No doubt that smart phones are the next PC and their use will grow at exponential rate iPhone along with its innovative AppStore has changed the dynamism of this industry. Apple has rejuvenated once boring mobile platform with the introduction of platform that lets third party developers to write applications and eventually make money. With the success of AppStore, others like Microsoft, Nokia, RIM, Palm and Google are following or have taken some similar steps. So, one can expect do-or-die battle for the dominance of yet to grow and lucrative smart phone industry.

If we analyze the current events that have been taking place in this industry with the pre-mature phase of PC industry, we can find some similarities. The PC industry flourished with the introduction of GUI computers from Apple with the ability for 3rd party developers to write an application for. Prior to as well as after introduction of Apple OS, there were various vendors including Microsoft, IBM, DEC and so on offering similar services. But at last, as it normally happens in the information economy, only one emerged as the dominant force, it was Microsoft at that time. The success of Microsoft during PC battle was not just because of Microsoft Windows and/or DOS was superior to other available platforms, but Microsoft had and still have support of  wide array of hardware and software vendors. Apple and other vendors lost the PC war because of that particular reason.

Now lets come to current smart phone war. There are so many vendors offering or soon to be offering their own OS along with application platforms like Apple iPhone + AppStore, Google Android + MarketPlace, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile + Windows Marketplace, RIM + AppWorld, Nokia + Ovi and may be we will hear more in the near future. For now, as a developer it’s much easier to choose a smart phone platform to develop for (most in the US choose iPhone with Android trailing by long margin). Just imagine what will happen once all major vendors provide similar platforms after sometime. Which platform will you choose and what about interoperability? Certainly for large companies this won’t be a big issue as they have and they can afford to provide their applications for respective platforms. But what about those small developers and entrepreneurs and even for someone trying to get into mobile phone development? It will be just be crazy and/or practically impossible to offer certain services in all platforms.

I think we are going in somewhat wrong direction. With so much hype of iPhone and Android, along with other upcoming platforms especially Palm Pre, developers are forgetting about interoperability that the Internet and WWW have taught us and what Web 2.0 have delivered us. We are again going back to same PC era and writing applications for vendor specific platforms. Smart phone and as a whole mobile industry should focus providing their APIs respecting the concept of WWW. It’s true that browsers are available in almost all smart phones but which application will you choose when one is offered as a native one and while other being offered pointing to some URL like htpp://m.time.com or m.cnn.com and so on. In most of the cases, users will rightly choose former.

I am not saying platforms that enable developers to write vendor specific application is wrong but  one needs to fear that after sometime, it will be quite hard to offer applications for each and every platforms. But I am optimistic that one dominant player will emerge as victorious in the current smart phone battle and it will be the next Microsoft for PC and/or Google for Internet search.

My Bet: certainly not Apple even though iPhone + AppStore  provide the most superior platform for now

This is an interesting keynote presentation by Robert Martin delivered during RailsConf 2009. According to Robert Martin, Smalltalk was the most superior language of its time and even with such unique features and even being the epicenter for introducing Pattern based development, Test Driven approach and various OO principles we are following, Smalltalk was never successful with mainstream developers and eventually extinct with the popularity of JAVA in early mid 1990s. He believes that failure of Smalltalk users to ignore problems commonly faced by enterprises and attitude of Smalltalk users in being more superior than other platform developers were one of the crucial reasons that killed SmallTalk. He further expressed during the keynote that if Ruby and Rails community fail and/or ignore problems faced by enterprises then, there is a chance what happened to Smalltalk could also happen to Ruby.

I think the video is a must watch if you a Ruby developer and/or want to jump to Ruby/Rails band wagon. There’s no doubt that Rails is one of the leading web frameworks that have embed the concept of test driven development at its core and Ruby developers have always been in the fore front adopting agile development strategies. But whenever I read some blog posts/articles and writings by Ruby enthusiasts and developers, I feel some kind of rebel and attitude of superiority in their expression which is somewhat same as mentioned in the keynote. Ironically, most of the Ruby syntax is also inspired from Smalltlk with small blend of C; that’s why Ruby is also called reincarnation of Smalltalk but lets hope Ruby won’t be next Smalltalk and as Microsoft new initiative Make Web Not War.

Cover via Amazon

Finally, I completed reading House of Cards - A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by William D. Cohan I accept that I may not have enough background knowledge for understanding each and every terms mentioned in this book and even for writing book review but I am petty sure that now I have general knowing about the state of Wall Street and financial mess they have nurtured in the form of sub prime mortgages and other complicated financial instruments like derivatives (I swear I don’t know what the fuck is this).

Cohan is a former senior Wall Street investment banker, author of The Last Tycoons and as a whole a respected writer and/or journalist.  I am really impressed by the way this book is written. The sequence of the events and excitement of consequences produced by them is what let me to complete this book in such a short time interval.

