DailyPost 746
TOWARDS A PROFESSIONAL IT LANDSCAPE
Our Software Industry does not make software & our Computer Science BTech courses do not produce coders. Coders create products & products define companies. It’s sheer starvation even in professional coding in the age of algorithms. The onward journey to Machine Learning & AI would thus get more more difficult, we might miss out as well. At the other end is the hacker, ripping apart anything and everything in the digital world& has thus become the real professional of the digital universe. Coder & hacker define the success of the IT industry.
At present, Indian industry and the professional educational system are not able be break the barrier & these skills are conspicuous by it’s absence. Its time to take a different route to make it happen. It has to happen if the country is to have a dignified global digital presence. The first to happen should be a India Coding Challenge competition, on the lines of International Collegiate Programming Competition, ICPC. It would energise the ever dull Indian coding world. Starting from small & big cities, simple to complex, ending up in National Finals, with ranking & rewards attached to it. It would be able to provide an yardstick for the future employers. The much needed movement to create a coder ecosystem would happen.
India Hacking Challenge can be another national mega event bringimg together large number of disparate hackathons, spread across the country, on systematic, regulated & structured format. It can be exactly on the same format as the India Coding Challenge, with ranking, rewards, recognition all attached to it. Cyber Security is the fastest growing industry today. They will make or mar products as well as companies. Products, defensive & offensive capablities all matter. They are the new age sentinels of peace & also the harbringers of war.
With name, fame, glory, placement and even entrepreneurship attached, these two National Challenges, totally skill based, completely fair & transparent, can initiate a different trajectory for the IT world, which the country has been yearning for long.
CHALLENGES & RECOGNITION ARE WHAT BOTH CODERS & HACKERS ASPIRE FOR.
Sanjay Sahay