The Anatomy of a Code Review

This is the musing of a software developer. If you are or have not been in the profession, some of these might appear jargon to you. I have tried to write it in as simple a language as I can, but still you ought to be thankful to God Almighty for your absence of knowledge on some/all of these issues. Believe me, you are much better off NOT knowing all these than those unlucky ones like me who see lines of code floating around in dreams…..

Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, long before the sun has risen over the horizon, in the dark alleys of a software company, an unfortunate soul sits away staring at his computer monitor, his hands deftly navigating the contours of a keyboard attached. That harangued soul, I wish, were my worst enemy, but unfortunately happens to be me. Myself.

The clacking of the keys is the only noise in the entire hallway, which is deserted sans a solitary me. I peck away at the keyboard incessantly, unaware of my surroundings. Completely focused on what I do. And finally, a few hours later, the beginnings of a smile begin to creep up on my face. At last, my code is working. An almost surreal feeling. Priceless, exactly the kind that my MasterCard cannot pay with. And finally, double checking everything, I send off my piece of code for reviewing by my peers. Also known in colloquial terminology as code review. That done, I head to the parking garage to pick up my car and head home. On the way down to garage, I try to remember whether I did have my dinner, or whether the last meal I had in the day was a piece of toast for breakfast.

Sometime after I reach home, I fall asleep on my sofa. And long after the sun has risen and the world around me is busy with its morning activities, my alarm chirps me to life. I brush my teeth, finish with my morning ablutions before I head to office. My first task - to check peer feedback on my code review. As I grab my morning coffee and head to my desk and open my computer hoping to see that my code has gotten the requisite sign offs. Or at least a few comments so that I have something to work on in the morning.

But alas, that is not to be. Indeed, I should have known. The very revered peers of mine were busily ensconced in their respective worlds, my request for reviewing of my code was nothing but a mere distraction. And so there I was, after toiling way past midnight, now at the mercy of my colleagues and seniors. If only they could give me some feedback. But fear not, it is not the first time that yours truly is facing this situation. With nothing better to do, I turn on the web browser. Social and anti-social media are the buzzwords as I delve into the pleasantries of life with friends and family from up close and afar. Cameth the lunch hour and I, having all the lavish time in the world, decide to skip the office cafeteria and entertain myself to a fabulous lunch outside in some restaurant.

I come back after a very sumptuous lunch and open my system. My mind is delving into the multiple possibilities of how to creatively spend my time in the afternoon in the office while appearing to my manager and the rest of the pack that I am, like a loyal servant, hard at work. No sooner has the computer opened up, I see my code review all lit up like the lights on a Christmas tree.

And there, after addressing the plethora of comments that flew in from left, right and center making me appear more of an idiot and less of a software developer, I finally manage to commit my code to the system. Feeling triumphant, like a warrior after a successful battle, I head to the kitchenette to celebrate my success with a cup of coffee. I stand near the machine while it splutters and cranks out the coffee I believe I so richly deserve. The mobile phone in my pocket vibrates. It is a new email, my change has caused a build break. Muttering all the expletives which I imbibed as a part of my collegiate education, I rush back to my office. The vicious cycle begins all over again…..

It takes two to tango

He was napping on the sofa when the doorbell rang. He opened the door and saw her tired physique and an exasperated visage.

“The dinner has been on the table for more than an hour now. I’ll heat it up.” He said, as he turned his back and shuffled towards the dining table. She didn’t take her eyes off her phone as she made her way into the bedroom.

A few minutes later, with the clock all poised to strike eleven, both of them were seated at the dining table.

“You didn’t eat?” she asked.

“You know very well I hate to have dinner alone. It is something I avoid as much as I can.”

They munched a few morsels in silence. “We need to talk,” he said.

“Please..! Not today. It was a bad day at office. Am in no mood to talk. I know what you are going to talk about. It is not like I wouldn’t want to come back home earlier, but my work forces me to stay late often.”

The conversation trailed off. One liners and short bursts of speech were becoming more and more common.

As they went to bed, she felt sorry for him. “Am sorry honey. I will take more care. I will try to give you more space in life. Somehow I always get tied up in work, but I will try to come home earlier on a regular basis. I love you. Give me a hug.”

“No. You give me a hug.”

She rolled over and embraced him tight.

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For the umpteenth time, he sighed as he picked up his phone and went through his dialed numbers. Her name showed twelve entries. He had called her twelve times over the past two and half hours, and every single time, it had gone to voicemail. Every single time. He sighed, cast a forlorn look for the dinner he had prepared for this day’s special occasion. He got up from the dining table and paced around the room. He saw the China teapot, he had got for her on a trip to Shanghai couple of years ago. Wall paintings they had so thoroughly searched and bought together. Her smile when he used to give her rose bouquets back in the days. Back in the days, seemed so long away. On the calendar though, it was a month under two years.