The book describes about the whole life cycle (from the birth and impressive rise to the dramatic collapse) of once proud investment bank Bear Stearns that became the first major casualty of the global financial crisis or credit crunch and consequently triggering the global financial system in the edge of collapse. Bear Stearns was eventually acquired by JPMorgan Chase in the fire sale price for just $2, later adjusted to $10 after shareholder lawsuit (Just a month or so ago it was trading above $100).

Here are some of the major events / points from the book:

• Bear Stearns had had leverage ratio of nearly 40 times i.e. it was borrowing $40 by showing liquid asset of $1. Not only Bear Stearns, AIG (Always Investing Garbage Hmm..Did I write something wrong:) ), Lehman Brothers and most financial institutions and investment banks were leveraged in the same way.
• Confident is the name of the game in the Wall Street. Just couple of weeks before the collapse of Bear Stearns, it had $18 Billion cash in hand. But once news about its potential survival and toxic assets in its balance sheet began to leak, there was run for money by its clients and no one was ready to do business with Bear.
• Though Bear Stearns was a public company, its management and overall control was in the hand of few people namely Ace Greenberg, Jimmy Cayne and Alan D. Schwart. The failure of Bear was not only due to its business model but managerial missteps and personal rivalry about controlling the firm were also one of the causes.
• Its quite shocking to know that most of the investment banks rely on over night funding for their daily transactions.
• The rating agencies like Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch Ratings are the bitch of Wall Street firms and also one of the major villains of this crisis.
• Ironically, the executives of the failed firms like Bear Stearns and Lehman brothers were highest paid. But overall, all Wall Street executives normally were make millions even after the crisis (Remember AIG bonus saga). Wall Street has always be known for its excessive pay and risky investments especially after the de-regulation initiated during Clinton Administration.

Certainly the above list do not fully capitalize what this book explains. I have to say, I never thought it would be so interesting to read a book about finance world. But I believe that every person in the world is being directly or indirectly affected by the current crisis should have at least rough idea about how crisis of such magnitude completely took the world by surprise. As currently I am living in New York, which being the home of Wall Street can be considered as the epicenter of the current mess and one of the most affected state so, getting to know about the financial crisis is always nice.

And I can conclude what I learn in just one statement:

Investment banking is an unregulated black magic that let you to believe you are making chunk of profit that is kinda NULL in reality.

Software engineering and programming are such an inquisitive fields that there are always unexplained avenues for gaining improvement. I may not have proper authority to fully capitalize the previous statement because being relatively new to programming (couple of years or so of professional career), there are so many unexplored horizons of software development that I still need to explore.

But every time I write some code and after sometime, I personally feel that the code I wrote sometime ago is really awful and dirty. I have to admit that most of my personal projects that I did alone was kinda failure and/or bizarre and no doubt they have taught me lessons I will never ever forget in my life.

I reviewed the code I wrote just few months ago and I was able to extract so many mistakes and would be bugs that I wrote that code again. And may be after few months, I will do same again. But this cycle of writing bad code and after certain time getting to feel how erroneous me and my code does make me quite happy and I can make self comparison how am I improving as a programmer that does not just code but write clean and testable code . But I am really loving this vicious cycle of unsatisfactory code.

If you are new and kinda enthusiastic programmer then, I guess you have also experience similar and/or related cycle of dissatisfaction and are always searching to learn and implement something new. It would be really nice if you can share your experience too.

Blogging after long time (I guess after a month or so) on quite unusual topic.

AIG’s $165 million bonus to its Financial Product division has grabbed attention everywhere and of every US media. The public furor and outcry of the poorly managed Wall Street bail out by former administration and current Obama administration has been clearly been louder from AIG bonus saga. And to limit this outcry Congress just passed a bill to impose massive 90% tax on that bonus and this will also apply to all other bailed out banks receiving fund under TARP.

I wonder what the hell were these lawmakers and politicians doing when they were bailing out AIG few months ago. AIG was bailed out under Bush administration spear headed by then New York Fed Chariman and current Treasury Timothy Geithner under supervision of Federal Reserve and then treasury Hank Paulson. All these excessive bonus issues (for which Wall Street has been widely criticized for) should have been managed during that time.

I think 90% taxation by lawmakers is just an act of showing the public that they are worried about tax payer’s money and ultimately hiding the whole bail out failure. I think most of the people will accept that the bailed out supervised by Hank Paulson was severely mismanaged (Oh I just forget he is also from that same Wall Street mess named Goldman Sachs) and I don’t know why but I really don’t have any trust with the current Treasury’s plan (they have not proposed any significant plan either). And wait, this bonus issue certainly does not seem to cool so soon especially when yet another bailed out bank, Citigroup is also planning to give big bonuses (cetainly not a good move during so much public outcry).

I thought all these massive mismanagement and shameful politics happen only in developing and under-developed countries but now I am convinced that all politicians all over are somewhat same, perfect blame gamers. I wish all mighty give some sensible logic to both politicians and Wall Street losers.

Some interesting AIG articles:

• How AIG Became Too Big to Fail

• The Problem With Flogging A.I.G.