Pakzilla » COMSATS Institute

Non CS skills every CS graduate or programmer must have

Tahir Akram — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 11:27:49 +0000

CS graduates come up with superb knowledge of computer, networks and other IT skills. If they are programmer they write sharp logic and design and code software well. These skills helps them to advancing them in their technical career. But being a technical practitioner a CS junkie should know some non-CS skills and abilities. Because in job they have to communicate and interact with many other people who don’t the CS background. And these skills can help them in more advance positions.

So to reach that level one should know these skills to prove better in other areas too. I consider following skills that a programmer or a CS graduate must have. You can add your comments to enhance this article*.

1. Business communication

A fresh CS graduate must have a very good verbal and writing skills. To present well his idea to managers. He should know the art to put things on white board what he has in his mind. I found CS people are lacking very much in it.

2. Inter-personal skills

It can be merged with above. But being better in inter-personally means to be a good listener, behaving effectively on different situations. Convincing power compliance with logical arguments. Interacting well with different niche of people like client, colleagues and managers.

3. Knowledge of business, economics & international affairs

For me this is the thing which put leadership in computer science people. When they started thinking globally. They know whats going in international and local markets. What are the causes of global economic recession. They know what are the means to earn money if they start their own business. How they can market their ideas. Thinking in this way cause them to be entrepreneurs. And hence they start taking risks and giving jobs rather waiting for a job in a cube.

* Note: My this post is a response to the research that Mr. Nadeem Ghafoor from COMSATS IIT is doing on “Non-CS Aspects of Undergrad CS Education in Pakistan“.

My participation in ComSPEC’09

Tahir Akram — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:26:01 +0000

Yesterday I participated in ComSPEC’09 and presented my final year project with my group member Aisf Shehzad. This event was organized by computer science department of CIIT Lahore. My project was Open Source Healthcare Management System which we guys developed as our degree project under supervision of Nadeem Ghafoor with the intention to make it in production for public sector hospitals in Pakistan. It was I think a month ago when I was told about this event by my friend to make the project ready for it. So it was an activity in off office hours, I keep myself involved in fixing bugs and usability issues.

It was great response by students and other participants on COS-HMS. They appreciate our efforts discussed about the design and architecture. By this event I got chance to meet with my teachers especially Muhammad Aman Ullah, Muhammad Emran, Muhammad Farooq i Azam & Nadeem Ghafoor (COS-HMS adviser) and other alumni members. This is even was a great effort to bridge students between those guys who are in school and those who are graduated and working in the industry or pursuing their higher education. Student who came to us were full of questions that how the market is going on and how students of CIIT are rated.

And then we got the judges for evaluation process. These three people one from MCB Bank and two from ITS evaluated our system by seeing working application and asking questions about design, domain & standards. There were seven to eight projects were there for evaluation, otherwise if categories were made like embedded systems, industrial automation, MIS etc. I was sure to have rated my project first in MIS. Following is the application tour presented at exhibition.

Golden memories of summers

Tahir Akram — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:10:06 +0000

After a long time I am back on my blog. There were a lot of thoughts that were trailing in my mind and I was thinking to write here but I can’t. It is first post of its nature, as I didn’t write on my thoughts and my ideas just write about coding issues or post some interesting industry news.

All right, let’s come to the point. O yes, Summers are coming; temperature is increasing, I perspired while approaching my office. I don’t like summers at all but there are a lot of things in my life that are attached with it. Whenever I think about going in warm atmosphere, ultimately it reminds me some of my active or you can say defining times of my life. I remind my university exams in summer when I can’t able to solve all questions. I can remember sitting in a long lecture class and used to doze and just seeing the instructor doing something on white board. The time was great.

Summers also remember me my end of sixth semester when I start my final year project (with my friends Asif Shehzad, Adnan Saleem and Mian Rashid). We were appointed in a lab by our project supervisor Mr. Nadeem Ghafoor Chaudhary, we started our work in summer vacations and we worked very happily on our FYP in a very tight environment (without ACs). While working in the end days of my project in the month of July 2006 I applied for a job and got interview call. How exciting it looks to get the call of first job of your career. My friend Adnan (a.k.a Aden) dropped me at interview place. The interview could be said pretty well.

I got the opportunity to work with this small start-up company. I was second hire in their technical resource pool. As a fresh company I got the opportunity to work on different modules of software. The learning was great. But there is always a room for stepping higher. Another summer came and I switch my job for my current one.

I don’t know in these coming summers what I am going to do in my life, so that I can remind it in the summers of next year. The days are getting long, there are more awakened hours to do work, sorry for office only nine hours, let’s balance. I think in these summers I am going to do good investment on myself. I am optimistic and hope I will full fill my claim.