[Techie Tuesdays] Pavan Kumar - Python aficionado and CTO MineWhat
![[Techie Tuesdays] Pavan Kumar - Python aficionado and CTO MineWhat](https://images.yourstory.com/cs/wordpress/2013/05/pavan.jpg?mode=fit&crop=faces&ar=16%3A9&format=auto&w=1920&q=75)
I think the benefits of studying in a good engineering college lies in the quality of the peer group that you’re studying with. Yes, the teachers are better and so is the infrastructure and the academic support system but the real development of a college student is in those friends who
inspire and motivate you to push yourself to the next level.Today’s Techie Tuesday has about 13 years of experience in the software industry and has worked in companies of varying scales. He’s now the co-founder of Bangalore based startup, MineWhat. Despite being a senior statesman in the software industry, in his own words, he codes day in and day out.
Meet Python aficionado Pavan Kumar, Co-founder and CTO of Bangalore based startup, MineWhat.
The importance of a good graduate school
Pavan is a graduate of the prestigious College of Engineering, Guindy, batch of the year 2000. “Back then, getting into a good engineering college in a CS or ECE degree was the singular aim of everyone finishing school. Most guys used to make this choice blindly. Thankfully, I knew what I was getting into. I used to go to a weekend course which taught BASIC and I was lucky enough to have access to a computer at home when I was 10th standard,” says Pavan.
Pavan credits a lot of his development as a coder to his college and his peer group. He says, “We had a 24 hours computer center which I think most colleges have today. Between my coursemates, we used to have regular competition on coding. We used to pull out all nighters trying to build the same thing, and out doing the other person in things like how fast the code executes or who’s algorithm was more efficient.” Apart from this, Pavan said that they read about computer technology very extensively.
After his college, Pavan worked at organizations like Lucent Technologies, Philips and Motorola before starting up in 2010.
Being a programming polyglot and the love for python
Pavan’s professional career coincides with a period of time in the software industry that has seen the most amount of change. This is evident in the number of technologies that Pavan has worked on. He says, “I started my career working on VC++ and BASIC. Today I’m working on completely different things like Scala and Cassandra and similar technologies.”
He believes that there is a need for coders to be polyglots. Pavan says, “I think one shouldn’t be restricted by a language to solve a problem. It is important to find which technology is most efficient to solve the problem and use that.”
However, not everyone is a programming polyglot. It’s difficult. He says, “If you see, all languages follow a pattern and you can classify them as structural, asynchronous programming languages and so on. After that the only difference between one language to another is the syntax.”
Then why aren’t there enough of them? Pavan says, “I think a lot of people don’t try hard enough. You need to push yourself out of your comfort zone to try out other languages and not give up easily.”
Pavan says that languages have become less verbose over time. He says, “What used to be 100 lines of code in C can be done in 15 lines using Python. In fact, I love Python because it’s almost like dumping my ideas on the computer and it understands what’s running in my head.”
Advice on entrepreneurship and technology
Pavan believes that entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. He says, “Many people will tell you that entrepreneurship must happen to you, but I think it needs to be well thought out. You need to see if this is what you want to be. If it’s a rushed decision, the first sign of trouble or difficulty will scare you away.” MineWhat is Pavan’s third startup, after Mobiremind Solutions and 3Forz and he says that the journey hasn’t been easy.
Before signing off, his advice to coders was -- “Know your basics and try out new things. Today avenues to showcase your talent is a lot more. Make a github profile and show what you can do, rather than saying that you can code.”