"Dude, I need help here" I said seeing all the error messages in my screen when I compiled my first written C program. Yuvi who was busy helping the girls with their errors said "Just a min man". I was burning inside thinking 'if only I could know how to debug those errors, I would be helping all my classmates around'. It was our first C lab session in the 1st year & everybody new to computers were to put up with these weird error messages. I could see Far & Allols helping out our classmates & the C teacher impressed by their skills. "What is the problem man?" said Yuvi who was now at my screen. He saw my 7 line code of the Hello World program with 20 odd errors, He quickly pointed to me the errors I had made, misspelled pre-processor statements, missing brackets, misplaced semi-colons, wrong parameters for the scanf statements etc. I still looked puzzled at the program trying to make sense out of it, Then quickly Yuvi modified the program & re-compiled it. The result screen showed '0 errors, 0 warnings' I could see a relieved expression on his face as though I had told him to solve a tough sudoku puzzle. He went back to the girls again. I stretched out to relax now, thanking Yuvi for helping me finish the program quickly. Slowly I started to observe the lab now as I was late to the lab & had to quickly start writing the program as soon as I came in.
The lab was quite spacious, painted with light brown which perfectly blended with the color of the computers, There were 25 of them. The systems looked old, not a surprise as they were only running DOS. I tried now to have a good look at my classmates. Some were busy with the program while others looked anxious & worried about the errors they were getting. I could see Avi taking the help of our teacher in getting cleared his doubts about his program. I had joined the course just a week ago, so was trying to identify my classmates based on the events which they took part in. For ex. Rav,Gunda,Tilak,Bharth & Co for pasting the Jogi cutout in the class, Madh as people kept calling him 'Busa', Veerana for his brand new handset which could play live tv videos & some girls for their frequent answering in the class. Suddenly out of nowhere I heard an announcement, "Write a program which prints 1 to n on onside at the same time n to 1 just beside it" It was SK sir, I didn't know what to think of this program as I was still struggling to come in grips with the 'HelloWorld'. Within moments I could hear the sound of a barrage of keystrokes, Few mins later I saw someone calling SK sir unto his system. "Very good Suhas" said the sir after he saw suhas execute the program. Now everybody's eyes were on suhas even Far's & Allola's, Suhas promptly turned back to his screen with a proud look on his face. I was still left wondering how do these guys crack it? I tried to write type something about the program & compiled it. '50 errors, 30 warnings' the screen showed. I didn't want to call Yuvi again as he was again seen helping out the girls. I started to worry as I found this C extremely difficult to handle, somehow it was not entering my head. I started to think about all the effects C class might have on me for not being able to learn & grasp it. Just I was thinking about all such bad things that could happen to me, I heard a freedom sound. A sound which will make any student of our college get excited & motivated, The sound, teachers disliked. It was the college Siren sound, indicating the end of the period. I gave a huge sigh of relief & quickly rushed to join my friends Avi & Yuvi to go out for our usual lunch at the sagar hotel.
