As we walked down the college driveway yesterday morning, I'm sure that Suni and I were thinking about the same thing. Would they accept our oh-so-late project report? Suni did the explaining to the Head of Department. I could sense barely controlled tension in her voice. Perhaps the HOD sensed it too, and thats why he smiled and said "I'll do it" when Suni asked about the Principal's signature. What a relief! You see, if our reports aren't signed by the Principal, they probably wouldn't be accepted during the demo on 8th.

While going back(We were humming the same song) Suni remarked,"Its so funny. Today we came here with nothing and we're going home with fully complete and certified reports. Its just like our project. One morning we had nothing and that evening everything had sorted itself out."
We literally finished our project in one day. I mean, we worked for months but couldn't get the code to work. One morning we sat down all serious and determined. Nothing happened.Then we had lunch and after that, the ideas just started pouring in. Maybe thats why we named that module 'fresh'. Then everything just fell into place.

The project we got was quite an unexpected one. It was in VHDL and we weren't exactly fans. I liked VHDL in a fairytale sort of way, because of the magical conversion of typed code to actual circuits that it facilitates, but as a subject, not really. It was this project that opened our eyes to a new world and now, we have a newfound respect for the language and the associated technology. I'm sure that whatever I learned from this project will remain with me forever. Why? Because of sheer emotional intensity. The vehemence with which we cursed the IDE for coming up with strange errors was so strong that its probably burned into our brains. Syntax errors are easy to correct but the most mystifying annoying and tearing-out-the-hair errors came from the synthesis and mapping tools and that too, at the most inopportune moments.

It was fun working with Suni. Of course, it helped that we knew each other well, but I feel that we bonded like never before in these few months. Also, it was a comfort to know that someone was just as awed and scared of the big organisation as you are, and just as clueless as you are. We did the coding together and I think our project base line was "So, tomorrow at 8?" What was the main thing we learned from the project? Thats easy, and I'm sure Suni will agree because we learnt this the hard way: Behavioral simulation means diddlysquat(*). and Component instantiation rocks.

It was quite an experience, really.

*Diddlysquat is a very funny, very effective word. Its one of my favourites and I first heard it used in this song:

Labels: goodbye, goodtimes, project, VHDL