puts “Precog Debugging”

I remember this slight air of awkwardness and the fear of the daunting task of scaling up the brilliant work already done at Precog ensuing when I first met the Precog team for the meetup as a summer intern. Things didn’t make sense. There were technologies being used I had only ever heard of.

And though they left no stone unturned to make you feel at home and get you comfortable, it did take a couple of days for me to come to sense with all the nitty gritties of the huge system we were building. And then? Then I did feel at home.

I was contacted by Sameer Sir for the project to build the UI. I skyped with Mayank to know the current system that had already been built and which we were going to rebuild for better scaling incorporating many technologies into one product. The conversation that lasted about an hour in the midst of my exams left me astonished. Some astounding work had gone into it already and we had to top that.
We were to build an integrated enterprise version of twitdigest and multiosn system for online social media analysis.

The search portal would extract, track and visualize information from multiple online social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, etc) with many other interesting features being added to it.

Initially comprising of Sameer Sir, Mayank (Research Assistant), B.Tech undergrads at IIITD – Archit Taneja, Rohan Katyal and Megha Arora, we were joined by Nilaksh who had just completed his B.Tech at NSIT.

The summer saw us incorporating all the little features one by one. And with the help of the team that taught me bucket loads, it was a breeze.

As PK sir mentioned once, “We’ve built IIITD as a startup and we continue to do so”, I came to realise this the day I stepped into the college. The spirit is imbibed into every grain here. The work ethics, the culture – all of it at IIITD is a beautiful amalgamation bearing semblance to a startup. And a really successful startup at that.
After the ensuing first few days of adjusting to the new code and environment, the college felt homely. Pulling out all-nighters to yield to deadlines, late night dinners, scrounging across floors to find chilled drinking water without a bottle at hand, having all the resources at your disposal at all times – it just felt right.

And I can not stress more about the people who made it possible. Shoot a mail about a problem that you’re facing and you’re bound to get a solution to it by someone or the other instantaneously(most of the time Sameer Sir or Mayank being to the rescue :P). Everyone helped each other out. People put effort in debugging other’s messed up code to help them out. And that said a lot about the culture at Precog.

Would I defect to IIITD if given the chance? Well, not considering the fact that it is 10 minutes away from my house, sure as hell! (This is a slight hint for PK sir to think about a lateral entry programme :P)

These enthralling concoctions of all the right things put together rarely come your way.(Lesser when you send a mail regarding internship half expecting a reply from PK sir :P). And I’m glad they came in mine. Now, when I write this, I understand what Megha meant when she said “I’ve been Precog-ed“. I guess you’ve to experience it to know it.

“It’s the people that have made the system and not the code and you can see through it. You’ll see few hints of agitation, a few sprinkles of ebullition and bucket load of laughter in the code. But only if you look closely.”

Archit Srivastava, B.Tech 3rd Year, NIT Durgapur