Test vs Development

With placement session  going smoothly(with few bumps, here and there, of course :)) in my college, I found this doubt prevailing in minds of many of my friends that whether to prefer Test or Development jobs? Which is better? Is switching possible later? What are scopes in both profiles further in life? I'll try to discuss few of these issues here based on what I observed in past few months.

• Which is better: A Test job or a Development job?

Most of the people think that Test Profile Job is some second tier job given to those people who couldn't manage a development job which is not correct at all. Recruiting company never thinks like that. Most of the companies coming at campus never have this notion of superiority of one profile over the other. They do classification of candidates between both profiles based on the requirements suited for that particular profile eg Yahoo had two sections in its written paper.  They had designed these papers in such a way that a person doing well in one particular section was shortlisted for Test profile and another person doing excellent in other section was shortlisted for Development profile.  So clearly, it's not like two cutoffs for two different profiles with lower ones for Test profile as most of the people think.

Most of the biggies in software offer (almost) same compensation to both profiles with equal chances of growth.  There may be some exceptions here but where arent they?

• Which one to prefer: A Test job or a Development job?
  

The only thing to remember here is that "One should prefer the BEST FITTED job rather than the BEST job." After all, the term "BEST" in itself is relative and depends on one's view point:) There's no point going for a job which one doesnt feel like enjoying. So decide what exactly one is made for and then go for it rather than following one's peer group choice. I have seen people during my internship who were doing Test jobs by their choice and not by their destiny. They had options to switch to so called "coveted" Development Jobs in various stages of their lives but they chose to stick to their Test jobs. 

The best strategy to make one's mind is to talk to people working in these profiles in the concerned company and try to find out which job is suited for one more than the other. That's it, no rocket science involved :)

• Is switching between the profiles possible later?
  

The straight answer is "Yes, of course". There are many cases I have seen in recent past. One of my friend who did internship in a company in test profile could convert it into PPO of Development profile. He just conveyed to the recruiter that he's more suited for development job.

Another friend of mine, who also did internship in test profile in the same company later could grab the offer from another excellent company  in development profile.

I would like to make this point very clear that they didnt have any inferiority feeling for test profiles. It's just that they were more into dev than test. A personal choice as explained above and nothing else.

When one can switch from a tech job to a totally new area i.e a management job in their careers( you must have seen many examples of this) so what's the problem in switching jobs in the same domain? 

So, to sum up,  feeling of inferiority of one profile over other is just a false notion and one should first listen to his heart than to one's peers.

P.S. In the whole discussion, I might have sounded like an "anti-dev" person but I only tried to be "pro-test" along with "pro-dev". I am having an offer for dev profile from a good company. So I am not "anti-dev" at all. I invite, all of you, to discuss this issue and put forth your views as this being an open ended question.

3 'S' of coding

Most of us feel that developing algorithm is the main part of whole SDLC(Software Development Life Cycle) which is actually not the case. We, generally, ignore the vital part of coding and do it in our stride. Here, I am mentioning the 3 ‘S’ of coding which one must take care always:

1) Simple: As they say, "Think simple, think better". Keep the design as simple as you can(of course, it should be meeting all functional specifications). One thing worth noting with simplicity is that generally, the first thought that comes to our mind is simple and better. We are the one who make it complex later. So, Believe on your first idea.

2) Scalable: You design should be scalable enough. By scalability, it means “It should be modular enough to accommodate further changes in requirements without modifying much at the base level.” For example, if the logic of your problem demands reading/writing from/to an XML file, you have two ways to do this:

a. Either do normal XML parsing using XMLDocument Class Object(in C#).

b. Use concept of Serialization/Deserialization to derive object out of classes(formed from XML Schema(Xsd)) and populate those object. This will save you at later stage when you need to do some changes in XML. Using this method, you need to just change your schema and voila , you are done! No need to modify hard code.

Clearly, scheme 2 is more scalable. But as you can see, Simplicity and Scalability often contradicts each other. It needs a great combination of experience and expertise to make a balance between two.

3) Standard: This is one of the thing, we ignore the most. But, this is the most important ‘S’ out of 3. Being Standard means following some standard notations, that are followed in industry. This benefits in two ways:

a. Following standards makes the code easy to debug.

b. It also help the followers of your code in easy understanding.

Different languages follow different standards, but common ones are:

i. Identifier Naming: Using camel casing for variable names and Pascal notation for properties and functions. Identifier names should be fully descriptive e.g for a varible which stores the count of old customers in an airline, use variable name as oldCustomerCount rather than using some fundoo names as oldcustcnt or CustmrCnt. Adding few extra characters won’t affect you much in this world of Intellisense and all.. Will it?

ii. Adding Comments: Adding comments to code is also an art. It’s not that you add whatever you want to. It also follows few standard conventions like adding name of the editor, date and time of comment etc.

iii. Indentation and Line Folding: These are generally taken care of automatically in advanced IDEs like Visual Studio, Eclipse etc and need little from side of programmer. Of course, you need to take care if you are using some ancient compilers like Turbo C .:)

iv. Minimal use of Public members: One should use public variables in classes(in C++, C# etc.) as less as possible. Rather use private variables and properties(get and set) derived out of them.

Also, few other things like preferring Asynchronous Callbacks over Continous Polling are also counted as Good programming skills.

So, merely developing algorithm is not enough. You need to implement them by coding and coding well. You will have to do trade-offs among 3 ‘S’ of coding at various stages but that’s how you develop and mature. Isn’t it?

Happy Coding :)

Party Time !!!!

As N(P)idhi got placed in Adobe( with a very decent package), we all (Interns@MS) could party finally. So we chose yesterday as P-Day.  As there was nothing much to do after college registration, we all(Deepank, Mukul, Nidhi and me) left for District Centre. As my bike was the only vehicle we had, I decided to park it at Metro station only so that I can accompany all in Metro(see, how co-operative I am :)). We reached District Centre and had lunch there at Pizza Hut. Then few rounds of strolling and wandering at District Centre and we finally settled down for movie "Jaane Tu ya Jaane Na". Though I had watched it already, but agreed again for common good(Height of co-operation :)). I must say movie was worth watching again. Predictable story line with unpredictable presentation. Music was too cool. Mukul liked the actress "Genelia(Aditi)" for a change. I guess Katrina should work hard ;). 

After movie, again some window shopping, eating Ice-Creams, Chuski(especially Wild Cherry for Mukul), chocolate cakes.... I was liking this vellapanti(not very much used to it :)).  Reached home at around 7 something. Really enjoyed the day..

After 2 months of extreme hard work, this was required to regain energy and freshness... With college starting from Monday(It's too early:( ), there is much in store for me...

A Journey of Life

Hi, This is Jitesh Sachdeva. I'm in final year of B.E. at NSIT,COE in Computer Science. I did my summer Internship at Microsoft IDC this year ( got a PPO too :)) and experience was amazing. I rediscovered myself there and found out the software development is the thing I wanted to do always. In short, I have discovered my "Lakshya" and want to strive hard to achieve ultimate s
success.

These days, I 'm living best part of my life. I'm rewinding myself after 2 months of extreme hard work. I have plenty of time to explore other interests these days and hence I'm trying out new things. So, one of the thing I thought is that I should write a blog and here am I... Few other plans to follow: To join a gym and work on my physique and to learn guitar etc.

In this blog, You'll find out stuff related to my experience with life, experiments I did with life, my internship experiences, my future plans and lots of stuff related to computer, technology and philosophy.

So, stay with me and check this blog to experience " A Journey of Life".