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ramkalari | 1 year ago | on: Why Ruby on Rails still matters

I once had to fix a Rails project where the original developer chose not to use ActiveRecord, ActiveJob or any of the Rails built in features. Not sure why he wanted to go that route unless he wanted to learn Ruby at the customers expense.

ramkalari | 10 years ago | on: Saving Private Flipkart

I think it is really hard to compete with Amazon on cost. That is Amazon's strength and you will most likely lose that battle unless the government has some kind of protective measures in place or you get another titan like Alibaba or Google taking a majority stake. Flipkart still has plenty of mindshare but they need to innovate. They are not going to win based on prices alone.

ramkalari | 10 years ago | on: Saving Private Flipkart

Amazon is not doing a great job either. They shipped a Macbook Air when I had ordered a Macbook Pro. They didn't release my replacement until their supposedly superior system registered my returns. I had to contact their support to tell them that it was returned a week back. After all the song and dance, they shipped a Macbook Air again as replacement. How is that for a market leading performance!

ramkalari | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do software consultants deal with maintenance?

I would also try to build in as many self-service features that you can so that you are not bugged with routine maintenance requests such as adding master data. Otherwise, all maintenance requests should be done for a fee. Customers also value you even higher if you proactively do maintenance such as security fixes that maybe beyond their capabilities.

ramkalari | 10 years ago | on: What’s new in Play 2.4

I have built a couple of apps running Play on Java and I like it. I still prefer Rails if the customer is starting on a clean slate but Play Java has worked out pretty well.

ramkalari | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (January 2015)

SEEKING WORK - Chennai, India, Remote I'm a full stack web developer with over 14 years of experience. I've been working on Play Framework, Rails, AWS & Ember for the past year.

Currently working on Android.

Experienced in building profitable B2B Saas apps as well as enterprise software.

ramkalari | 11 years ago | on: Magnus Carlsen Repeats at World Chess Championship

Anand doesn't like playing long games. Carlsen doesn't give an inch even when he is down. Regardless of rating differences, Anand's game was in bad shape in 2013 and it just continued in the world championship. He is playing much better these days. It is just that his game doesn't match up very well to Carlsen's relentless style. That said, he had his chances this time like how he predicted before the match. He just couldn't take them. I'm always reminded of Federer-Nadal rivalry when I watch these two play.

ramkalari | 11 years ago | on: Commencement address by Bill and Melinda Gates

It isn't true just for a Stanford graduate audience. Extreme poverty and discrimination will shock just about anybody who hasn't seen it. I live in India in a nice city and interact with poor people everyday. Even that didn't prepare me for the suffering that I saw when I traveled to different parts of the country.

ramkalari | 12 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who wants to be hired?

Chennai, Remote, Contract|Part Time

Stack: Play Framework, Scala, Java, Spring Integration

Contact: ramkalari at gmail

Looking to work on interesting Scala projects.

ramkalari | 12 years ago | on: JIRA vs GitHub

Having done many ALM integrations in the last year, Atlassian has been the most pleasant to work with in the enterprise space. They are young and modern compared to the other dinosaurs. Github poses a very different kind of challenge to Atlassian with their better developer mindshare. Really interesting battle on the cards.

ramkalari | 13 years ago | on: Why SICP Matters

I was working through the coursera functional programming course on scala which is modeled on SICP. While the content is really good, it suffers from the same problems pointed out by Dr Harvey. Getting used to scala syntax takes time while Scheme was a breeze.

ramkalari | 13 years ago | on: Introduction to Databases

I took the course and I found it very useful even though I had done good amount of work with databases before.

The sections on relational algebra and relational models are really good. The course covers the basics of db - sql, constraints, views, triggers and authorization very well. I particularly liked the coverage on transactions, an area that most web programmers will benefit from.

With respect to xml, I found the level of detail to be quite good again but I don't really use much of xquery or xslt these days.

While the course does cover Olap and nosql, it is quite light compared to the relational and xml units of the course.

I see that they have added a new section on json in the new version of the course. Some of the questions in the homework and exams are slightly tricky but nothing too hard.

I didn't really get to see the office hours videos, so can't comment on that. Overall, I think it is an excellent introductory db course. Just make sure you don't fall back on the schedule as some of the material can be quite heavy.

ramkalari | 13 years ago | on: Brian Harvey: Why SICP matters

The best cs book by a mile. One can't help but fall in love with programming after reading SICP. I'm now reading Peter Norvig's Paradigms of AI Programming. It's another classic. I've also listened to video lectures of Brian Harvey. I think his own twists to SICP such as starting the course with functions on words instead of numbers are invaluable too.
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