Raj Agrawal

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You are here: Home / Archives for myths

To Code Or Not To Code? – Coding Myth #1

July 23, 2011 by Raj Agrawal Leave a Comment

Coding Myths – Like any other rapidly evolving technology/ methodology, ‘programming’ has also been a victim of the wretched myths. It’s very easy for novice programmers to be convinced that manual coding is losing it’s importance and automated software generation will entirely take over in years to come. Some even naively predict that, somewhere in future, programmers will face a dead end in their career as software will be developed straight from the user’s specifications. In this article, I aim to bust this myth and educate the victims of the myth.

wtf code joke
Quality code vs Bad Code

The level of abstraction seen in many high level languages today is phenomenal, take C# (Sharp) for example. It will never eliminate the need for manual coding since all the requirements will have to be accurate, formal and detailed enough so that the machine can perceive and execute it properly. A code is the foundation of an application that represents every minute detail of the requirements; as a programmer, one just can’t ignore these details at any stage of development. Also, a program grows imperfect as the level of complexity increases. We cannot either ignore a universal rule that there is always room for improvement. So, no matter what generation of programming technology/ methodology a program is built with, at some point of time, the source code or a module will definitely need manual alteration/ updates.

Many ambitious aspirants wish to build artificially intelligent machines, aiming to output “What one wants” rather “What one says”. For this, the machines will really have to understand a user, precise enough that it can translate even the most ambiguous decision into perfectly executable programs and succeed.

One really has to remember that a code is the ultimate expression of systems requirements. A programmer may use any language or custom tools to build a program. The need for manual coding will never die, rather exist to seek perfection the built application.

Do share in your valuable opinions on this, using the comments section below.

Filed Under: Software Tagged With: myths, Programming

What To Do If Your Windows Drive Has No Free Space Left?

April 26, 2010 by Raj Agrawal 4 Comments

Your computer hard disk will fail if there is very little or no space left in the Windows partition. Not!

It’s odd to imagine that there are a so many myths related to computers and their working. Is it the people or is it the massive knowledge base of technology know-how that are hard for people to cope up with (the latter being the culprit).

Almost 10 years ago, i owned a Pentium II with 2 GB Hard Disk with 32Mb RAM and Windows 98. One of my friends bought a CD loaded with free flash games (of course i was 11 years old). My prehistoric computer was configured with two drives, C drive and D drive of which D drive was already full *sigh*. Flash games were the only games that worked correctly on my computer. So, i copied the entire CD on my desktop and very soon the C drive was full too. Being a novice user, i started to worry a little because i had no space left at all on my computer and my friend suggested me to delete those files i just copied into my computer or else my hard drive will fail. Left with no other option, i deleted the flash games. The fact is that, having no space in a drive has nothing to do with hardware failure. He was not the only one who blessed me with the divine knowledge of how computers work. I still meet people who are stuck with this myth!

What actually happens

Your computer will definitely boot in a healthy way if there is very little or no space left in the Windows partition. But, there are certain things you should be careful about when you encounter such situation.

  • Almost all programs are designed to create temporary files and cache. These programs will refuse to start or continuously pop up an error. I experimented this situation on my desktop with Photoshop CS2 and found out that Photoshop was smart enough to deal with it and asked me for an alternative drive (Scratch Disk Preferences) where it could store it’s temporary files and cache and let me continue using the program.
  • Such situation also might create a problem while using System Restore. As it may not be able to restore your desktop into the previous state you selected due to the non – availability of required free space.

What should you do?

  • You should clear the cache and temporary files using CCleaner (freeware). Sometimes these files get piled up into a hundreds of megabytes or even gigabytes.
  • If all this is already done, then delete or transfer files of least importance to the neighboring partitions/ backup drive with enough free space.

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Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: myths