Foreword from the Author

I am dedicating this blog post to all the people who has some software development background irrespective of the job role. So it may have language, tone, and words that you not be familiar with. What ever the language you speak, I hope the information and passion captured within is received.

A brief Introduction, or is it brief enough?

Once upon a time “it” was a only pronoun! As we know, “it” was used for objects, and animals other than humans, where we didn’t know the name, and other detailed information. It appears, the inferior “it” didn’t have too much of a definition, or a structure, almost giving so much of freedom for these inferior things to be, and change if need be.

Today, for Information Technology, we use the abbreviation IT. Although IT is close to creating “human intelligence” or what we refer to as “artificial intelligence”, without understanding the full mechanics of human mind, how can humans create another human? So, whether it’s “IT” or “it”, we can somewhat agree as something “not that human yet”, as per majority vote, for what ever reason.

Although I have no idea why I had to write such a lengthy intro, let’s hope it makes sense for you, and most importantly you enjoy reading it.

Chapter One (of X, a variable as it stands)

The Story Nim used to tell himself… and still occasionally hear it….

Nim, you are not technical enough! With this level of passion and ability, and at your age, it will be a challenging task for you to learn new things and achieve goals. People can’t see the value you bring, because finally it will always boil down to how fast you can deliver working software, which obviously have some form of code, whether application code or test code. You are not fast enough, and you can’t write a fully functional automated test framework under pressure in a week or what ever the time that an expert take to write one. To add to it, you can’t say you don’t enjoy writing code anymore, and you would like to spend more time design thinking and translating. In fact this blog post is a threat for your future job prospects, no one will want to hire you! If you want to remain employable in IT, you must know to implement using the latest trendy software language, framework, tool, or a combination of some or all the above. You can beg to differ, but majority has spoken, everyone in the team has to have a GitHub profile, and you must have proper statistics of contribution. Run far away from IT, and never return as you don’t belong!

Chapter (X = X + 1)

Where this Story stems from, a brief history into the author’s life, with an analytical twist!

Of course this is a made up story, I made it up. It’s probably never what the world told me! What ever was said, in the end, I am what I interpret myself as… The one true variable X! Although I know this story is not true, as I definitely see how much value I add to a team. I’m still unsure whether others see. So either way, doubt appears to come in as yet another variable! Most days, “my doubt” is insignificant, which provides some ability to “re-see” my worth in the professional realm.

However, since migrating to Australia, I have struggled from time to time to know whether I bring value, I’m trusted, and accepted. I was quite confident in what ever I did within professional realm, before migrating.

Of course for an immigrant, the struggle may start before arriving here, when other immigrants tell you,

“Don’t have high hopes about jobs. You will not have what you have over back at home. They always look for Australian experience, they will not believe what you say in your resume, because we do a lot of work outside of designated job title, so remove all of them and put only the things relevant to the job, don’t put any of your former titles, play down your titles and roles, take any job, even a cleaning job or Cab driver”

But, I chose to take this feedback with a grain of salt, and I was blessed enough to find a suitable well paid job within 3 months of arriving here. The first task was ticked, but I was miserable, lonely, and quite naturally had to take my own time to find my feet in all areas as an immigrant. On top of it, with my new found freedom in multiple areas of life, with the next task at hand being finding a suitable home in a country 115 times bigger than where I come from, experimenting with life came to me as the natural next step, rather than settlling in A Victorian South Eastern Suburb. So although I almost completely avoided the Bus rides that replaced the trains, I entered into a bumpy and turbulent ride for my inner belief system!

Is There a New Story?

I’m glad you asked, says Nim1 to Nim2!

There is no new story. But there is a new knowing.

Chapter (X = X + 1)

Nim tries to explain this knowing

Attempt Y, Y being yet another variable, and I have no idea what the current value is, which doesn’t really matter!

