About twenty-one
years back, in 1990, a Parsee Lady from Mumbai complimented me by
saying ‘You simply know how to talk to a computer’. I think she exceeded
the limits while assessing me and definitely over estimated my capabilities but
one thing is true that you can call me a technology savvy and crazy
or better word is tech freaky. People like me sometime are too good for
the machines and often too dangerous. Involving with a device for me means break
or make. Therefore, I preferred to ignore if approached by someone to look at
their machines.
I am very old
fashion regarding this theory as for me Job satisfaction is before money
and the attitude of mine directed me to this field. It was somewhere in 1985,
I saw a real computer, that time it was a petty unknown things to me. While
in Singapore ,
my friend’s nephew having one but I never saw it in healthy condition. My
friend was a teacher and one day she told her nephew that she wanted him to
get some answer from the computer. For your kind information, internet
was not yet in picture at that time. I was wondering for many days that
how a machine can answer her queries. Soon I back to India , first thing that I
decided to get an instant answer for my queries, that is how I joined a
course in Davar’s. After few months and a few programming languages I
found my hunger grew with every program I wrote and wanted to know more. I joined
a full time course in F.P.H. and believe me or not my class was 9 a.m. to 7
p.m., one good thing was there in FPH that the canteen over there used to
provide food for very cheap rate, of course quality wise you cannot expect more.
Therefore, I ventured to this world unknowingly and never knew that twenty-five
years I am doing same thing, which I done that time means studying hard
everyday, and teaching others, that too is very hard.
Before I could
finish my Diploma I got a job, first one was part-time and immediately after
that I landed in a full-time job, it was
a Parsee concern and we were developing software in COBOL. Even spending
time with computer which was the best past-time for me but I never enjoy much
my working days with the concern ‘Digital Abacus’. When I was just
thinking to leave it, I got the job I was looking for and I stayed there until
1998. I left it because I wanted to return back to Kolkata but I stayed
back there for another two years. It was one of my close friends wanted to
start a computer setup somewhere in Thane and she wanted my help. So I
stayed back to look after it, I still regretted decision later. Finally, June 2000
I returned back to the place where once I born and last eleven years I am
running my own establishment mainly meant for BPO job. It is now turned
to a training center and I am to the teaching.
However, these twenty-five
years journey was very exciting and full of transformation. I like to
remember all those processors that I worked with. There were computer that was
only worked with Basic programming. Then came the big ‘O’, I mean
operating system and all we needed was a 5 ¼ floppy disk to start and to
store. In 1988, we got a machine with 286 processor, hard to believe but
true that we had our first hard disk, capacity was six-forty megabyte. Until
1994 we used some of its modified versions like 386 and 486. Then finally
Pentiums arrived and also Windows operating system (Windows 95).
This relentless
upgrading of hardware was amazing but it was painful too. With keeping
competition with new hardware in the market software companies too never failed
to produce varieties of new software, be it application software or programming
languages. Keeping pace with the change was stimulating, painful
and miserable. It was too hard for the people like us, as I always
explored with all sort of software. At the end of the day, I am not complaining
and very much satisfied with my strive yet I am sad, I know how much effort I
had given to learn COBOL, Fortran, Pascal etc. but today
these are worthless piece of knowledge because those are outdated.
!!!The computer, I am living in it, with it
and simply loving it.!!!