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The Department of
Computer Science and Engineering
History |
Coming soon... (
what an oxymoron !) |
Computer Science for Dummies |
Yes, we are the latest Engineering discipline, a result of human
advancement reaching its peak. There have been others before us, but we just are the
crowning glory of civilization, and Yes we are proud of it Never before has mankind
marvelled at the things computers can do & we the brains behind it all. There
may be others who may take credit for our reaching the peak & yes we do give them full
credit, as much as a good helping hand deserves.
The Human body has muscles, arteries, bones which roughly correspond to the various
faculties in Engineering, but the brain ( not the meat, but a live thinking brain ) is the
one that runs it all. How we all know that.
For those of you who still haven't comprehended the importance of Computer Science
Engineers let me give you the gist of it all - We run the show.
The World, as we know in the West, is run by Computers. We do have a lot of bugs,
but with the whole lot of stupid programmers coming out of 'Computer Institutes' & in
from 'Other Disciplines' - What can you expect ! I may sound a bit harsh here, but with
the blame being put on the Programmer community as general, we need to make a distinction
between the men & the 'well, we are trying to be's'. We didn't put Four years ( or
plus ) of effort into getting a degree to see instant concoctions try their hand at the
keyboard, being more of typists than programmers, & give us a bad name. We have a lot
of theory behind us and that is what matters in the long run.
The current increase in the standard of living & the improvements in the facilities
available alongwith the salary boom has to be solely attributed to our success. It is just
that the top management at most places is from the 'old school' who in addition to being
ignorant about computers feel intimidated by them, otherwise the world would have been a
much better place to live in.
'Give us a free hand and we will give you a better world' -
a great man ( identity withheld on request ) once said that, but when will the world
listen. There is no need to feel intimidated, let us help you to let go of the past & lead
you into the future. The Industrial Revolution was a good thing, but that is history now,
leave it to the historians, you are technical people, lets get on with the Computer
Revolution. |
Recollections / Memoirs - Whatever
Editor's Choice
The Department is a relatively new department in the College.
It has produced some really good students over the years. My earliest recollections are
the Dual floppy drive DCM-Tandy computers, that used the advanced 8088 microprocessors.
The Unix system ( A Wipro 386 - much bigger than its name ) was present, but we hardly got
to see it in action. The system was a classic example of the state of affairs in the
Computer lab. 'Booting floppys' were a premium resource in those days ( 5¼ obviously )
The first experience with the lab was a 'Do-It-Yourself' one, from turning the equipment
on, to figuring out the mysteries that lay within. The compilers came in a floppy &
the programs we wrote went out in one, constant switching between floppies was probably
the only bottleneck in the speedy processing powers of those babies.
We were assigned floppies to store our work in, with a comprehensive database tracking the
assignment of numbers to students on a paper log book. Copyright & other laws could
not be enforced then due to the inherent unsecure nature of the storage medium, Malice
wasn't rife those days, but viruses were ( they had a permanent abode in all the storage
media, so they never really bothered us ). The lab was a repository of all kinds of
viruses, lending credence to the generous nature of the institution. The lab time
available was adequate, especially if you don't intend to be career oriented.
Then came the PC-XT's, what a revolution, some of them could even boot on power on
!. They had a huge hard disk capacity of 10-20 MB Wow !. We could now save our work on the
disk. The 'Booting floppies' hadn't gone away, not yet. There were some XT's that still
could not boot up on power up. ( Any ideas as to Why ? I won't write the details here )
The progress didnt stop here. While the Computer world was moving ahead in leaps &
bounds, Well Ah ! we had over moments of crawling. We got PC-AT's after that and 386's and
486's. The number of individual Unix sytems also grew & we were not interested in Mr.
Goliath anymore. The line printer was in commission some time, but the dot matrix's (
matrices ? ) were fine by us. Print-Out paper would follow the pattern of the moon -
waxing & waning , but we did fine. What is life without some hardship anyway ?
No mention of the Computer Science department will be complete without the ( BRRrrr )
mention of the Hardware lab. A terror, analogous to the Gabbar Singh for little kids, for
the CS&E guys. The fear for this lab could be partly attributed to the equipment, but
mostly it was our combined bad luck, I guess.
