"Maintenance" Vs "Development"

http://www.sastwingees.org/2011/03/16/maintenance-an-untouchable/

A fantastic post on our attitude towards 'Maintenance' Vs "Development" work.

Mythologically, Hinduism enunciates that Vishnu the protector, the God in charge of maintenance and growth visit earth many times in different Avatarams for executing his job.Creator Brahma is banished from having temples because his cleverness leads to low moral ethics (he lied). People celebrate the destroyer, Shiva who paves way for creation and the protector Vishnu, but not the creator Brahma! Yet vast majority of our people are keen to create rather than maintain and grow.

On the other hand, a more basic and practical difference between the two jobs in software is the fear of losing touch and locking up oneself in an old and outdated technology stack, not to mention the potential loss of revenue associated with the experience in the latest, greatest technology. If the remuneration structure is adjusted such that maintenance folks make as much as or more than the folks in development, things can change.

Incidentally, in Japan, people start with the development work and slowly graduate to the customer facing maintenance work! Maintenance work comes as a reward for good development work It makes sense if you think of it. People who tinker with existing stuff find new ways to grow and invent new stuff that helps people immediately which is good for business. Development without association with the customers may or may not succeed.

On the lighter side

I watched a show yesterday in which is this scene. The main character in the show gets sold into a pyramid/MLM scheme and goes out to recruit resellers for him so he can "become rich"! Two religious evangelist walk up to his door steps on their mission and this guy tries to make a deal with them. "You buy this stuff and I will convert to your religion!" That was hilarious. I was lol for a long time.

When I was in college one of the hostel guys was influenced by a religious group. He started attending their prayer meetings and indulge in the belief system until one day they declared that watching adult Malayalam films is forbidden by the religion. The guy was offended and stopped going to the meetings from that time and dropped off from the group eventually! It was very funny then as it is now.

People are sometimes presented with such unusual dilemmas!

Thoughts and Reality

Universe seems to express itself in dual forms. At a fundamental level, scientific discoveries prove that space and time, matter and energy are expressions of one and the same. At an experimental level, we see wave - particle duality that takes us deep into the quantum reality of nature and the idea that 'things change just because we observe it!'

Now that is a bizarre idea. The near 14 billion years of universe history wherein organic life forms like us on earth emerged less than a billion year ago could influence the behavior of universe! If we look and stuff change because we looked, what happened when we were not even around? Did someone else from other earth like planet looked and it changed the course of history of Universe? We know not. The more closely we see, it feels like the more we don't know!

Einstein proved that nothing can travel faster than light. Yet we know that thoughts can travel almost instantaneousness to the center of Milky way galaxy and back to this blog in less than a second. What is thought and consciousness if it is not a physical entity that obeys nature's law as we know it so far? Well we only know 4% of the reality anyway. There is dark energy and dark matter that fills the 96% of the universe that we have no clue on and hence the name dark stuff. May be one day the future humanoids will find.

Bharathiyar's song on reality and dreams come to mind.

ponathellam kanavinaipoal
puthainthalinthe poanathanaal
naanum oar kanavo
intha nyalamum poi thaano


Kaanpathellam maraiyum entral
Maraindhathellam kaanpamandro
naanum oar kanavo
intha nyalamum poi thaano


What a wonderful thought! Every 125 years approximately (max age of humans so far), earth has completely new set of human beings. There is no single human born on or before 1885 today. No one who is born today will live to see the year 2135 with the current medical technologies. Yet we know about the history of Universe and our thoughts travel into the realm of dreams all the time.


After I started writing this blog, I notice that there are scientific papers on this topic. The line between physics and meta physics blurs when we think that thoughts and reality can be a dual expression of nature.