He wished that life was simpler. That she would barge in with some surprise, on this special day, the anniversary of their marriage. As if his thoughts were read by someone, the doorbell rang. He rushed to open it, with anticipation.

Opened the door.

His arms about to stretch out.

“Madam is coming. She is on a call, so she didn’t take the elevator.”

Saying this, her driver handed him her bag with a big smile. Without a word, he took the bag and turned back, leaving the door ajar.

A couple of minutes later he overheard her voice over the phone, growing louder as she approached closer. “No Mr. Johnson, I can’t allow that to happen. Our company does need an advance payent of fifty percent. I cannot authorize the transaction until you pay your outstanding dues.” She didn’t look at him when she entered. Her energy was focused on the phone, and getting the money from some random Mr. Johnson. She headed to the bedroom to change.

He sat there, drained of emotions, drained on energy. As he scrolled through random forwarded messages on his phone, he had made up his mind. 

Pursuit of Happiness

"Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be."

Abraham Lincoln

I have an average one way commute time of around twenty minutes from where I stay to where I work. Barring a few occasions when traffic or the pressures of job snarl up my attention, I would say I enjoy the commute, the solitude that rides beside me in my car. The solitary sojourn gives me time and a frame of mind to ponder over a wide range of things – personal, professional and even occasionally news events..! Solitude normally induces a chain reaction of thoughts. One thought leads to another, and so on. Simple logic, your mind is not bound when you are with yourself, no mannerisms to follow, no etiquette to break.

It was during one of those trips, while I was waiting on a red traffic light that I saw a bunch of bright, bubbly eyed, energetic and enthusiastic children crossing the road to take their school bus. It just stuck me at that instant, the magnitude of loss that tagged along with the process of growing up. Where was the joy I used to experience when I used to walk or cycle to school? That feeling bordering on ecstasy when you know the when the bell rings on this class, the next hour is PT? As much as time is a healer, time is a dampener as well. With time, when you grow up, your surrounding injects a huge dose of “maturity” into you. The society lays down rules which prevents you from acting “childish.” There is a barrier between propriety and impropriety which you never cared for as a child, but which you as an adult, try to uphold.

Simple pleasures. Stepping out when it is raining. As a child, you simply used to love to run out without a care in the world that you would get wet. Your natural tendency is to just go to the centre of the world and drench out completely till the rain stops, and it gets more enjoyable if it gets your mother to chase you. The sheer, unbridled joy. And now? You cuss upon the rain since it inevitably comes when you intend to step out. You think between jackets, umbrellas and what not to protect you from monsoon even when your intention is to get to your car parked a hundred meters away. And in spite of using any of the afore mentioned methods, you still manage to swear when you finally make to your car, because a drop or two (or maybe more) managed to break all of your obstacles and find its way onto your nicely pressed shirt. Did I forget that I so used to love those droplets falling on me once upon a time?

Lunch at school. Used to be an elaborate, often clumsy and sometimes even an unfair affair. You never had any etiquettes when you used to snatch stuff from someone else’s box. You used to enjoy sitting with your friends and munching stuff from your tiffin box. All those chaos associated with the ringing of the lunch bell at school. And now..? Occasions are getting scarcer when you can sit with everyone and share an elaborate lunch. Manners prohibit you from diving inside someone else’s lunch box scourging, and if we do glance into someone else’s box, we attempt to make it as subtle as possible. “No thanks, I am on a diet”, “Oh thanks, maybe just a little bite”….  

Celebrations. Be it festivals, be it personal achievements, even the joy and celebrations associated with them seem to have become symbolic. What used to be getting together with family and entire days of camaraderie has now been reduced to a weekend party in some high end pub in town. Or an IM or text message wish. With a smiley, not a smile.

I do not have any control over life, I walk the way everyone before me has walked. And I show the way for someone from posterity. The light has turned green, and under this blue sky I take my foot from the brake pedal and shift it towards the gas pedal. It is then I notice the tiny drops of rain that have fallen upon my windshield. As I cross the junction, moving past the kids getting into the bus, my thoughts come back to where it all started, that I have to get to the office before the rain gets heavier. Shoot, the nasty headache from yesterday’s promotion party at the city tavern….

cout << “Happy Onam..!” << endl;

Today….is Onam.

