A French hacker finds bugs in AADHAAR and challenges UIDAI

A French hacker Robert Baptiste, who also goes by the name of Elliot Alderson on Twitter, is a security researcher who often hunts for security flaws in various apps as well as tech services. He gave out his opinion on what he felt about Indian developers as a whole. The Indian Twitter media responded mostly with mixed views.

Baptiste has a substantial following on Twitter, but he came to limelight earlier this year when he found out various security loopholes in the Indian government's Aadhaar app and challenged UIDAI eventually. He discovered that the Aadhaar app can easily be hacked even by a coder who know basic coding stuff. This came at a time when the news filled up with individual Aadhaar details selling for Rs 500.

In his tweet, Baptiste mentioned about the lack of knowledge in Indian developers with regards to Git. For the uninformed, Git is a distributed version control tool that can maintain a history of all the changes made to the code of a particular application. Git is maintained by the Linux foundation and runs on the user end. Developers often use Git to submit their project on the cloud-based GitHub, which is maintained by Microsoft.

Baptiste didn't just stop there. He went on to mention that some developers are so disconnected from the world of coding that they have to Google basic stuff while appearing for an interview. "Don't get me wrong, there are a plenty of good developers in India and it's ok to don't know something. But at least, if you don't know something be curious, try to learn it and understand. The lack of curiosity is really a blocker for me," he added in another tweet.

After Baptiste made the tweet, several Twitter users came up with support for the French developer. "In my experience it's the outsourcing companies who seem to randomly allocate people to job roles without actually checking what skills and experience they have first," wrote one member by the name of Tautology0. "I once had a VMware admin who, when my testing VM wouldn't work, would open the VM properties, randomly alter a few tick boxes and then try again. (Root cause, after I eventually got him to Google it, was to do with VMware not being compatible with itself.),” he added.

Another Twitter user called @srj0408 said, "Git should added as a part in college curriculum. I ask every candidate in the interview if he/she know git. Working on a project in a team without git, I think is not possible."

However, there were several others to explain Baptiste that he cannot base his judgement on the basis of what he had to witness. "Don't generalize about Indians. How much are you paying per hour? That determines the quality you get," wrote @80s_boyz. Another user @mgchaunshuo said, "I am Indian but I agree with you, because there are lots of good Indian developers but they never get the chance to prove themselves, instead some idiot who claims to be senior developer get the job."

"I think those were Pakistani/Chinese developers pretending to be Indian or @fs0c131y might be offering very less," jokingly wrote @saurav6767.

This isn't the first time such a debate has taken place. It is often said that Indian developers are good at copying code or at basic stuff but find it difficult to come up imaginative solutions to tricky problems.

Two years ago a study by Aspiring Minds with sample size of 36,000 engineering graduates found that over 60 per cent IT students in India couldn't write code that would successfully compile. A study that appeared on Quartz earlier this year also stated that one in three kids outside India typically begin learning to code before they turn 15, while only one in 10 did it in India.

While the reputation of developers in India may not be all too great, it is worth nothing that there are several good examples of Indian developers making it big in the Silicon Valley. In fact, some of the most recognised work in the field of information technology can be attributed to a significant number of Indian developers who look after products and services in companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others.

But the problem, it seems, is there with the desi developers. The problem that Baptiste pointed out can largely be attributed to the ineffective distribution of computer education in India. Schools in India primarily focus on a handful of programming languages such as C, C++ and Java. These languages are in high demand in India, but when it comes to solving problems in India, people end up learning something that doesn't apply to solving relevant problems.

Here are top Ten Indian Icons for an awareness -

1. Sundar Pichai, Google

India-born Sundar Pichai was named as Google CEO on August 10, 2015. The 44-year-old head of Google was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu and pursued education at IIT Kharagpur (B Tech), Stanford (MS) and Wharton (MBA). At Wharton, he was named a Siebel Scholar and Palmer Scholar. He is responsible for the launch of the dominant Chrome web browser, and was previously the product head for Android, Chrome, Maps, and other popular Google products.

