Dawn.com has launched their beta website available via dawn.net. Going with a phased roll-out through Beta is the only thing they seem to have gotten right and one can only hope they address the issues with the website or go for a complete overhaul. After spending 15 minutes on the website, I only hope they don't take this live any time soon. Following are some things that immediately stuck out like a sore thumb.


I never came across such code even when I was teaching Introduction to Programming at university. Why would anyone write a switch statement which says if value is 1, print X, if value is 2, print X, if value is 3 print X and if value is 4, print X. Why use a switch statement if all conditions print the same thing? It defies common logic. It's code like this that causes pain down the line and simple feature requests can take days to implement and introduces bugs waiting to go off like land mines.
How can one even move to more serious guidelines for web development. I am so befuddled by this code I cringe just thinking about what kind of blunders they have committed in the back-end and middle-tier. This website does not even come up to par with most blogs out there, let alone be worthy of a news website. Even their current dawn.com website is a class-act in comparison and that has been around since at least 1997.
I am guessing this new website is going to be rife with problems going forward given its precarious state. Feature requests will probably take days to implement because of the poor architecture, and cryptic and unmanageable code. The only winners here would probably be the contractors billing Dawn for weeks/months of labour for even the most meagre feature request. And sadly, dawn.net might be in a bit of a sticky situation here with their contractors. If you want to get rich, build something that only you can maintain and takes you days to change so the client is locked in and ends up paying hefty amounts.
Update 8/31/2008: They don't even have spell check in their CMS (Pakistan spelt Paklistan in title). It's hard to image a publishing company using a publishing platform without spell check. Even my blog has spell check.
The recent PASHA Career Expo 2008 provided a great platform to engage with the community. Following are slides from my presentation for Developing for the Web.
Pakistan Telecommunications Company Limited has a subscriber base of 4.5 million users. PTCL in a recent revenue generation scheme enabled nationwide calling for all of it's 4.5 million subscribers without their consent. At Rs.199 per month per subscriber, PTCL will generate anywhere from Rs.800 million to Rs.900 million in the first month alone.
PTLC's plot to maximize customer retention into this plan is elaborate and operates at multiple tiers. Their business division and top business planners will probably get a nice bonus this year for devising such an ingenious plot to defraud customers.
Luckily for me, after failing 8 times the ninth time I dialed 1236 and decided to check on my voice mail feature and through that prompt I was able to get through to an operator. To cancel you can quickly follow these instructions without waiting to listen to the instructions on the phone:
Spread the word so that people can cancel. The last date to cancel without penalty was 31 December which means you are already too late.
There were some interesting people at the startup meetup held recently at the offices of PixSense and sponsored by the Pakistan Software Houses Association and Green&White. For me it was a good way to get acquainted with the talent pool that exists here and hopefully this is the first of many to come.
Following the buzz online revealed the following bloggers speaking about the meetup: