I, literally, touched a computer for the first time when I was 15. We do not have computer subject in our school. I used to read magazines and study my sister's note from computer institute for computer basics. It was after school that I joined a computer institute to learn a formal course. I enrolled for Web Designing for some two months class. I wanted to take a computer subject in High School but I have no idea how to get one. I joined a high school for PCM (Physics-Chemistry-Math) as suggested by my brothers. I wanted to be an engineer like my brother.
I had my first computer after my school, how I get it?! let's not talk about it. Well I had a computer then. 14" CRT screen, Pentium 4 processor, 256 MB RAM and 80 GB Hard Disk. It was a very good configuration then. Since I joined a high school for PCM I do not have a very good use of the computer. I used it, then, to watch movies, listen to songs and play games. Sometimes I try to recall what I learned in the institute, but most of the time I don't.
After high school, on pursuit of engineering I tried for IOE (Institute of Engineering). I was not well prepared and couldn't get enrolled on second attempt too. Well, it was not usual that I was looking a newspaper at evening but one fine evening I was checking admission advertisements on Kantipur Daily and I found a advertisement of a reputed college about starting a new course related to computer. I was excited and rushed to the college the next day. They explained to me that the course has just been introduced by Tribhvan University a year ago (i. e. if I join, I would be the second batch student). The man there explained to me that it was not a engineering course, but the course content was not different from the engineering syllabus. I was so excited and get the entrance form immediately. Luckily I was selected for the Bachelor's of Computer Science and Information Technology (B.Sc. CSIT) on December 2008; to be specific it was on 2nd of December that I paid the admission fee, the day has special attachment with something else. I was the first to get admission and my roll number was 01/065 and it remained throughout the course duration.
This became my formal curriculum enrollment to a university for computer studies. I joined B.Sc. CSIT, in a government college. When we hear government college, we hear politics within. It was not easy to study in a government college, nobody cares about your studies. It's very difficult for a student to have a regular class. Sometimes we couldn't even get a class room. Political leaders interrupt the ongoing class to give their speech, to ask for vote during student union's election. It was my first time to get a close look at the politics. We even had a fight with administration to get new computer for our lab, because there were not enough computers in our lab. There were about 30-40 computers where only 10-12 were new ones rest of them were too old; Pentium II, 64 MB RAM and so on. It took some time, like a year, after the agreement and get new computers. Now, we have new computers, still we couldn't use them properly, because of our lovely country's electricity problem. Now again we fight for a generator, again it took some time, you know how long, to get it and finally we have a new generator and a year old computer. Still we couldn't use it properly, because this time we do not have diesel to feed the generator. The college regulatory (administration) system is so tedious that if you have to pay next months bill, you should have wrote a letter a month ago.
It was a difficult four year of my life, with a lot of experiences and good knowledge. After four years of studies, now its time to face the real world. While on the final year of the college I joined a software company for an internship. The place was fun because of the friends. We were some 5-6 guys from the same college there for internship. We started to work for the company few months later; after completion of our internship, working professionally there I was surprised knowing that what you studied back there in college about the system development do not implement in the real life system development. Back in college we studied that there require many specialist to develop a system, but in real world where I worked, there were only one, sometimes two, people working for a whole system development and designing too. With a lack of vision and improper management, work couldn't continue and the company collapsed after few months. I learned a good lesson working there; how to manage a work and handle the problem, most importantly; how to develop a system properly.
After the fall of the company, I've been searching for many other options. I'd even thought to quit programming; I was not good at it. I do not know how I've been doing it for a year. I've keen interest in designing rather than development, therefore I've also searched for the designing option. In the mean time I'd applied for a master's degree abroad. It took a while for the enrollment, not sure for it though. So, I have some more time to think about my career again; should I quit programming that I learned for a year or start a fresh new. It was not only my problem, many students like me faced this problem. We had a mandatory Internship, it took a while to determine, what to do during internship program? Most of us choose programming, like I did. Many continue the field while many fail to continue.
I usually search for the vacancy posts; I am surprised to live in a country where there are vacancy announcement for a hardware and networking technician with database knowledge in Oracle and 3-4 years of experience in Linux and the job title is IT Technician and interesting thing is, they are reputed Banks. Many government post require a Engineering degree, not B.Sc. CSIT or B.Cs. (Bachelor of Computer Science) or other computer courses to apply. How and who would explain them that our syllabus and Engineering syllabus is not different. The requirements for the post can be well fulfilled by us, and we are not engineers.
We still have a lot more to explain people that a computer can do a lot more that just type in a word sheet and print it. A great scientist of Nepal said many years ago that "Nepal is a virgin land for technology", with a lot of development done and a lot more yet to be done, Nepal is yet a virgin land for technology. People carry a smart phone in their pocket but still do not know about its processor and RAM. They buy most expensive phones just to play games, and yet they don't know the system requirement for an app to run in their phone. I've even seen people with iPhone and they do not know how to sync music from their PC. I'm not complaining about their knowledge, I am sorry for them that they do not have chance to learn these things, but we do.
Now-a-days there is computer subject since the primary level of the school, the future seems very bright. We'd been in an awkward generation, our parents have no idea how to play video on youtube and kids in school have better smartphone than you have. This is not the generation gap, this is era of Technology.
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