With the passage of time technology bloggers from Pakistan have made quite a name in the blogosphere across the globe. Their expertise in the subject matter and their blog reviews on the latest product releases equals them with their international contemporaries.  Tea Break’s featured blogger for this month, is a professional technology blogger who is an inspiration for many because of his dedication and professionalism.

 

Name: Umair Khan Jadoon (aka Fish)

Blog: Programmer Fish

Claim to Fame: The seamless machee (fish) in the Pakistani blogosphere

 

1.      Tell us something about yourself and how did you indulge in the habit of blogging?

I am a Computer Science Student at Bahria University Karachi. I am a technology writer and a web developer. I wrote my first program in GW Basic while doing a computer course when I was 12 years old. All this started back when I joined Operation Badar( a non-profit educational movement) when it was all the rage about Java and Object Oriented programming. I was 14 year old at that time and within 1 year I developed skills of Server Side Web component development in Java.

I and my long time friend Salman Ul Haq (who also joined OB for learning Java programming and is also Programmer Fish’s co founder) started doing very small freelance projects and other web development experiments exploiting our Java skills. These were our geek years.  I joined Bahria Univesity and found that Imran Hussain and Taimur Asad are my classmates; none of us were doing professional blogging at that time. We became very good friends as we have a lot of common interests about technology. I used to read tech blogs at that time and had a small tech blog at blogspot.

I had to drop out of university in the first year for “academic reasons” and after spending a year repeating intermediate part II, I got in NUCES (FAST) for Bachelors in Computer Science which I left after 2 months and got back into Bahria again. This time I stuck up with another amazing guy, Ghaus Iftikhar (www.addictivetips.com), and we started working on a photo sharing startup. We worked for 9 months but the project failed. I joined my old mate Salman Ul Haq in Islamabad and decided to enhance our web footprint and do some freelance work again. Instead of a lame company website, I decided to install WordPress on our server and started aggregating hot tech news on Programmerfish.com.

 This was the second major learning curve and we started taking blogging seriously and put up a ‘fail blog’ type blog www.whatreallysucks.com and started writing exclusive content on it. It was a blast and the articles started to spread like wildfire on Social Media. We started earning and realized that it’s a good revenue stream for us. We also started writing original articles on Programmer-Fish that were initially development tutorials and discussion on tech news. Professional blogging needs a lot of time and to keep our full focus on one blog so we closed www.whatreallysucks.com.

2.      What’s the concept behind your blog title; “Programmer Fish” and there’s a question (Are you a fish?) in your About page. What it takes to be a fish?

People think that programming is all ones and zeroes but to put it really simple: It-is-NOT. It’s an art, something you nurture over time like an artist. Great programmers write “seamless” code and we thought “Hey, Fishes swim through the water seamlessly!” so there has to be a similarity between the two: A fish that swims through the water and code that runs smoothly on your machine. Both are state-of-the-art and both “swim” smoothly. This is the inspiration behind the “Fish” part of the name. The question simply asks whether you can also write seamless code.

3.      There are many local and international blogs out there which cover tech news, publish technology reviews, share tips and tricks. What’s unique about your blog? 

Initially, the basic idea behind Programmer-Fish was to turn n00bs to amazing developers by providing really cool and very simple to understand tutorials.  We have written many tutorials on ASP.NET and Windows Azure that people really loved. Later on we realized the demand of content and we changed focus.  We now write about many other things and made a tag line that says Programmer-Fish is about “everything that’s programmed”.  The unique thing about Programmer-Fish is simplicity. We write short, focused and simplistic technology articles.

 Is there money in blogging? How reasonable is it to indulge in blogging just for the sake of money making?

Yes, blogging can make you money; it actually can bring a lot of fame and fortune. Most of the web celebrities are bloggers.  Blogging only for money is surely a bad idea. If you are inspired by how much money bloggers make and you start blogging only to get rich then you will most probably fail. Money making doesn’t start in the first month; it needs patience and hard work. 

4.      Every other day there is a technology release; do you follow the market trend or your own tech instincts while writing a blog on a particular release?

Yes we do follow the trends. SEO is the heart of pro blogging and search engines will pick you well if you break the news or even if you update your blog with the latest releases.

5.      Your favorite blogs and why?

Almost all blogs that I regularly read are my favorites. Each has its own uniqueness. If I put the list here then it will be very long. Here are some of the unique ones 

www.CodingHorror.com it’s very hard to explain your geek life experience in a way that people start admiring life of a geek more than the life of a superstar. This guy really inspires me with his Computer Science taste of wisdom.

http://Lifemeansdrama.blogspot.com  a local version of asofterworld.com by an artist who calls herself kAy. I love the art on this blog and was among the first blogs that I started to read when I was 16.

http://teeth.com.pk/blog/  Who doesn’t know Dr. Awab? I love the confidence and research in his posts.

6.      How do you maintain a balance between your blogging and student life? Does blogging effect on your grades?

To be honest, it’s hard for me. Sometimes the “conventional” paradigm gets on me. It doesn’t mean that you should not go for blogging if you are a student, you can create a good balance between studies and blogging. Time management is very important. For maximum effectiveness, blogging needs to be your favorite past time.    

7.      Microsoft or Apple?

From a developer’s perspective, I love Microsoft! From a designer’s perspective, I love Apple (except the Mac OSX).

8.      Have you ever given a thought of writing a personal or political blog?

I got the domain for my personal blog but never started. I don’t think people are interested in my personal life more than what I already mention on Social Media.  And politics, I have written some articles anonymously on random blogs as guest posts and they were more than enough to start the fire. So I am out of it now.

9.      Your opinion about Teabreak.pk and its team?

The idea of Tea Break is really good. But I expect the user experience of this site to be simpler. Everything is jumbled up. You should add a voting system and customizable personal pages like alltop.com.