What's in a name?

The story begins in the Cognizant Academy training hall at Bangalore, where I, a fresher then (in late 2003), was being trained on Java by Tarun Elankath. Tarun ate, drank and talked Java. He has been one of my idols ever since I met him, although he left Cognizant some time after teaching us. He has his own blog here (click at your own risk): jroller.com/page/lenkite. Anyway… he drilled Java into our brains for 4 days at a stretch, leaving us with a great softwarocomplexophobia towards programming in general and Java in particular. I didn’t understand much Java then, but I did get to know it was incredibly complex behind the scenes. That’s when I wrote a humerous article on how it might be to interview such a hardcore techie.

By great good fortune, after many months of joining CTS I met yet another such radiant personality in one of my projects; Kenny Kuriakose. Kenny was born with a Java compiler CD in his mouth. He could build Enterprise Software before he learnt how to tie his shoelaces and passed the Sun Business and Enterprise Architecture Certification exams before joining kindergarten. One day I just ‘Kenny’-ised my article on Tarun and mailed it to his batchmates. The article has been doing so many rounds in people’s inboxes since then that I thought I should give it a permanent place on the net.

Kenny has a characteristic way of speaking that really endears him to people, making heavy statements while holding up his hand to show the palm, as if he were a Java Guru blessing all his listeners with coding abilities. Maybe people who haven’t met this character won’t enjoy this article, because many statements here are typical of Kenny’s way of speech and make sense only when imagined to be said by him.

Stautory warning: This is a completely unreadable article. Knowledge of Object Oriented Programming is necessary to tolerate the article. No characters in this story are fictious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely intentional.

(The article has been slightly abridged to remove statements that might otherwise have given the lawyers of CTS an opportunity to earn extra money)

‘Literally’ yours,
-Parag

What's in a name?

Kenny, a young and prospective 'Language Developer' gently pushed open the door of the interview room. With a very confident smile, he peered inside and said, “Hello sir, may I come in?”

Subeer Bakshi, an experienced, resourceful human in the human resources dept. of CTS was quite ready to scare the guts out of another candidate. “Hello,” he said, “Please do come in.” Kenny merely said, “Thanks.” and softly entered the room with a thousand ideas running in his mind. Subeer Bakshi indicated a chair, “Please, have a seat.” Kenny responded heartily, “Thank you very much.” and sat down, swinging a giant bag of books over the table.

Wanting to get familiar with the new face, Subeer asked Kenny, “So... what is your name?”

Greatly happy at being asked a question, Kenny held up his forefinger and said, “Aaa… That’s actually a very interesting question. My name belongs to the Domain Namespace ‘Kuriakose’. My name, which is an Abstraction containing three parts, Uniquely identifies me as a Leaf Node in my ancestral Hierarchy. I mean, aaa… the Keyword ‘Kenny’, which is the first part of my name, is the Class Identifier which when Passed by Reference to the second and third parts of my name, uniquely identifies me. ‘Kenny’ is also a Root Directory, in the sense that it does not Inherit any Attributes from any other Namespace. The second part of my name, ‘Joe’, is a Static keyword that Extends my Parent Class. I hope you are able to Compile what I am telling you.

The third part of my name, viz. aaa… ‘Kuriakose’, is the most interesting part. Although it is an Extension of my Namespace, it is a very good example for Multiple, Multilevel Inheritance. You know, among all my Parental Nodes, exactly half were instances of Male Class and the other half were Objects of Female Type! Aaa… That’s actually the best thing about my name! The third part of my name is also a Constructor that Instantiated and Initialized my name as soon as I was born until a formal Declaration was done at the naming ceremony.”

Subeer Bakshi appeared to have been hit by a whirlwind. He collected himself and managed to cut Kenny out; “Okay, okay. Sorry for asking that question. Can I continue with my next question?”

The prospective candidate was not displaced so easily. The forefinger had now been replaced with the entire palm. “Yes of course, but first aaa… let’s understand the simple fundas properly. ‘Kenny Joe Kuriakose’ is an excellent example for Encapsulation. You must be knowing about Encapsulation, right? Access Control mechanisms? Private, Public…blah blah blah blah. The three parts of my name have Access Specifiers as Private, Protected and Public, respectively. I hope you are not getting aaa… bored. Am I going too slow?"

Subeer was stumped at this question. Before he could utter a word, Kenny, the Persistent one continued, "So as I was telling you, ‘Kenny Joe Kuriakose’ is a particular instance of the Template Class Name. And since my name represents me, who am an object, it is Simple, Object Oriented, and Architecture - Neutral. The strange thing about my aaa… name is that although it does not return any Arguments, it still cannot be declared Void! You can call me ‘K. J. Kuriakose’, or ‘K. J. Kenny’, which are different Function Calls that generate the same Result. So aaa… Polymorphism is a built-in feature of my name. That’s why my name is actually quite famous; in fact, ever since I graduated from HKBK college, it has become better known as Hai Kenny Bye Kenny college. Now let me tell you about the Security features of my name.”

Subeer Bakshi was, by this time, actually down on his knees, desperately crying, “Stop! Stop! It is more than evident that you think in Java. I promise you that you shall be selected into the company, but for James Gosling’s sake, stop!” Kenny was startled at his naivety, and said, “But… but you were going to ask me some question, no?”

His face becoming red at the very thought of asking another question, Subeer lamented, “Am I mad? I tell you, you are already selected!”

Kenny shrugged his shoulders, got up from his seat, slung his bag of books over his shoulder and walked towards the door, pleased at the thought of enlightening another ignorant soul. But his explanation was still somehow incomplete. As he opened the door to go out, he could not contain himself. He turned around to his now pale-faced interviewer, and said with a most earnest face, not to mention the forefinger, “Speaking of my name, you may like to visit my personal website: www.mynameiskennyjoekuriakoseandiknowjavarealgood.com. Aaa… It has a beautiful left-nav (Kenny was involved in building the left-nav of our project website and was very passionate about it). It also has a games section where you can play interesting games, such as cursing people by moving the cursor over them. There is also a dating section where you can search partners based on their level of SUN certification.”


(As a matter of fact, Kenny is one of the sweetest people I've ever met, and I'm proud of his friendship.)