I share a closer bond and have more stories to share about my eNACH colleagues. For obvious reasons of having worked with them so much! You already met Abhishek, it's time you meet one more character - Abhijeet.
As you already know, I want to recount the few stories I can remember!
REBASING A BRANCH
I don’t rebase branches because it's needlessly complicated. I just create a new branch! If there was something Suri found complicated – It was rebasing a branch.
Unfortunately for me, creating a new branch was not the best option. Because that meant re-doing all the work that was already done in eNACH before I had to take it up.
After googling and watching videos on rebasing, when I had given up on rebasing months old code, I reached out to Abhijeet for help! It was one of my first interactions with him.
I had shared my screen and Abhijeet was walking me through the rebasing process, trying to be as simple as he could as he guided me. But after an hour we both gave up. I was drained out after such a long tech session, and he was tired of experimenting with control in my hand. It became obvious, if we tried to rebase the entire code on my screen share, we would take days.
So, we changed our approach!
Abhijeet – Main rebase karta hoon, tum dekho!
After around 1.5 hours on call, we got stuck at something! At that point we decided to call it a day.
He offered to try rebasing it after that point and I offered to redo the code if rebasing failed.
This was a glimpse of how our future interactions were going to be! Long and patience testing! It was my first test of patience though Abhijeet looked like a seasoned player in patience!
He rebased it by the next day and saved me the trouble of redoing the code. So, our discussions would be long, patience testing and mostly fruitful. -:D
Amid existing code rebases, building code, getting to know API jargons and working with these two amazing people – Abhijeet and Abhishek, work adventures started for me.
With complete confidence in my situation of being in the middle of nowhere, and complete confidence in Abhishek and Abhijeet to get us through.
Let me drift a little away from my eNACH story for a while to something lighter.
INSTALLATION & LOGIN ISSUES
Many times the local APKs and apps would not get installed on my phone. To be fair to myself, it wasn’t my fault most of the time. Our app’s auth token was broken or sometimes it just started acting up. It took me some time to get used to its tantrums and ways to persuade it to work.
No prizes for guesses who helped me understand these installation issues. Abhijeet – of course.. And how we used to debug– Vysor! This is one of the cool things we did in virtual debugging, projecting our phone screen on a laptop for debugging.
At the end of every such debugging session, Abhijeet would say- next time I won't help you with these installation issues. And he would never keep his word :D
THE MOST INTERESTING SESSION
We had many debugging sessions while developing and testing eNACH. This most memorable one is when we were trying to find where we had unknowingly mocked the response in our code.
Abhishek was on leave so it was just the two of us. We spent our entire Friday trying to debug one issue. Then came the weekend. I spent it seeing code in my dreams and imagining situations where I could have created a bug. Only to wake up and realise I was going mad.
Then came Monday. Abhishek was back from his leave. And now, three of us sat down again, trying to find where we had mocked our response without knowing! This time after half an hour of fresh perspective from Abhishek, we were able to prove against our own intuition ki hamara code sahi hai.. Aur ICICI ki API faulty.. (See, it is hard to believe that a live API that is used by many companies is faulty!)
So, we had spent days debugging an inexistent issue! And to impress upon the reader our situation, I had even started to lose my mind over it!
Both me and Abhijeet were 200% confident ki humne hi koi jhol kiya hai! Ye tha humaara confidence humaare likhe huye code mein -:p. And we were surprised to learn ki humaara code ekdum mast hai!
By God.. Phir to jo confidence aaya hai.. Gazab!
On later thoughts, it was the best Monday. Abhishek saved me from nightmares after that day.
And in the previous two days, Abhijeet had taught me to navigate unknown territory. That is, navigate through a humongous codebase that I had neither written nor understood, but had to debug! and make some sense out of it if not full!
TESTING PHASE
This was easier. And comparatively much safer for my fragile sanity :p!
I used to test a total of 5-10 loan applications on a daily basis. Creating new loans and moving them through the entire process of registering a mandate! This was my job for a week!
Only to talk to these guys a few days later! Where they would tell me hacks for smarter testing. So smart that they could reduce my testing effort by one-tenth!
Me- Pehle nahi bata sakte the!
Abhijeet & Abhishek- Humein kaise pata tum kya kaise kar rahi ho!
And I would just knit my eyebrows - in sadness and happiness. Sad that I had wasted so much of my energy in work that could be done in a simpler way and happy ki chalo aage se to I will be at a better place. And I would console myself telling myself knowing that – had I not done it my tedious way, their new approach wouldn’t have felt so much like rain in the desert!
A BIGGER CHALLENGE STILL
Mocked requests test karna to ek challenge tha because there was no mocking -:p.. But usse bhi difficult hota hai knowing when Abhijeet is mocking me. After everything is done, he'll say.. Arre main mazaak kar raha tha! Tum serious ho gayi kya?
As if I was already not confused enough :p
Ye online baat karne ka thoda rehta hai.. Ek baar saamne aane do.. I'll tell him how to play pranks and act smart.. -:p
In our work, we had defined parts we had to take care of. And we would always say- Maine apna kar diya hai ab tum apna dekho! :D
And we tried to hold onto our pieces as much as we could! But some things – That famous ICICI call to show them the bug in their API- that week Abhishek was on vacation and the part that we had to show ICICI wasn’t per se Abhijeet’s. Although I knew the issue inside out, I was nervous if some question came up about some part I didn't know!
That day Abhishek tried to attend the call from the airport while he was on vacation and Abhijeet attended it on a very short notice on my request.
They didn’t abandon me when I needed them.. Even if it was for moral support rather than engg support -:p
JUST THOSE LAST MINUTE THINGS
We had to release eNACH to Avanti for testing the next day. And there were some pieces that had come up for testing just like that! Biometric authentication and something in populating a bank!
Uss din to humne ek din mein itni testing ki hai, jitni hum ek hafte mein bhi nahi karte the! And that too on a Friday. Even we were surprised at our efficiency and getting the work done abilities.
Here is where I'll drop the eNACH references and come to the person this piece is about!
Abhijeet is a Software Engineer at Indihood. What I admire about him the most – is his desire to do it himself and experiment. Even if he doesn't know how to do something as such, he loves to explore it. Knowing that it might take him hours to DIY compared to asking someone who will explain it in a few minutes.
His enthusiasm is contagious – It shows in his voice. Mostly I am interested in understanding the tech stuff even if it is not related directly to my piece – and he would be more than happy to explain–
Ruko, main ye bhi samjhaata hoon.
Sometimes he would be eating and explaining side by side. One other time we were trying to debug some issue with phone number format while he was travelling!
Travelling se yaad aaya, I am even amazed by his capacity to travel! Nagpur-Bangalore aise up down karta hai ye banda jaise ghar se ghar se paas waala grocery store.
Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayaal aata hai– Abhijeet nahi hota , to kya hota mera.. Kya hi hota!
Meri apps install nahi hoti –
code navigate karna thoda aur mushkil hota –
zindagi mein thodi aur aafatein hoti –
ek beizati maarne waala dost kam hota –
eNACH mujhe thoda aur nachaata –
aur ye Character #7 koi aur hota -:p :D
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