Gandhian Principles for Computer Geeks

                          

On the eve of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, I thought it will be best to teach the Gandhian principles to the computer geeks and programmers alike.

1. Love Your Enemy

I know its hard to do, but you have got to love those nasty bugs that crop up in the code you write. By love, Gandhiji does not mean that you have to sing love songs to them, but you have to understand them and have compassion for them. Understanding why they occur can be critical in your approach towards defeating them.

2. Always be truthful

This is very important, in case you bring down the whole system while you were playing around with the system of your organisation, be truthful. Take up the matter in your own hands to fix it and admit your mistake to the system Adminstrator.

3. Never use violence

This is one of the major principles of Gandhiji. Whenever, you encounter that undiscoverable bug or a heisenbug don’t just crash your computer and/or any of its parts. Instead, take a deep breath, control your anger and go out to have a coffee.

You have to understand that while unneccessary violence will help you vent your anger, it will only make your enemy gloat at you. Thus, keeping an impassive face, feigning resignation by moving away and then attacking it after some time (non-violently of course) always works for me. 

4. Try to win your enemy over to your side

This is one very simple principle. If you can’t correct the bug, make sure you make it known to the people that it is a feature in the product. Many of the major features might have come this way and we would not have known.

5. Don’t be angry; suffer the anger of your opponent

You don’t have to show anger to the opponent, it only causes the bug to gloat in happiness. Rather suffer its anger, slog it out, it draws the attention of fellow geeks to your cause and they will come out and help you when they see you spending hours in your cubicle while you should be out there playing foosball/TT with them.

6. Wean your opponents from error with sympathy and patience

This applies when you are coding. You do the coding with patience, sympathy for the bugs, and you will find yourself debuging less.

These principles appear to be hard to follow and might prove to be slow in working, but there is no other principle in the world that can help you more.

As usual waiting for the comments.