To us, here and now, it appears thus

I have always considered myself a liberal and one thing that is inexcusable for a liberal is the violation of the right to private property. The attitude of politicians and the society in general towards the property rights of induviduals here is something that is far from even being considered acceptable. Right from the "not in my backyard syndrome" to the whole brouhaha of the Sardar Sarovar Dam issue. It is downright depressing. The latest in the series of atrocities that are being hijacked and either being grossly misrepresented and/or glorified is the election promise of two acres of land to farmers by the DMK in tamil nadu.

Among the various promises, many fancy, imaginative and at most only partially implementable with high costs is the promise of two acres of land to landless farmers. And the land for all these small farmers comes from other arable, but unused land which in most cases are owned by private citizens. This so called 'tharisu' land also includes lands in private hands. And this promise is basically a violation of the property rights of those induviduals. Whats even worse is our beloved minister of finance supporting this. I know for a fact that he is more sensible than he actually appears on the dias. But would some one be actually willing to forego what he thinks is correct for the sake of petty politics? And by the way Mr.Chidambaram, I've lost all respect I had for you.

One thing that is true today, and as I believe the finance minister is well aware is that farming on the small scale is not the way of progress. Its about time we moved our massive labour force to something thats more productive, probably manufacturing and let the farming to the corporates. Yes, Corporate Agriculture is the way to go. The means of agricultural production, is better used when it is in the hands of large corporate entities, espescially when indian agriculture is at the mercy of the monsoons. Not only would they have better bargaining power and be able to handle the vagarancies of the market, they would also be able to manage the seasonal fluctuations and why we may even see some innovations in agriculture. But thats not whats important now.

What is important is that property rights of private citizens are important. It is simply atrocious to see a political party glorifying blatant violation of such rights. Its even worse when a central minister praises such a scheme. But something that is by far the most incomprehensible is complete and universal apathy shown by the general public regarding this issue. Will I ever find a level headed, sensible, and progressively minded politician? (Note, I din't mention honest, I lost all hope of finding honest ones a long time ago).

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas.

This is something I wrote on an extremely mind numbing 40 kilometre bus journey from my house to my college.

There is an interesting article in todays' paper about how big a market place that china has become. But the line that piqued my curiosity more than anything else was this particular line.

The largest manufacturer of christmas decorations and santa claus dolls is offically atheist china.

Well, for some-one who knows a bit of world history, china's is not the first atheistic country. India is supposed to be one too, but the meaning of the term 'secular' has been hijacked and mutilated beyond repair by our politicians. A few decades back, it was the godless russians, now its 'officially atheist china'. Interesting isn't it? Atheism has always been inextricably entangled with communism and in most cases socialism. It may be true that socialism may imply atheism, but why the converse? Stated otherwise, why has free market, a purely economic concept been so deeply tied with relegion outside purely academic circles?

It is highly inconcievable that such a link could have been forged and enforced over few decades. Even taking into acount the the strong images that the link draws to christian america or the persecution of faulon gong. What's more ironical about this link is that, if you practice religion, then as the many "relegious heads" seem to concur, relegion seems to be all about equality and the well-being of every one. But aren't those the same goals of a socialist ideology? I've heard of the religious right, but never the about a religious left or even an 'agnostic right'. Are there more deeper connections that I don't know about or is it just blatant american media hegomony that seems to be all-pervasive. An Interesting conundrum after all!

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas.

I've been usually criticised (of course by a lot of well meaning people) for bashing the current development model of the indian economy, or the fact that I constantly rant about how its really bad that low entry barriers to the BPO and other back office industries imparts a serious strain on innovation within the economy. But hearing the ex-CEO of Wipro, a major player in the Indian IT and ITES diaspora echoing my sentiments was definitely as pleasent surprise that I never could have expected in a million years.

Here is the link to the interview at Knoweldge@Wharton.

Writing a virtual machine is serious fun. But one thing that you probably shouldn't be doing is designing the virtual machine and the compiler at the same time. You ask why? Well, there is a very good reason why. If its a single person who is doing both the development (coding) and the design of a virtual machine, then that part of your brain which lets you write code (the same part that also lets you sit through CAT) is working along with the part that you are probably using when you are doing much more creative stuff, say, like writing blogs.

Now, whats the problem with more of your brain working at the same time? Well, ask any schizophernic and he will tell you. The reason that you shouldn't do both at the same time is because, when you are designing a virtual machine you are letting your creative side flow, and when its a compiler, its not as much a problem of design as it is a problem of assembly. And doing both requires exteremely different types of mind-sets.

When you are designing a compiler, its like you are building something out of lego-blocks. You have to nitpick it to perfection. Every component has to talk to ever other component properly. That means your interfaces and your data-structures that move from one component to the other must be clearly defined. It is in short a process of pain and paitence. But if you are out to write a compiler, don't fret, because the rewards are surely great. Write one compiler, and you will master almost all programming languages that are out there. When you see the syntax trees flowing, the scopes unfolding, and the recursion proceeding in a cyclic loop generating code, you will attain nirvana. Trust me on that.

And, now about that virtual machine. This is more like solving a challenging math problem. Its not as if you are writing a proof for publication, but just like solving a problem for fun. Its more of a creative endeavour. You have a billion options in design, each one with its own pros and cons. Each design decision affecting the way certain language constructs must be generated. This is not only serious creative thinking, but exteremly worthwhile exercise in critical thinking as well. And this spell should never be interrupted by the part of the brain that actually is incharge of the compiler. When both are working together, you get each part involved in a time-wasting dogfight and sometimes you may even be seen arguing with yourself, raising doubts about your sanity in the minds of others. And those are just the minor irritations.

The major ones, come up when the compiler brain comes to your vm brain and starts arguing about who should handle internal name-resolution or the fact that lexical scopes are handled by renaming rather than having a true runtime sphagetti stack. Or, since the vm tries to be elegeant and minimal, then you can't even have RTTI thats better than C++ inspite of the compiler actually compiling some breed of dynamically typed language. Its like in the movies, when there is an angel to your right and a crazy guy in a red drape on your left with a trident poking you.

The greatest mistake you could do while designing a virtual machine would be to let that evil little red guy win! So, if you are ever writing a virtual machine, don't let that evil little red guy win.

Signing Off
Vishnu Vyas

Its that season again. Yes, Its been a long time since I sat along with a comrade, writing code, getting high on coffee and arguing over Vi or Emacs. And that season is back. With our projects due over next week, its about time we got serious and started hacking away!.

If there is time, I might just post a few photos of whats its like to work in the one-true-geek-way.

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas

“It is self defeating, grossly misused, misquoted and misunderstood, and atmost correctly works only sometimes, yet thats the best we have come up with so far.”