more, It cheered me up, I tried then to search for him, 26 January Those who I loveSince the moment i was born, there are three who always take the first place in my heart, I can't even try to change it, my heart will never obey me, although I didn't see any of them, but they gave me more than any other one can give, these three are respectively, Allah -sob7anoh-, I love them as they are the ones who taught me how to love, they taught me how to hate to hate, they taught me the language of the humanity,... and for those who my eye got a sight from them, my heart could never settle, until so soon, 09 January Why Am I Alive?Who am I ? This may be true, There is no reason whey I am alive, but there is billions of people other than me, that I am only "1" to the world,... then i have reson for being alive,..... |
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