Saturday, January 30, 2010

Open Source or Cut, Copy and Paste?

"The migration has to go in tomorrow, Alok", said Ram, the project manager. Even though his voice was soft, Alok really couldn't miss the steely edge in Ram's voice. "I will try my best" managed Alok.

Late in the night, almost alone, Alok ran his fingers through his hair. "Migration code" - That was the only thing in his mind. And then it struck him. He quickly browsed the open source repository. Somewhere he had seen that bit of code to make it all fit together. It was in that now retired application. Alok had a smile on the corner of his lips now.

He carefully read the code and did a cut and then a paste onto his workspace. Lo! the Migration code is all set for testing and MTP tomorrow. He called Ram and said, 'Ram, I've fixed the migration code now. We are good to go for the show tomorrow.!" Ram chuckled at the other end. He was a programmer too before he took over as a manager. He knew, Alok would have got up, stretched and bent down to lock his computer for the day by now.

Now to think of the best things to ever happen to a programmer... Isn't that Open Source and even better was Cut, Copy & Paste :)