Founder & CTO @SMERGERS & @wealthrox
Past - Dev Infra @Google · RF @NI · CS @USC

Currently
Founder & CTO @SMERGERS & @wealthrox
Previously
Dev Infra Intern @Google NYC RF @NI-WCDMA
Computer Science @USC
Contact
hey [at] krishnabharadwaj.info
07-Mar-2011

Anitha Ma'am asked me if I could talk about Linux and motivate the students of 4th semester to use it more at labs etc.. I personally feel that asking someone to use Linux just because it is good does not motivate them to use it. One should be passionate about computer science in general, that's when they make the right choice of using the right tools.

It can be thought of like this, a guy very passionate about Cars will always want to buy a Ferrari or a Porsche and not some sub standard car. Madhu was there too!! he had asked me not to tell anyone that he would be coming since he wasn't sure if he could make it or not. I'm happy he did. Madhu told his story of how he got things working on Linux.. i felt it was great. I quote it here:

In 2003, I installed Linux, but nothing was working, no sound, no internet, not so good display etc.. so I went back to windows. In 2005 I removed windows completely from the system. That's when everything started working!

I hope everyone liked the session and they take away some things from it. I must acknowledge that some guys were really awesome, they could answer some questions which we never expected to get answers for. Great bunch of students.. Some of the resources which i had to share:

Slides: Download (Its created using open office and it should open in latest version of MS office i guess, worst case just open it in google docs)

Links:

Programming Contests

http://www.projecteuler.net/
http://www.spoj.pl/
http://www.topcoder.com/tc
http://uva.onlinejudge.org/
http://code.google.com/codejam/
http://cm.baylor.edu/welcome.icpc

Must read blogs/articles for software engineers

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/
http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
http://www.norvig.com/

Technology/Startups

http://techcrunch.com/
http://www.pluggd.in/
http://news.ycombinator.com

Other links which I quoted in the presentation:

http://blog.mongodb.org/post/660037122/holy-large-hadron-collider-batman
http://www.adityanaik.com/infosys-powered-by-intellect-driven-by-what/
http://www.passioncomputing.com.au/Articles/Disadvantages-of-Indian-Outs...
http://www.thoughtclusters.com/2009/02/are-indian-software-developers-co...
http://www.javaworld.com/community/?q=node/4354