Everything your self tells you is a story. If a human was an IT system, it’s like a report based on the data you have accumulated during your life, that you considered important for you. There are no facts given by your belief system report. But you have to live with other belief systems that may produce facts, at varying authoritative power levels, sometimes even leading countries, despite these system’s unawareness of the existence or mechanics of this “belief system” in place. To add to this complication, although the architectural design of all belief systems are the same, not all systems run the same configuration, or have the same data setup, hence different intelligence or awareness levels! But, the good news is, no system is better or worse, everyone (or everything) is either reacting or acting, consciously or unconsciously, based on information captured from their experience of life, or from people they hold close to their heart.

Huh?!? Are you high on something?

Apparently Nim hears someone asking

Chapter (X = X + 1)

Nim tries to explain this knowing

Attempt Y = Y + 1

So, Let’s analyse my two story reports.

“You mean the story report and your new knowing”

Nim hears you trying to correct him!

Well this new belief system upgrade, according to my current configuration and data setup, it is apparent, that the new version has renamed story report to “Knowing” with some developer comment line “Same report, but you are in control”. Also as per my current setup, the only actual knowing is the belief system mechanics which has no user guide, but it’s meant to be intuitive, and the auto upgrade had taken place as it hit the minimum upgrade requirements of “awareness from within”. I love the upgraded version, I have enjoyed the upgraded version starting from the upgrade process itself, but still have to deal with translating legacy data type “facts”. As per the configuration, the upgrade doesn’t support data type “facts”. In fact, this entire blog post on it’s own is (almost) a (show and tell) fact translating excercise, which is a painful and energy consuming excercise. But, as soon as the system finds a fact, it autokicks the translation process and a system restart! No escape from legacy facts! But, my system variable “hope” always runs at high values, so I have begun to feel somewhat confident that after the restart I won’t see the blue screen of death!

Chapter (++X; // Thank God for the X)

Let’s talk about unforeseen translating issues that I faced.

Your system doesn’t come across a fact until such time the system has run the same report a few times while familiarising itself with data patterns. Which means the the more data you ignore, either in the storing time or at the reporting time, the more your story report start showing biases, and factualizing which heads into a translation loop. For example, my previous story report, I have completely ignored all my childhood passion. How I started writing code, which felt like playing some game, feeling ike it was the best game ever, using “GW Basic” with minor supervision from my Dad, at the age of 11-13 with limited computer time as my mother thought “You are playing with the Computer”, as computer was not in the education curriculum (I’m sure the computer in Principle’s office probably hardly worked).

This may sound like no big deal, despite my attempts in writing a lengthy sentence just then. But, this was years (1991-1993, in a 3rd world country with no computer teaching for kids being available, with no internet or Google (which didn’t exist, in relation to what it is today), with my rather new teacher who I didn’t know much, who was also suffering from loosing a job due to Gulf War, and adjusting to new income levels (Dad), and the principal of the house, Mom, whose only understanding of it was that “the computer had costed the family almost the same price as the house we bought, hence although she couldn’t get her head around that spending, she should save it by controlling access to it so that it doesn’t break, which didn’t include herself”! Which made her both the saviour and the “wanna be destroyer” of the computer depending on what Dad’s last action or statement was. So, she was better than all monitoring and alarming systems put together for violated access or any hardware noise changes, and any marketing activities. But on an angry day, imagine no monitoring, or alarming, and she was attacker strategizing breaking Dad’s expensive toy!!!

So, me and my Dad’s precious IBM 286dx, going off creating things based on a few tips Dad gave me, amongst all other chaos was in fact a big deal. But, the report had ignored both how passionate I was and why I liked programming. I could program the computer to do things. My initial programs were to play a tune of some simple song I liked. I had some basic piano knowledge, but I didn’t know any theory, but computer didn’t care, it gave me time to adjust numeric values I had given, by small amounts until I heard the same sound. I could hear the same note on my sister’s mini Cassio Electronic Organ, which had a Piano setting, and the Computer Beep! I loved the freedom it gave me. None of this was in my report! In fact, none of the positives including all the wonderful feedback I have received from almost all my teachers and employers were not included.

