Bonn Voyage: Endless Division

One of the best thing of studying abroad is that, you experience a whole new cultural dimension; you learn new perspectives and find different point of views. Sadly due to my a-social life style and language barrier, I am not able to learn more about German culture but to my amazement, I had learned a whole new paradigm of my own national identity. I must say I was living in my own world and didn't grasp the gravity of national and cultural drift we had in our own homeland.
Till now one would say its nice to have such a cultural diversity, but in reality its not, as it is very hard or in case of Pakistan, impossible to thread them all in a single unanimous ideology.
What I had experienced is that, the urge of making one’s own culture superior, maligning others, and on the top of all these shortcomings, the parochial complexes have really destroyed the sense of nationalism in us.
I remembered reading in a preface of some book, Arnold Toynbee adduced that Pakistan can not stand a single day if its edifice is build on linguistic,cultural or geographical bases. What Arnold meant can be eloquently described by more superior scholar , Ibn Khaldun’s concept of ‘asabiyah’. According to Khaldun, nation dies when they lost the sense of “group feeling”, when individuals shun off sacrificing for deeds of others. This is what happening to Pakistan , and to all with national euphoria, I am very sad to learn that we are segregated not only in caste, creed and culture but in religion too , which I thought was one single point where all Pakistanis converge. And more sad thing is that I have to come to a whole new country to realize this.

Bonn Voyage : Bonn vs PUCIT

It been almost 2 months since I came here, and these days I am having my first mid exams at Bonn University. Well coming from two prestigious institutes back home, Forman Christian College and Punjab University, I think I am in right position to juxtapose the education I got in Pakistan and one I am getting here. But I am quite sad to say that the educational standards back home are quite sullen. The only thing common between Bonn University, F.C.C and Punjab University is that they all share almost the same age of 150+ years , and this long epoch Bonn has outshine in achievements. And not to mention that whole Germany is been resurrected after WW2.
But yet I will give the edge to German Universities as Germany is leading economy not in the Europe but in the world. From helping bail out Ireland from economical crisis to making efforts to save Eurozone and deteriorating economy in Greece, Germany is shining these days. Germany has invested a lot in their educational system and no doubt they are providing the best education in cheapest rates.
Well going from PUCIT to Bonn, the major thing I noticed that the teacher's hierarchy is very well defined; all the teachers teaching in Masters are PhD. Back in my bachelors many teachers were plan bachelors with some market experience. Secondly in PUCIT teachers use to prepare slides from other resources like net, books etc where in Bonn mostly professors teaches their own researches, for example Data Mining course which I am studying these days contains most of the examples which were conducted in house.
Moreover, the most annoying thing for me is that teachers here are always punctual, and they start lecture at exact time. And till the lecture ends there is no break, and professors blab for whole 90 minutes uninterrupted. Well I am sure Pakistani students neither have focusing ability for that long nor they are use to attend event less lectures.
But in the end some silver lining is that the tally of PhDs is increasing in PUCIT too.

Bonn Voyage : First Experience

Isolated, desolated sitting in a room with fear of unknown crippling me to my bones. Coming from a set life, aiming to create it again from the scratch, in a new world where you are not the people but alien.
These are my feeling when I moved from Lahore to Bonn for pursuing Masters in Informatics from prestigious Bonn University. But I am positive that everything will be fine and I will come over with this depression and jet lag with some time. I have been acclimatizing with the city. The temperature of Bonn remains from 5 to 19 degree centigrade nowadays with some drizzle every now and then, where the Lahore is reaching scorching 35 degree at this time of the year. I can finally say I am where weather suites my clothes. Hardly two weeks have passed since I came here, but the organization and efficiency of German people have made an impact on me. The roads are calm and most appropriate for walking. I have taken couple of strolls down the city and have found the experience most refreshing. The studies here are quite tough with comparison of the standards provided at my home land. The professors are very competent and delivers their maximum while lecturing. The whole city is connected with web of transport services and they are managed with immaculate smoothness. I wish some day these traits may be seen in my country too. This is a first draft of my intended 'Bonn Voyage' expeditions.

Fort Food Street

Lahore has always attracted gourmands from its suburbs, and it won’t be an overstatement that Lahore have been citadel of food for centuries. Lahore have abundance of eateries scattered all over its geography, but it would be amazing to know that only last decade or so, modernization hit them. Once old ‘dhabbas’ or shabby places,which were unaware of importance of ambiance, cutlery,etc and were just getting business because of their excellent food, but now it is imperative to have all these features to run any eatery. The food street at Gowal Mandi, Old Anarkali and an array of fancy restaurants at M.M Alam road were overwhelmingly accepted by Lahorites and it was evident that how long they wanted to have proper and decent place for eating and hanging out.
Punjab Government closed the Gowal Mandi Food Street, and after some time opened a well planned and well architected food street at Fort Road just within the vicinity of majestic and commendable Badshahi Mosque and Lahore Fort.
Yesterday my brother and I, after doing some shopping, decided to visit the new food street and quench our taste buds with delicacies there. We parked the car in well managed parking lot, which occupies the lane on the back and western side of the Badshahi mosque. The enterance for food street was well secured by walk through metal detector and security guards.
After entering the street, we decided to stroll around. The street was packed with people enjoying their meal with friends and family. After meandering we decided to sit at the beginning of the street, just a furlong away from the musicians. I wished that i would had brought some buds to jam my ears, the music was horrible there, and most ironic thing was that this place was famous famous for its music.
Second shocked came to me when the manager told me that they don’t have any pos for plastic money, and I thank my stars that out of curiosity I asked him whether they accept card or not because I was short on cash that day. Than I realize that in hurriedness of inaugurating the food street (and many other projects ) in unrealistic deadlines set by Punjab Government , some major things are overlooked. Well with the budget of meager cash, i didn't played much with my luck and put my bet on Tawa Chicken. I don’t know the origin of this dish, but i am aware of the fact that this place epitomized Tawa Chicken. Tawa Chicken is prepared in two phases, first the chicken is slowly grilled on coals and than this half done chicken is saute on huge pan (‘Tawa’) with yogurt, spicy masala and then garnished with julienne ginger, lemon, green chillies and coriander. Well I was anticipating something marvelous, but when we were served with our meal, i was very much disappointed. The dish have no sense of presentation, and it looked like it was prepared by making chicken wear a suicide jacket filled with masala and just blast it on our platter. Well I won’t recommend anyone to eat the overpriced food there, nor will I reevaluate my impression by going there to try something different because anything they were offering their, i know better place to get it!

The Artist and Hugo.

I won’t say that I am avid movie watcher, but I am advocate of the fact that movies can be an effective way for oozing depression. For last couple of years I was not able to watch Oscars, which I used to follow dearly, but professional life don’t give me that luxury, in fact software industry stripes you from many. I won’t be whining about horrendous field I am working in: p, this will be the topic of some other blog maybe when I resign or get fired.
Well I intended to write about 2 movies I watched which shined at Oscars this year, one was “The Artist”, bagging 5 golden statues in prestigious categories;  best picture, director and best actor, where second move “Hugo” also bagged 5 Oscars from 11 nominations.
The Artist was a very significant movie because of the fact that it was first silent movie in 80 years to win best picture at Oscars. The movie depicted an actor going through the transition period from silent to talkies. Imbued by his silent euphoria, confront by conundrum that whether go for talkies or not. The movie’s plot was not a new one, many movies have been made on such a topic, and I don’t know why all of them have intact the same stereotype for actors going through the transition. Means why a silent protagonist thinks that he will outshine the talkies by his charisma, why he thinks that he will make a great silent movie by risking every dime he earned and that movie will be a reason for his glorious comeback and audiences will hark back to silent movies once again. And I can’t comprehend the fact that why in the whole world, the only person loyal to technology stricken out of job actors is their butler. I think writers and directors should really work on this stereotype. Overall the artist was a nice attempt, I won’t say that it would be my favorite movie, but it rightfully deserved the entire accolade showered on it.
Now the second movie, “Hugo” was directed by one of my favorites. The movie was adapted from historical fiction ’The Invention of Hugo Cabret’. The movie is about a lonely boy living with his inebriated uncle in a railway station. Jim Morrison said once, “We are thrown into this world”, same was the case with the movie, audience were thrown into it. The movie lacked a proper build up, and this happened with a lot of movies which where based on a epic book. But for me the treat to watch was Ben Kingsely’s portrayal of great George Melies. According to me he was more convincing as Melies than he was as Gandhi. I know not many people will digest this but it’s my personal opinion. The other best thing about movie was its majesties art direction and cinematography, for which it bagged Oscars too. Well in the end I would say that it was not best by Martin and he would do better.

Amazing Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Today, I was serenading my ears with beautifully composed qawali of Late Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan,suddenly my memory reflected me to a long forgotten argument between my two teachers about a decade ago.one teacher,who claimed to be an authority on sub continental music asserted that Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali was off tone singer who just got lucky,other teacher was opposing this preposterous claim.

I was just a stand alone spectator, as I didn't had any workable knowledge of music then.

But now I would like to add my share to the pertinent debate. Ustad Nusarat himself revealed that his father didn't  gave Nusrat approval  of making music as his profession because of the facts that qawali is not lucrative monetarily and qawals do not gain the social respect that they highly deserve. His father was also concerned about the quality of Nusrat’s voice and he insisted Nursrat that if he wants to pursue music as a career, he better learn to play instruments instead of going for vocals. Hitherto my teacher's claim that Nusrat was not a good singer can be substantiated, but what my connoisseur of music teacher failed to realize the true geniuses of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Nusrat knew that he could not change his voice, but what he did was unprecedented in the history of qawali in Pakistan. He as a great composer and innovator, moulded the raags and alaaps in a way that they complement his vocals. Like his father who was legend in his own right , Nusrat fused Khayal raag and Dhurpad raag in his qawalis. Doing this , Nusrat revamped the whole qawali singing, and Nusrat created a whole new world around these raags. Nusrat got an immaculate control on the vicissitudes of his pitch. He could enunciate raags with such a valor that i haven't seen any one to his par.

Second line of argument my teacher made that he just got lucky; well I wont negate that totatly too as we are what our surrounding and circumstances are. Nusrat got an excellent ambiance for music from his pedigree and then the lyrics of Khawaja Pervaz (I am not exaggerating but in my personal view I rank Khawaja Pervaz on a very high pedestal , his work is comparable at any national or international level) did the trick. The combination was instant hit.

In the end I would like to say , sir in your face what ever you think about Nusrat’s voice quality or he just being lucky, he was a true legend and I don't think someone can fill his shoes.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Muhammad Ali Jinnah did all three.
Excerpt from the Preface of Stanley Wolpert's Jinnah of Pakistan.

Anthropological murder of Lahore

On Monday night, I had a craving for some desi food, so my friend, two of my brothers and I decided to have one of the finest creamy chicken savoury served at Pyara Chargha , Mozang. What ought to be a simple trip, turned out as a sort of adventure for us. We just went couple of furlong away from my home, we noticed a punctured tyre. We removed the punctured tyre from the axle, it took us almost 20 minutes to do so as we all were first timer when it come to remove a tyre. Cutting long story short, I volunteered to look after the handicapped car, where others get the tyre fix. I sat on a small jutting coming out of someone’s porch. There I sat alone seeing the lanes on my left and right, and after couple of minutes a strange feeling of alienation imbued me. I have lived here for more than a silver jubilee; the lanes bears the names of my ancestors, but still i felt such an isolation there sitting alone. Suddenly i realized that this area ain’t what i use to live in, and due to my introversion  and lack of ability to mingle in , i didn't felt the transformation earlier.
My ears were filled by Majid Sheikh’s mourns; how he is writing relentlessly in Dawn every Sunday about cultural drift which is slowly killing the unique and beautiful culture of Lahore. Now it was my epiphany, I was terrified to see what we have done with this city, the city has been transformed into a corpse, and we all inflicted by avarice, are eating the flesh on the carcass of once beautiful Lahore. Due to unplanned exodus from suburbs for some better living Lahore has been crowded by all sort of unwanted population. I noticed , once a local dhabba providing food of some desirable quality; we as children were not allowed to eat food from outside, but my own cousin grew up eating the nihari from there, now that dhabba has been converted into a sub standard and i am very positive in an illegal 5 story building.
Allah forbade but i am seeing Lahore becoming a very cosmo political structure, because the zest and beauty of its own culture is decaying in the mist of political ignorance. I am afraid some day Kasuri, Okarvi, Narowali, Gujrati etc culture will prevail in Lahore , and Lahore will be mini Punjab but not Lahore as it used to be.

Dinning at Cafe' Aylanto

One thing that have crept into our nation is that they feel it is their outright obligation to pass comment or shed immense rays of their wisdom on every matter despite the fact that they have no or shrimpy knowledge on the subject. And not only that they pass comment, they inflict its righteousness on others.
But when its comes to cooking, we Lahorites deserves every right to pass a comment. Lahore is famous for many things but when it comes to eating, we have special place as we not only know how to cook, but also how to devour. So in my capacity as a true Lahorite and self claimed connoisseur of food , I will like to take a liberty and comment on my experience at a suave restaurant. First I would like to add a context, it is implied now that any restaurant in Lahore whose name matches the expression of ^ Cafe [a-z0-9]*$ will be a bit more expensive than those restaurants  whose name doesn't match the expression string (exception are there).
As on Friday night, in honor of soon to be an ex-colleague, we went to Cafe Aylanto. As name suggests the restaurant serves Italian and continental food. As we entered the restaurant, we were greeted warmly and were escorted to our table. The ambiance was much to desire; couple of candles on table, gibberish music with no sense of lyrics and dim lights in which I could hardly read the menu. Having said earlier about the prices of these places, Cafe Aylanto did not disappointed us as they also had a stupidly expensive menu. But as i was not on paying end and limited to 1000 rs per person, I managed to order seafood grill platter and margarita pizza. Other guys orders were mainly consisted of steaks. When our orders came, I was pleased to see the presentation of food, The quality of food was nice, my platter was awesome; prawns, sole fish and squid were nicely marinated with mildly spiced sauce, with pinch of oregano. I poured freshly cut lemon juice on them to give zesty flavor. On my side order I had Arabic hummus which was nicely blended, but the pita bread was dull, soggy, and most definitely not fresh. The pizza which i ordered to compliment my platter was below average, the base was soggy and bit under cooked. I think Alyanto really had some problem with their breads that day!
I tasted the steaks of my friends which in my opinion were awesome too. The tangy tenderloin beef cooked to perfection, tender and flavorful. The succulent beef was complimented by assorted veggies and some thick gravy sauce.
But the shame of the day for Aylanto was there pasta. It was an insult to “al-dente”, for them “al-dente” means anything that sticks to your teeth. The pasta lacked crispiness and the white sauce was over powered by one flavor which my taste buds failed to recognize.
Well in the end Aylanto is good place to hang in if you have won some lottery or you just got your pay, in our case the latter was true.

The contribution of Informatics to the development of social networks and their impact on society.

The contribution of Informatics to the development of social networks and their impact on society

Change is continuous constant; inevitable and sometimes unpredictable. We can easily say that world has changed a lot in industrial and mechanical era but the change seen in last half a century is exponential and amazing. If we have to credit one invention which had bought such a revolution, it would be computers. With advent of computers, a new paradigm shift was seen, computers enable mankind to compute and process data in more meaningful way with a blink of an eye.
And it did not stop there, once a stand alone computing machine, the true acumen of computers was judge when they were connected with each other forming a giant mesh of information following from one place to another in speed of light. As technology advances, the hardware and software capabilities of computers increased, now recently 1terabyte of hard disk space is normal for personal PCs, where servers and super computers can manage thousand of terabyte easily. Well it is debatable that can we apply “Moore’s Law” on the expansion of Internet too, but in practice its seen that Internet has grown tremendously in past years. Currently there are more than 50 billion web pages on Google alone, so one can easily imagine the depth and breadth of Internet.
Humans have always shown eagerness and urge to learn unlearnt, find which is not found yet and invent things with improvisation and innovation. This hunger for knowledge is reflected on Internet, as it has abundance of information where million of people quench their thirst. But the most amazing thing about the age of information and Internet is that they not only infested our professional or educational life but they have imbued our social life too. Aristotle once quoted in his Politics that “Man is by nature a social animal’, well if Aristotle would have been alive now he would had uttered that indeed man is social network animal. Internet helped to shape new social norms in our generation, though we are in transaction period but in more than two decades this would be a tautology.
Alvin Toffler in his book “The Third Wave”, declared that the shores of the Earth have been struck by wave of information. Interestingly the power of Internet and socializing through networks was so strong that when Alvin Toffler wrote this book back in 1980’s , Internet has not yet reached its epitome, though it has not reached it now but its far more glorious than back in 80’s. But still the anthropological changes pointed by Alvin are very visible and evident. Ships, trains , super sonic jets etc have not shortened the edges of this world but Internet has really made this world a global village. It would not be an exaggeration; but single invention of making a meager data packet flow from one point to another brought all other inventions of 20 century to their knees.
As there was a huge junk of scattered information lying on the Internet which would be useless in majority of cases was channelized by the brilliant idea of socializing sites. The informatics provided a concrete edifice to these social site which developed there existence surrounding it. I can still remember that when I made my first account on orkut and shared a funny and witty scrap among my friends. I was rejuvenated by the replies and than it was no looking back. The concept of interacting with your friends who are at far geographical locations was just amazing and it also provided a taste of cross cultural exchange, and not only that but also increases  your intellect by indulging in talks and debates around the world. The lacuna of geographical, cultural, religious,cast,creed etc was beautifully filled by social sites and networks. The vastness of these social sites are unimaginable, as on face-book statistics, its reported that 800 million users are active member of face-book, and according to Metclafe’s law the number of connections can be calculated by squaring the connected people. so one can hardly imagine vastness of the “node link” graph of these social sites. There is no harm in accepting that these social sites are now imperative part of our lives. But with pros there are also some cons attached they come with package, as human being  is a bit stubborn, prejudice and many people will argue but sometimes irrational too, social site failed to provide tolerance and flexibility. It rather serves the purpose of full filling your social desires; desire to be loved and liked by your friends etc. But still i am not pessimistic , i am firm believer that these social networking may not bring complete ignorance and patience but will pave the path for global tranquility.
There is also a trend developing among the people to communicate and interact with each others through social games. I can quote this with full authority and with professional experience that the socializing through games is a new big bang. I am a team member of developers those  created TapFish Android and currently I am developing a new social platform for our android games which will provide device portability and new socializing opportunities. Currently 5million people have played Tapfish android around the world, which is more than the population of many cities in the world. The social games have not only set the trend for providing “virtual” pleasure but also to communicate with each others. They have also provided  new meaning and realm to the concept of currency by introducing virtual currency (Maybe in future the paper and plastic money would be replaced by virtual currency).
In the end i would like to conclude that social networking has  shaped this world and i feel lucky and blessed to be a part of this revolution.

References :
1. Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/)
2. Aristotle’s Politics
3. The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler.
4. Facebook Statistics (http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics)

This is an essay I send to Munich for admission purposes, i made vivid changes from original draft.

Back on Track

Today on weekend as usual i spend the evening with my friend, and watched the third ODI between Pakistan and Sri Lanka. I missed much of Pakistani inning due to office hours , but watched the Sri Lankan inning with some sporadic interruptions. As Pakistani cricket now a days trapped in whirlpool of controversies, with spot fixing charges to Afridi - Waqar exchanging incendiary arguments, Pak vs SL series is some relief. As Pakistani team and PCB going through transformation, what i saw today really awaken the old days enthusiasm and love for this game in me. Today we played as complete unit , and after a long time i have seen such a commanding captain. Misbah have proven all his critiques wrong today , he commanded the team from front . It may be his heyday, that every risk he took paid him off. First sacrificing his own wicket for Younas Khan , which in end proved a vital decision . Than in bowling he played a lot of wagers which paid him off , but couple of times Tanvir disappointed him and us a lot. He consulted Younas Khan and Afridi on every critical moment , as in the ending overs of the match , Younas was placing fielders for Umer Gul , this was a great sign of improvement. Misbah seems quite confident and mature as captain and he is not threaten or afraid that some one is gonna out run his captaincy. This is a conspicuous sign for politic free team structure. Shoaib Malik's role today was just reduced to a 12th man , which i loved. No controversial player was named in playing 11 (players involved or suspected to be involved in fixing). I hope we see better cricket in following year.

In the times of Joe Frazier

Famous Left Hook To Ali in Fight of the Century

7 November 2011, Joe Frazier was knocked out from this world for good. A fierce and competent boxer of all times defeated by liver cancer. But Joe Frazier and all other boxers of 60's and 70's were most misfortune because they were in the times of Great Muhammad Ali. The extraordinary persona of Ali enchanted the whole world and all the other boxers were completely over shadowed by him. But still comparatively short but shrewd guy with arrogant swagger came to the scene of boxing and amazed everyone. Frazier or Smokin Joe, he was referred as, became professional in 1965. He won gold for USA in Olympics previous year. His style was very aggressive, always tried to narrow down the distance between himself and opponent. He was one of the most fiercest puncher of that era. He was famous for throwing fury of jabs and uppercuts but his most lethal weapon was his left hook, ironically he broke his left arm in childhood which though healed completely but was a bit short from his right arm. The accident not only shortened his range but also crocked his arm a bit which some experts say did him good.
Joe Frazier was best puncher of his time, as his first 10 fights ended earlier or in 6th round, and all were Knockouts. But the moment of glory for Frazier came on 8 of March 1971 after six years since his first fight. The fight was tagged as "The Fight of the Century". Venue was Madison Square Garden New York and each player was paid record prize of 2.5million dollars. Well what a fight that was, Muhammad Ali dominated in start but after 8(total of 15 rounds) round, Joe Frazier was in command. This was the fight in which Joe landed a superb left hook to Ali showing the canvas to him, second time in Ali' s career. Frazier became world heavy weight champion by a unanimous decision. To keep this for the glory of Joe I am not mentioning the fight of Frazier with Foreman in which Foreman ruined him in just 2 rounds.
Frazier was one of the two  fighters who completed hatrick with Ali, with famous Gorilla in Manilla, both resulted in Frazier defeat. Frazier belonged  to the era where on the scene of world boxing Ali floated and stung but still Frazier made his mark. The International Boxing Research Organization ranked Frazier among the ten greatest heavyweights of all time.

Artificial Intelligence in H.D

Well Artificial Intelligence is the most abused term used in nowadays computing. Thanks for the advent of Emotional Intelligence we can differentiate between different kinds of intelligence. Intelligence is some what an umbrella terminology encompassing, emotional and academic intelligence. We human beings are themselves very complexed machine , we havent learned enough of our selves. so it would be a disaster if we juxtapose computers in our own image.
As once Thomas Carlyle said , "What is all knowledge too but recorded experience, and a product of history; of which, therefore, reasoning and belief, no less than action and passion, are essential materials?". This quote is the first line of the textbook "Artifical Intelligence Illuminated by Ben Coppin", and i am glad that a Scottish satirist made this distinction back in 19 century. So when we talk about Artifical Intelligence , this means that we are talking about academic intelligence , the intelligence which has nothing to do with emotions, experience, consciousness. The intelligence what is required to solve problem by regression , learn by propagation or hit and trial rule that does not require these elements. it seems that this sort of intelligence is inferior to ours and its in fact , but where computers beat us is there resilient ability to repeat same things for eternity without getting tedious. And by considering all possibilities of some problem million time faster than human mind. In some way the emotion less machine can perform better in most of the cases , like human mind get lazy, exhausted,tired etc. these arguments look trivial but when in reality these thing make difference.
The thing is that A.I is comparatively new term and domain, and there is no one who is currently focussing or discussing the philosophical implications from computer world. there is only one name in philosophical circles who attacked the philosophical queries relating to A.I and his name is Hubert Dreyfuss. With his two astute works , "What Computers Cant Do" (First Published in 1972) and than "What Computers Still Cant Do" (First Published in 1992) , H.D argues the disability of computers were having any consciousness and their disability to understand and learn things that do not follow any rules. H.D a renowned phenomologist is of the view that learning and intelligence does not follow any rules. According to him people have invented or created many things which contradict there culturual or geographical needs , and they have done this by some inner urge , he named that force or impetus "Calling". I totally concur that computer can not have this inner urge or creative force in them till now and it does not seem to be possible in near future too. i also agrees that computer learning is done by heuristics which definately follow some rules. But i will say that human creativity and imagination is boundless, it does not follow rules. the imagination's boundary are limit less, in my imagination i can fly on peaguses , can kill hercules with bare hands etc. means human creativity does not know limits , it does not have sense of causality , neither it follows relational heurmentics. but when we manifest this knowlsge in real world , we have to take care of all implied rules this world follows. so manifested knowldge follows all the heuristics that can be mapped in program though how diverse and vast resrvoir of knowledge we have in our mind.
But in the end A.I is still an unexplored land and we needs a lot of learning and understanding pending on our part.

Fundamentals of Coding.

The best way to define computer is that, computer is an electrical device which performs some computations on information in accordance to the instructions given to it. The instructions given to computer should be in compliance with the hardware architect of the computer.

But I am not going to focus on computer hardware organization or its architect, but the more important thing is writing instructions which gives computer its diversity and the ability to do wonders. From first generation languages like FORTRAN ,Pascal ,Cobal,Ada(named after first programmer in world ,Lady Ada Lovelace) to most modern and sophisticated languages like C#,Java and etc. , there have been a lot of changes but the pattern of writing instructions are same .Once I asked my teacher what are the fundamentals of writing a program, and his reply was that if you are able to use and understand control flows, conditional flows and data flow , you have learnt to write good programs and now after 4 years I realized how true he was , the programming revolves around these phenomena.

1. Data Flow:

            Computers perform computations on some sort of information, or simply on data.

So data is fuel for computers, and writing a program needs ample information about which sort of data you are going to use. For simplification we divide data in two categories mainly, one text and other numeric (data have more complex forms like images, audio/video etc). Both types have further classifications too. The most important thing is that when u are writing a code you must be aware of your data type (what sort of data you are using), scope of data and its flow.

Some languages are loosely bonded like PhP in which you are not required to mention the type of data when declaring them. In some languages like C you have to declare all variables (data) before writing the other instructions.

The scope of data refers to its availability in program. If you had declared a variable in a block than you won’t be able to use it outside that block. Same as some variables are declared with static or global keywords giving them access to be used in complete code.

You should also be aware of the flow of data , means if u are using   the data in loops and conditions etc. you should be able to know the points where the data is being updated especially if you are using pointer type , it helps you to debug the code properly and remove both logical and syntactical errors.

2. Control Flows:

                        As the computer instructions are read one at time (the instruction is executed at which Instruction pointer is pointing in memory), the flow of control is most imperative part in writing programs. By default computer reads instructions chronologically, but we can alter this flow by using the structures provided by computer languages.

Goto:

            The "goto" provides us the ability to skip the instructions and jump to the instruction which has been "label". The instructions within the goto statement and label are skipped and the control is shifted to the instruction after the label. The use of ‘goto’ is not considered as good practice in programming. It’s difficult to debug the code and it creates ‘spaghetti code ‘, analogy drawn from the curls of spaghetti.

Jumps:

            If you  r coding in machine languages than u can’t reject the importance of jumps. Jumps are same as goto or other way round (as machine languages are older). Jump as name suggests it transfers the control to the instruction where the label is pointing. Jump can also be used with conditions like jump when zero etc.

Functions:

            Functions are the art of writing programs. They add beauty in your code. Function is a block of instruction which can be run whenever needed by just calling its reference. The functions have ability to take some variables within and perform the operation on that and return the results. Its increases the readability of the code and gives the programmer to reuse its code whenever its needed. The function redirects the control to the code of the function and returns the control to the next instruction written after the reference of function.

3. Conditional Flow:

            Conditional structures are same as control flows, they decides which instruction to be executed but depending on some condition.

If-Else

            The classical example is “if else”, which is the most important and indigenous conditional structure in almost every language. The basic idea behind if else structure is that “if a condition verifies than run the instructions blocked in if or otherwise run the instructions blocked in else”.

But some time the code become complex and “if else “have to be used multiple time so to carter that we have another conditional structure named as switch.

Switch:

            Switch is very handy when you have to cope with multiple conditions. The basic structure of switch is that a variable is passed to switch and than it compares it with the ‘cases’ defined under the switch block, if any condition  mention in case verifies than the instructions under that case are executed. If none of ‘case’ is verify than the instructions under ‘default’ block are executed. One thing is important when using switch is that every case is ended with ‘break’ otherwise the cases after the verified case will be executed too.

Repetition:

Human beings get tedious after repeating some task, how interesting it may seem but computers are master in repeating the thing zillion times. They never get bored of repeating the same task. The repetition or loops are based on simple philosophy, repeat some thing for the time till condition is met. I won’t get into the loop variant, sentinel value and the techniques how to write good loops. There are two major loop structures and all other are their derivates. The first is ‘for’ in which we loop for some condition and until it’s met.

The other is ‘while’ which is same as ‘for’ structre but it’s the coder’s sense and good programming skill which tells which structure to use. But almost every ‘while’ loop can be written as ‘for’ and vice versa. The other structures like ‘do while’, ‘for each’ are derivates of basic for and while loops.

But as every skill is master through practice and there is a classical saying that, ‘it works perfectly in practice but it wont work in theory’. So the best thing to enhance your programming ability is to practice writing codes. That’s how you will learn to code programs which executes in lesser time and uses sophisticated data structures, and even complicated logics will be mapped in simple code.

Robbed by an artist

Today on Eid ul Azha eve , my friend and i went to have some thing to eat. our first preference was Bistro201. my friend really liked the ambiance and i had read a great review in dawn for it. but it was closed , so we headed  for Cuckoo's den, a place infested on historical monument. it was our first visit there. but all of our excitement fade away after seeing the menu. the dishes were stupidly expensive , but still we managed to order a plate of biryani and qeema naan with some condiment. when our highly expensive order was served i was amazed to see it. the plate covered with rice and chicken , was imploring to be accepted as biryani , i was under the impression that this place earns because of majestic mughal vicinity it has , they will at least honor the mughali biryani. well that area has its history of mugging people from their money , the means are change now but true intent is same , kudos to iqbal hussain for making his mom proud.