Nostalgia is too light a term to signify, in all its intensity, its meaning. All those folktales and songs associated with Onam, the floral decorations and the spirit enshrined in the concept of Onam… all those are irrelevant when viewing the world outside from the glassy confines of my software company. I wear spotlessly cleaned and ironed formal attire to office everyday so that my clients are impressed, but that hides the financial pauperism I am undergoing. The company pays me when it feels, and when it feels is a question of probability tilted heavily against employees like me trapped somewhere in the bottom rungs of the hierarchical pyramid. I had asked my manager for an advance payment of the month’s salary because I wanted to gift something to my parents for Onam, but his ominous visage told me to mind my own business than to keep refreshing my bank statement online.

And today, of all days, a series of meeting got scheduled to discuss some project proposals with my client. My manager being a Keralite, I expected him to find a way to schedule the meetings at an alternate date so that we could have a lighter business day today, the day of Onam. Instead, he, the veteran of many more Onams than myself, drilled into my head the fact that Onams might come and go, but the same wasn’t necessarily true with clients. So on this day, which all these previous years used to start with a temple visit followed by a nice breakfast made by a loving mother, it began in a most dreary way when my alarm didn’t go off and I found myself half awake in my bed half an hour before I was supposed to report for my meeting at office, cursing anyone and everyone who had anything to do with computers and software. An auspicious start to a pious day.

Reaching fifteen minutes late for the meeting was probably one of the better moments of the day, for, those fifteen minutes, I was NOT drilled. The entire day, merciless souls took pleasure in butchering me and pointing out flaws with my proposed design. I was supposed to presenting, but the amount of time I spoke paled in comparison with the amount of time my revered guests spent critiquing and tearing apart my design. Just before lunch, my manager approached me and asked me to come up with a fresh design in the next four hours, he was rescheduling a design meeting with clients after that and would like me to present a modified design, taking into consideration the feedback I received.

Onasadhya, the traditional feast is the highlight of Onam day.

I forgot the traditions and heritage of Onam as I sat bleary eyed in front of computer thinking how best to reduce the number rotten eggs I had earned in my portfolio earlier in the day. The clock continued its journey past lunch time, going at its nice leisurely pace. The concept of time had melted away in front of me, I just knew the deadline, nothing else. I kept pecking away at my computer, rest of the world numb and frozen.

The evening meeting seemed to stretch on forever, and it was not much different from the morning sessions. Sometimes I wondered if I were sitting in the Parliament House, the ruckus these people were creating would’ve certainly give the honorable parliamentarians a run for their money. The endless debates and discussions were led to nowhere till they finally decide to succumb to natural forces and conclude for the day, the discussion to be continued next morning.

The clock struck ten. Suddenly I remembered I was hungry, the last meal I had was a bowl of stale cereal before I rushed off to office at seven in the morning. I opened Paint. Drew a couple of flowers with the most elementary drawing skills I had. Typed in Happy Onam. Set it as my desktop background. Shrugging, I wished myself a Happy Onam two hours before my clock moved on to the next date on the calendar. 

Information Technology

Aaahh…it was my dream. I submitted myself to those two words. The talk of the town, the buzz of the world.

They called it Information Technology. “IT” was a real cute nickname. The dream of my generation. It was as if some unknown demi-God had just developed the seed of a tree that had the abilities to grow money. It fascinated me.

Those boring classes in Plus One and Plus Two never extinguished the spark in me. Those giant sized dusty reference books that I was supposed to “assimilate” never seemed a burden to me. Nights were never far where I used to picturize myself as a handsome young man in his well-pressed formal attire and tie, sitting in a revolving chair in an air conditioned room in Bangalore, New Delhi, Detroit, New York……or beyond. The traction provided by the smell of afresh bundles of currency in those dreams of mine was more than enough to leap across the hurdle called entrance examinations.

I eagerly waited. In an obscure corner of my engineering college. For the angel called campus selection. And after three years that seemed like ages, the day came. My angel came. I too was selected….into the wings of a company…a by product of “information technology explosion.”

It took my mother a good part of six months to come anywhere near pronouncing the name of my company, recognizably...

Phew...what else in life. Another damn year in this college and then am a free bird I reflected. Working in those heavenly conditions, living in those grandiose villas and stashing away those bundles of money that I’ll continue “earning” into some bank accounts and investment stocks…for me to enjoy later.

The day dawned. My joining day. Afresh in a new set of branded casuals, the keen desire to encounter the world of computers, I set out to my office in the Electronic City in Bangalore. And lo !!!! It was heaven… For a youth of twenty three, who could dream of better prospects in life at this stage itself?