My perfectionist self had queried,

“give me all the negatives I’ve heard, and commented on!

And thank God I have learnt to constantly read, and analize my belief system reports, mostly retrospectively, post incident or event, or just because I have nothing better to do, and I’m addicted to finding facts to translate! I don’t want a single remaining fact in my system! Which will take the system to ideal state of real-time analysis, and decision making with a solid fact-less engine!

But, as much as reading our belief system reports consciously and constantly are important, if you start believing your report is now analysed, fixed, without understanding what the “ideal state” is, it will go for another fact finding tour! I’ve come to learn the system needs to always recompute values of variables confidence level, and doubt, as every moment there are so many million people with new findings, while another bunch going sorry we were wrong. Data patterns change every nano second.

It’s neither good nor bad, it’s just data your life, your interpretation, it’s only a report to help your decisions, but not make your decisions. As children, this is the state they naturally are in. And we grow up, we turn off reporting and analysis, So here I am in a fact translation state of affairs.

So I repeat, there are no facts!

Why do I say that again!

Let’s take science for an example, as science generally speaking, lead to facts. But science’s foundation is relatively! So all facts are relative! Which means there are no facts and constants, just variables! Some spend long time in a given value, some others frequently change. Everything is a variable! There are no constants and facts.

This means, even if you have chosen to be connected to the “Google” of all belief systems, being completely open to share and receive data, your reports need to be constantly observed. No holiday for the belief system, but it’s also the best kind of holiday. And you start to also enjoy fact translation process, although hope for a fact-less day remains high.

Chapter (++X; //I’m so glad I chose a variable value)

The beginning of the end, an eternal variable that loves being a variable!

In the beginning when this big “knowing or awareness from within” hit me hard, so much information came to me, unsure where from, it was almost like some information got unlocked, and I was reading all my cool features that I didn’t know existed, and detailed analysis of all the facts I had to translate, and so much more. It was like something or someone put me through a 3000 different audio/video/still presentations to break my belief system just enough for me to achieve “awareness from within”.

But those 3000 different presentations were designed and dedicated for me, as it wasn’t upgrading other systems, it was upgrading me, clearly the information was individual system specific, in the format I can understand. This immediately was followed by a sequence of events, that I sort of knew was just about to happen, it was so magical, weird, cool, and the most blessed experience. So quite naturally you feel special. It is a special experience, in religious views it is special too, so the first report you get from your belief system about how awesome you are, with some near magic series of “brand launch activities” followed by fireworks, ice cream, and system specifcations, and theory; A lot of new information, everything is the coolest thing to remember to share with your friends, but this is the first time you’ve ever had this experience, and you are on a new system. Unstable to be sending reports to others, but it’s too cool not to share, and you don’t know any better. Who ever knows any better in a data driven system?

I now know that it just organically started the “translation” process. But let’s say, it has been an interesting journey from then to now, and to be confidentially writing publicly about things. The world is changing, at least mine is. Because my story report says so.

Although a healthy level of doubt is advisable, hope is a good headspace to be in. So why should I doubt belief system reports of hope, worst case scenario, report was wrong, you have acted wrong, forgive yourself for not doubting yourself, forgive yourself for being confident, forgive others and ask for their forgiveness for any “integration issues”, and retrospectively learn and play again.

“To be in IT or not to be in IT”
isn’t even a question!

We all are just IT!

Peace and Love!

P.S: Meanwhile in Nim’s life, he hasn’t still written that small script he promised, he also hasn’t finished manual testing, or any other promise he made to catch up for his absence. And other household items, are also behind schedule. And he is still hopeful. Priorotising takes strategy, effort, and no one knows what the future holds.

The easiest way is bringing in one’s own death to the picture to bring perspective. It’s bringing worst case scenarios.

So if I die before Monday, I have no regrets!

Although I’d be delighted to wake up (Yay! not dead), and go to work on Monday!