The feeling that B.Tech. is almost over forces me to feel a bit nervous. I spend (I am not sure whether to call it wastage) a lot of time socializing (at coffee shop and in BC with friends) and rest of the time I am sitting in front of my computer screen trying to develop or explore something. My life at IIIT has been influenced by a lot of factors from Dr. Kamal‘s use of a tablet pc and wifi to connect to the projector for a lecture or Dr. Sangal‘s outstanding way of teaching or the limited bandwidth forcing me to think of alternatives or Nirnimesh‘s inclination towards Linux or Ranta‘s entrepreneurial skills or Sandeep Saini‘s dedication towards downloading. You have so many people around you with exceptional skills in their fields. All these have forced me rethink about myself in one or the other way.

Today there was a mail on squid development mailing list with a link to this page. I was pissed off by the C++ code on the page. At one time I was very good at C/C++ but python killed the interest and knowledge over time. I was strongly inclined towards OOP back then. When I saw the above page today, I felt an inclination towards C++ yet another time. Well, thats me. Just think about something and start doing it without thinking what would be the result. I picked up “The C++ Programming Language” by “Bjarne Stroustrup” from the cupboard and started turning pages. While doing that the page after the Introduction caught my attention. There was a long quote. I generally don’t read stuff like this but I felt some urge to read it. It was

… and you, Marcus, have given me many things; now I shall give you this good advice. Be many people. Give up the game of being always Marcus Cocoza. You have worried too much about Marcus Cocoza, so that you have been really his slave and prisoner. You have not done anything without first considering how it would affect Marcus Cocoza’s happiness and prestige. You were always much afraid that Marcus might do a stupid thing, or be bored. What would it really have mattered? All over the world people are doing stupid things… I should like you to be easy, your little heart to be light again. You must from now, be more than one, many people, as many as you can think of…

— Karen Blixen (writing under the pseudonym “Isak Dinesin”),
from “The Dreamers”, from “Seven Gothic Tales”.

It was a wonderful reading. Inspiring enough to force me to blog about it. Looking forward for reading a bit about C++ also and becoming a squid developer from a squid plugin developer 🙂