Life at the first week at job strengthened my beliefs. Those instructions from the firangi boss of mine, seemed like music to my ears. The paraphernalia around me never bothered me, the way it used to until a couple of months ago. In spite of sitting motionless in front of my computer from nine in the morning to ten in the night, it never seemed enough for me. The feelings of hunger and thirst seemed ethereal.

Days passed by. With every passing day, it seemed as if my mind had stopped working. Enthusiasm, joy, happiness, eagerness...all these suddenly seemed mere words in a lexicon. Those commands of my Iboss started feeling less like music and more like having a tinge of contempt and haughtiness. The same monotone, sitting in front of the same idiotic computer. Starting to feel dull, was I?

Naah! All these melted away into thin air the day I got my first salary. Not thousands….tens of them !!! More money than I had ruefully counted and given at the counter of my entrance examination coaching institute. At that moment, I felt on top of the world, literally.

But...but what to do with the money?? Never really had the time to spare to eat what were once my favourite food items in the midst of a spare-timeless work routine. Could not even afford to think of a vacation to places I so badly wanted to visit as a kid, thanks to my boss who opined that taking leave was a greater sin than homicide. Aah..no problems...I consoled myself. Sure once in life, I’ll have the opportunity to spend lavishly this hard earned money, the way I desire.

Hard earned money...the way I desire !!!!
Life ceased to flow like music. It was as if time had lost its tempo. A day dawns, a day ends…and life in between these two events never altered. Six days a week, three hundred plus days an year. Couldn’t recognize days and dates, unsuccessful quests for the feeling called joy behind those fat money bags….every passing day seemed like an eternity frozen in time.

Hardly “found time” to go home. Countably few occasions. And one fine morning, I get a call from home. My marriage had been fixed. With those handful of days of casual leave that was mercifully granted at the behest of my Canadian boss, I journeyed home. Bespectacled with a pair of thick lenses coupled with a slightly wrinkled and expressionless visage, no one even dared talk to me. And I was elated for that. Recently, I had noticed…that I had started enjoying solitude more than anything. So far, so good.

The bride too was from my office, they said. Maybe…I reflected. I…not only me, was the same case with everyone...seldom talked. After all, what role has informal chats to do with the Goliath they call information technology, huh?

Marriage hardly did anything to rework the me in me. Just that in what was earlier a “single room” made way to become a “double room.” I shared space with her, never gave a thought to share my life. Before the time sun thought of rising to way after the time when even the moon and stars got tired of darkness, I “realized my dreams”...realized my life, in front of that white monitored devil with, very symbolically, white body and a dark screen. It seemed…no it was as if I had lost the ability...to laugh, to cry, to dream. Times were few and far in between when I and my wife met.

We were close...yet we lived poles apart. No complaints, no remorse….for either of us.

Now, I have stopped dreaming...about future. Those things come to fore only if you have certain goals to achieve, isn’t it? But whenever I do, I feel stranded. Like a little boy, trapped in a tunnel…with the false hope that at the end, there is going to be light. I remember the moment….when I was signing my offer letter, with a proud smile on my face and dreams of a prosperous future in my mind. I remember the enthusiasm, the spark in me….the resolve to earn money, however, whatever the means. After all, this is what I dreamt of from the time I was in high school.

My mind was raring to go. I was ready. To perform. For a profligate life.

I WAS ready...

Today...everything seems frozen. Me, my self, my mind, my character...I even have doubts as to the very existence of some of these. I am not able to laugh aloud at the dreams of a fifteen year old….at least if I could have done that, I would have justified my presence in this world as a human being.

Lying on my bed, this night...naah, my definition of nights once never used to stretch this far; five used to be very early morning for me as was for my mother a few decades ago, I am unable to sleep. Sleepless nights have become way too common nowadays. I looked to my bedside. I could gauge that even my wife was only half-asleep, the way she twisted and turned in her bed so frequently proved it. I thought of the time ahead….those faces that I came across daily but never really generated any emotion in me, flashed across through my mind…my wife, Canadian boss, canteen bhaiyya…. And the recent dreams, in which information technology as a gigantic satan, chased me with loud guffaws and outstretched hands.

I used to see demons in my dreams in childhood. But the presence of my mother at my bedside used to reassure me...that I was safe.

The alarm rang. Three days is what is left in the deadline given to me, to finish my allotted project, which is only just about half done. Three hours is what I slept...oops, no what I spent in bed, trying to sleep. Without a hint of fatigue, I removed my blanket and got out of bed.

Back to office. Back to the lifeless ethos I call life.