On the brighter side
We passed out with a degree in our hands ( mail ) & a dream in our hearts, all set to
counter the challenges that lay ahead. They all seem like peanuts compared to what we went
through at NIE.
All in all, we know we always love the days we had there
Apurv S.R. Anand's Contribution
(I was in the Golden Jubilee batch) I remember when I had my first programming lab in
Basic and Fortran.We were made to sit at some really antiquated machines (even by Indian
standards!).Some of us had to share terminals as there werent' enough to go around. That
was the bottom of the pit for all of us. Luckily by third year we got some really zany
machines with ultra-fundo monitors. We went around boasting aboutit for about one or two
semesters to all and sundry. The last two years were really cool and we had great fun in
labs and classes. The teachers were extremely supportive of all our activities, and I
think we have come away genuinely better people from our four (maybe more) years in NIE
Sheshagiri Mohan Shenoy's Contribution:
It was in 1992 when i first visited CS lab and by then the dept had acquired a few ATs
(386s i guess) and people used to fight to get one of them for we were scared to use the
Unix terminals (especially vi !!!). The teachers were good in what they taught. Guru was
the best of the lot (i didn't get a chance to attend HOD's lecture though)To be very
frank, even with those machines, we ended up doing array additiion, string manipulation in
BASIC and FORTRAN (matrix multiplication was considered to be the fundu job!!). I hope
things have improved now !!
Mahesh.R
Recollections: How I can forget the 4 golden years in my life. That too in the CS
department. whenwe joined the college How the computer sc department and the campus.All
our credit goesto OUR HOD(Dr.Shivakumar) and the management. I still recall theincidents
whenwe were in 6th semester, the computer equipments were robbed butwithing nextsemester
everthing was restored. Hats off to them. I really thank allthe lecturersfor their
contribution. I really loved those four years
Rohit Srivastava
Recollections: I was part of the third batch that graduated with adegree in C.S from
N.I.E.In those days we had to submit printouts of the results of our programsfor the
exercises that were assigned to us as part of the C.S. Lab (instead ofsubmitting our
programs that a grader would run and check). In the beginning we had less than 10
computers to work with (remember that little roomon the3rd floor :-)). Anyway, i remember
students often making photocopies ofthe printer(dot matrix of course) generated output
from other studentsbecause theydid not get computer time to work, or the power outage
prevented themfrom workingor there just wasn't enough printer paper to print results on!
Iremember goingout to the "xerox" copy shop down the road and buying A-4 size
paper sothatwe could print the results of our programs and submit them. This problem
eventuallygot solved when more funds were allocated to the department.I can't help but
chuckle to myself when i remember those days. We (andthe department_have come a long way.
Srikanth Murthi
Recollections: Hi I was in the Golden Jubilee batch..(if i was stillthere it would have
taken another golden jubilee for me to get out of there..)
I will never forget the day Amit, Sidd, and myself (there weremore eight to be
exact..)running into G.S.S (Maths HOD) in the secondsem..(actually we were eight of us
running after NAG, and GSS with hisone eye could see only four and took us four to the
princy , the otherfour quitely escaped..)and he almost court marshalled us..i still keep
telling my pals here about that..NIE was fun..i hardly used to come to college but when i
came i enjoyed it and so did the rest of theclass..another thing i will never forget is
one day myself and Shanks (Shankar) went in to RL (Royal Legacy) early in the morning
around 0900hrs and came to class sloshed after having two pitchers(I had mostof them mind
u..shanks will agree on that) and i was singing Hotel Calafornina for Iris..deepak was
playing drums on the desk...i don'tthink i will be abl!!e to repeat that now..well now
life has changed and so have i..i am now a Microsoft Certified Proff.working for Microsoft
here in Dubai...well settled and having those memories of NIE..(My def. of NIE-> Not
Into Engineering)..anyone who rpart of the above two incidents may pls send their comments
tostreak@emirates.net.ae i will update u on more as i get time..
till then chhers..
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