2. Shantanu Narayen, Adobe

Born in Hyderabad, Shantanu Narayen joined Adobe in 1998 as the senior vice president of worldwide product research and became the COO in 2005 and CEO in 2007. He holds a Bachelor in Science from Osmania University, an MBA from University of California, Berkley, and an MS from Bowling Green State University. Narayen held product development roles at Apple and Silicon Graphics before co-founding photo-sharing startup Pictra. A chance encounter between Adobe and Pictra led to Narayen joining Adobe, where rose swiftly through the product ranks. He was named among the world's best CEOs by Barron's MAgazine in 2016.

3. Satya Nadella, Microsoft

After a 22-year stint with Microsoft, Nadella was appointed as the chief executive officer of the company in February 2014. He previously held the position of executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group. The Hyderabad-born 47-year-old has a BE from Manipal Institute of Technology, MS from University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and MBA from University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

4. Sanjay Mehrotra, Sandisk

Sanjay Mehrotra co-founded flash memory storage company SanDisk in 1988 and has been its CEO since January 2011. He pursued bachelors and masters degrees at University of California, Berkley, and also went to Stanford for executive programme. Mehrotra holds several patents to his name.

5. Sanjay Jha, Global Foundries

Sanjay Jha took over as CEO of Global Foundries, a semiconductor foundry that produces chips for giants like AMD, Broadcom, Qualcomm, and STMicroelectronics, in January 2014; before that he has served as the CEO of Motorola Mobility and COO of Qualcomm. He joined Motorola as co-CEO in 2008, while serving simultaneously as CEO of Motorola's Mobile Devices Business.

Prior to Motorola, Sanjay held multiple senior engineering and executive positions during his 14 years with Qualcomm, ultimately serving as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Qualcomm Inc. from 2006 to 2008.

6. Rajeev Suri, Nokia

Rajeev Suri joined Nokia in 1995 and held various positions before being appointed as president and CEO in April 2014. Suri's ascedancy to Nokia CEO's position came after Microsoft acquired Nokia’s mobile phone business. Previously, he was the head of the company’s global services. Like Satya Nadella, Suri also holds a B-Tech from Manipal Institute of Technology, but holds no post graduate degrees.

7. George Kurian, NetApp

George Kurian became the CEO and president of storage and data management company NetApp in June 2015, after serving as its executive vice president of product operations for nearly two years. Prior to joining NetApp, George was vice president and general manager of the Application Networking and Switching Technology Group at Cisco Systems. His diverse background also includes the role of vice president at Akamai Technologies, management consulting at McKinsey & Company, and leading Software Engineering and Product Management teams at Oracle Corporation. Born in Kottayam district, Kerala, he pursued engineering at IIT-Madras, but left six months later to join Princeton University; he also holds an MBA degree from Stanford.

8. Francisco D’Souza, Cognizant

Among the youngest CEOs in the software services sector, D’Souza is Cognizant’s CEO and a member of the company’s board of directors. D’Souza joined Cognizant as a co-founder in 1994 and went on to become its CEO in the year 2007. During his tenure as CEO, Cognizant’s employee base has grown from 55,000 to over 230,000. The son of an Indian diplomat, D’Souza was born in Kenya. He holds a BBA from University of East Asia, Macau and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh; D’Souza also serves on the board of General Electric as an independent director.

9. Dinesh Paliwal, Harman

Dinesh Paliwal is the president and CEO of Harman International, a premium audio gear brand that owns the likes of JBL, Becker, dbx, among others. Born in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, Paliwal holds a BE from IIT Roorkee, and MS and MBA from Miami University. Prior to joining Harman, he spent 22 years with ABB Group, where he last held the dual role of President of ABB Group with responsibility for the company’s global P&L, and Chairman/CEO - ABB North America. He serves on the board of Bristol-Myers Squibb, and previously served as the economic advisor to the governor of China’s Guangdong province for three years.

10. Ashok Vemuri, Xerox Business Services LLC

Xerox, the 110-year-old document technology company that over the years has come to symbolize everything associated with photocopying, named former iGate CEO Ashok Vemuri as the new CEO of its back-office outsourcing company. Earlier this year, Xerox said that it would split into two separate companies -- one would focus on document technology, which would include Xerox's traditional printer and copier businesses, while the second company would focus on back-office outsourcing, payment processing and other technology-related services.