http://bradsemp.com/blog/2010/05/21/what-is-the-purpose-of-your-actions/

Future depends on past, if we look back 10 years; computer were sluggish, and networks slow. Communication around the world was bad. Fast forward to today’s world, we are connected to everyone, all the time. The way technology is emerging, lets imagine 20 years down the line. Where people will have high computing and well connected devices in everyones pocket. Business will happen at speed of light. Other scenario is economic advantage, as salaries rise in east and match with west. Monetary saving might not remain as main criteria of outsourcing.

(Book: ‘Business at Speed of Thought’ by Bill Gates)

What would that mean for programming jobs? Until now, we were following traditional model of software development, with legacy tools and application. They are quite labour intensive. For example, building website 10 years back was arduous, which drastically different now. Why? Plain reason, because earlier computing models were based on slow networks and slow computers, Industry was rather immature. So it was easy and cheaper to ship the redundant programming/customization jobs to India, for example, but it won’t be the case for long. Software Engineering is evolving as profession, it will gradually eliminate repetitive tasks. (Book: ‘The World is flat’)

What’s the future?: Future is in cloud computing, where Software and solutions will be delivered as a service not as product. Now that changes the economics a bit for companies, where few high quality programmers can produce product for mass markets. And as Software Engineering matures, it will be less labour intensive. (Which until now remains a labour intensive industry). Cloud computing will eventually bypass traditional IT systems and Software development.

Will all jobs to go India? I doubt it, because: First: The price gap, on labour between west and east in 10-20 years will disappear or will be marginal, and secondly they will have their own market to cater for. Example: In United states, companies have stopped outsourcing  few of their jobs, because its no longer giving them cost benefit.

Read: About Growth of Indian middle class, American becoming frugal and Salaries in China: Winning the talent war in China and Future of Global Economic System

What it might mean for us, as Software developers? We might have to compete globally for jobs, and it will be survival of the fittest. You might know that already, with current global economic crisis, things are changing fast.

To summarize: It will be quite different economic model in 20 years, and as programmer we might need to specialize very specifically in our business domain and programming skills. High quality jobs will find the best people and vice versa, without physical boundaries.

It’s a debatable topic, please let me know your opinion.

1. Identifying true north: It is one of the biggest mental clarity exercise. This and visualization that you have lived your life, and you are 90+ and on death bed. What kind of people would you like around. What you like to be your obituary? What you like to be remembered for? We must take death as positive, not negative. Its the ultimate truth, and we shouldn’t be scared away from fact. There is a difference between awareness and realization. Once we start counting down, the most important priorities in our lives appear. All unimportant things disappear. Vision will start clearing up.
2. Understanding and differentiating between true limitations and mental limitation: Once vision is cleared and most important thing envisioned, next step would be to identify what is limiting us to reach our north star. As per my experience, many of limitations are self made. To describe that, we are total sum of experiences, self awareness, knowledge and cultural exposure. All these are set of beliefs, some of which have valid reasoning, and some of them don’t. Exercise for that would be list all of our beliefs, how trivial or major it may sound. All those characteristics, which define who you are behind your skin. Once you have your characteristics listed, you’ll identify how most of beliefs are just mental limitations. Conditioning over period of all of your life. Objective now is to get rid of all self imposed limitations.
3. Mental re-run of journey so far: Once we have our north star and limitations identified, we must re-run our critical moments of lives. We should visualize situation as third person, how and why we reacted in particular situation. As mentioned, we are sum of our experiences, chances are high we will make decision on those experiences. If reasoning behind that judgment was flawed, most likely that experience will not be pleasant. We shouldn’t kill the messenger here, that think experience in itself is good, because it’s giving a chance for self improvement. It will allow us to contemplate about beliefs. Once that belief is worked on, decisions in future will be smoother and better. Belief like judgment shouldn’t be biased, it should be free of all the clutter and prejudices.
4. List of possibilities out there: So far exercises, were internal. Now we know ourselves better, we should look outside. What it has to offer? How can we make it a better place? How can we contribute to world, shared among all of us. We all contribute in each others life, knowingly or unknowingly. More we are aware how our smallest of action affect other people (for better or worse) our contribution can be improved instantly. Now we must list all possibilities options, you’ll be surprised how many choices you have. Once you have all the choices, comparing with our true north star, our actual limitations, our experiences, beliefs; you should be able to make the best decision suitable not only to you, but society at large.
5. Putting it all together: It won’t all come in a day or week. Critical self contemplation is one of most difficult things. Iterate the process over and again, until it runs like a finely tuned engine.

“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years” – Abraham Lincoln

1. Choosing Domain name: You would need to find a domain name, which should suitably identify your initiative. It should ideally put across the point in a word. Then choose proper extension .com, .org classifies the nature of website.
2. Finding Domain Name Seller and hosting: There are several players out there, who claim to be providing the cheapest domain name and hosting plans, but be aware of *’s and small prints. There are plenty of catches to it. As per my research end of the day, they have same price. Bigger players tend to throw extra free features, which make them better deal. For example, I’ve hosted with www.godaddy.com, which throws in two months of basic hosting, couple of softwares and features.
3. Which hosting plan to choose: I wanted to build my website on Ruby on Rail, so I bought ‘deluxe hosting plan’, which in advertisement supports Ruby on Rail and MySQL database. Later when I was trying to upload my website, I discovered its a Linux Web based hosting and it doesn’t supports ruby-on-rails. When I contacted customer support, I was asked to buy Only Linux based hosting, again.  My recommendation would be to thoroughly look through what exactly do you want, and buy hosting plan accordingly.

I think, its better to buy domain name and hosting services from the one single provider, it may make life little easier and better deal of course.

I will later update blog with details of best way of building websites.