Of Calvin, Hobbes and People

Bill Watterson. Even his mere name sends electric impulses through my body, for the genius behind Calvin & Hobbes is someone I've idolized my entire life. His comic strips have inspired awe in me, they have ignited every feeling there is in this world inside me. Primarily humorous, sometimes these little comic strips had such deep meanings hidden within, they would wipe you off their feet with the imaginative content inside them. Sometimes I ponder on how the imagination of Bill himself could be so expansive, so wondrously vast, as to accommodate a six-year old's point of view of the world, and perhaps his whole mindset, fully.
Calvin, that six-year-old, was what made this comic strip special. The whole of this strip was about the world of imagination Calvin had in his mind. What I saw in Calvin was a version of myself. It made me think about how the world molds you into thinking that imagination is a stupid thing to have, how a set of rules and constraints is what governs this universe, and we can't do anything to change it. And then, there's the famous quote, "There's always hope." I'd very much like to change that to "There's always imagination." Above all the things that Calvin and Hobbes has shown me, of all the feelings that it has made me feel, the most important and significant thing that it has taught me is that being imaginative is always good.
Being a self-proclaimed information addict, I wouldn't mind if the whole of imgur or Reddit were to be filled with Calvin and Hobbes strips only. Of all the things Calvin and Hobbes is to me, the only regret I have is that the strip didn't last longer. 10 mere years. Why would someone want to end this stroke of artistic genius want to end this masterpiece, just after 10 years of its publication.
But looking at the bright side, it did last 10 years, as long as the whole series of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
At least it didn't end up being a comic strip version of Firefly.

Code, code, beautiful code

This is supposed to be some code I'm working. It makes me look smart.

I'm a nerd. I'm a complete nerd.  I love computers. I love gadgets. I love the tiny little lights that blink every time I leave my laptop on the whole night. It soothes me so.

I'm a fan of the doge meme.

But seriously, I simply love computers. If I could, I would spend my whole life on my computer, doing nothing but watch cats on the Internet and code. Whenever I think about coding, it's right up there on my priority list along with watching cats on the Internet. Whenever I think about coding, my mind swells with excitement at the very thought of looking at pieces of text that mean nothing to some people, and so much to others. Yes, it excites me, and I'm proud of it.

But then again, I don't know code that well. I mean, I don't know half the stuff most intermediate programmers know. I'm somewhat of a between-novice-and-intermediate-coder type of guy. I know all the basics, and I know some beyond it, but that's where I'm limited to. Yes, I know how to use the documentations of languages and all that. My weak point is that I don't know what to do with a piece of code by just looking at normal documentations. I need examples to learn more. This whole "learning through examples" method isn't necessarily a bad thing. But then, there comes a time when there just aren't examples to support this learning process. And then, I have to use my brain because I have one, and I can assure you it's very usable*adjusts bowtie*. This is one of the few joys of coding,
the "try-it-yourself" part. You try and try and try and try until you get the solution (that, or just be lazy and go over to the guys at stackoverflow.com for an answer). I personally believe one can never be a good programmer until one goes through this very phase, and that is why, I postpone the use of  World Wide Web resources until the very last, whenever I'm coding.

Almost every programmer can relate to the substantial amount of time it takes to debug a program. As a programmer, I've almost never got my code on the first try (except on exams, I don't know what happens to me then, I think I get into a hyper-adrenaline-brainy mode at those times). And that's when the all-hail-debug king comes in. And god, does debugging make our life easier. Why, coders would be probably regarded as an elitist group if it was not for debuggers, because it would undoubtedly be a god-knows-how-tedious task to individually look at lines of code and figure out if there were errors in each one of those lines. Whoever invented the concept of debuggers, I bow down in front of you and offer you my gratitude. Seriously, those are awesome.

One thing almost every programmer knows that normal people don't is that people underestimate how powerful computers are. We programmers know that computers have solved problems that people would take (insert a HUGE number) years to solve. Basically, we are saying that whenever a Terminator-style apocalypse is going to happen, we coders can empathize the machines. And they would not kill us. Which is exactly why I learnt to code. That is exactly why coding is beautiful. Now, let me take a moment and plagiarize copyrighted content by Vladimir Nabokov, saying "Ah, coding, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Ko-deeng." (For those don't have a clue what I'm talking about, look up "Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov quotes" on Google) . And then, let me take a moment to emphasize how hard it is to conclude a blog post. It is VERY hard. Which is why I don't want to go through all the trouble, and precisely why I will conclude this post very very abruptly.

-Mohit