Arijit Dasgupta a programmer...
It was a comfortable pre-winter warm after-noon of November when I was born. I came to this planet, just to do great things! :P
I started growing up...
I went to school. And I found it boring.
I was bad at multiplication tables so I used to hack the standard multiplication procedure and used to add the numbers n-times. Teachers never gave me a straight A for those hacked ("insanely awesome") methods that I devised by myself.
Thanks to my family I strongly believed that the way they taught in school was wrong and there is a right way.
I felt a strong attachment to machines. I used to break things, gears and lights fascinated me. Espeically the cassette turning module of a old cassette player was a treasure trove for me. I loved the way the buttons changed the gear arrangments in the cassete playing module.
My cousins who were back then engineering students did all sorts of drawings and I used to enjoy the cryptic nature of those engineering drawings, and wondered "What the hell are these things?"
When I was 8, I went camping with a few adventure buffs. With their rough but comforting way they showed me how to live. I developed a strong affinity towards adventure, mountains, forests and all sorts of crazy places. It somehow got into my blood.
Camping was and still is one among the most important part of my life.
When we got our first computer, my Father bought me a book called "BASIC FOR SCHOOLS". It was a nice book on GW-BASIC. I still remember firing up the interpreter and running my first program.
I started programmng...
I designed my first website when I was 14. I always was using tables and rarely hand coded HTML to design webpages. The revolution I fondly call the "Firefox revolution" didn't start at that time. I used WYSIWYG editors to design static HTML websites. My first websites were hosted in geo-cities and tripod.
I used to screw up paths while uploading and it was really difficult to fix those once those were uploaded. I am talking about the days of the dial-up. You can imagine the speeds back then...
I got into photography by seeing my Father photographing nature in all it's glory.
He used to use his heavy 35mm SLR camera, which was rugged and old. For me though that was the awesomest camera I ever saw! Nowadays, I semi-seriously shoot with a Nikon D5000. ;-)
I fell in love with physics when I got Brian Green's "Fabric of cosmos". I loved it. I started exploring special theory of relativity a lot back then, effectively affecting my school curriculum.
I wanted to become a physicist...
While I was struggling to get my school curriculum inside me head during my senior years I got introduced to the 'awesome' world of electronics by a older friend of mine. He was studying engineering and used to grab component datasheets from the internet. He was really into PICs, and from him I got interested in embedded systems. He is responsible for my interest in electronics.
He said he would guide me with these cool stuff me when I get into engineering studies...
Though I wanted to study physics I turned out to be an engineering student after school. I went into Electronics and Communication Engineering. I loved the stuff, but as with school, I found the teachings in college mostly boring. And I also believed in a superior way of teaching.
I read stories of great inventors and scientists and firmly believed that undergraduate studies are the best time of enlightenment for a student...
The seed of love for adevnture grew since I was a kid. I fantasized myself in high mountains and I still do. I like the idea of waking up in a tent and seeing mountain ranges towering over clouds. I like the idea of brewing coffee in melted snow.
I believe mountains shape a man like no other. It gives you lessons you will never forget. It helps you become a better man...
This is what I mostly did in my free-time (which is all the time) during my undergraduate studies. I picked up programming languages and I coded. I didn't code anything useful, I simply liked to learn about programming languages, paradigms, styles etc.
I fantasize about dreaming in code...