About Vasudev Ram

Hi there.

First things first. (Gotta observe protocol, you know.)

Meet my mascot before you meet me:

Okay, now that you've met that big fellow, I can introduce myself:

I'm an independent software consultant, developer and trainer (both corporate and individual), with many years of experience in a variety of programming languages and technologies, and some project management and software engineering experience (acquired in reputed multi-national companies where I worked earlier).

I have worked with or consulted to large and small American, Indian, and European software companies, both established ones and startups, during my career, and continue to do so. I've been an independent consultant for some years now. (1) Software projects / products, (2) research/evaluation/recommendation (between alternatives) of new technologies, and (3) training on software technology topics, are some of the areas I work on for clients (sometimes a combination of two or more of those areas for one client), and I have significant real life experience in all of those areas; obviously so for (1), since software has been and is my whole career/profession, but also for (2) and (3).

Some areas in which I have good skills and experience: Python, C, SQL, UNIX and Linux shell scripting (with bash, awk, sed and friends), REST, web development (server-side), relational databases (worked on many RDBMS's), PDF generation (I created a product for it, xtopdf, that some organizations use) and many other tools and technologies, open source as well as proprietary. I've always been open to learning and working on new areas; in fact, in most projects I've worked on, there have been some significant new technologies that I encountered for the first time.

In general, I'm always open to and interested in consulting (as in, hands-on software design and programming), training and writing opportunities. Feel free to contact me via email at: vasudevram@gmail.com, or via this form.

Training (on Python, Linux, SQL databases, etc.):

I conduct corporate or individual training courses on:

Python programming

Linux usage, including command line tools and the shell

SQL and database design

Testimonials from happy training clients available on request.

Inquire with me at vasudevram [at] Google's fine email service for course details, mode of conduct, charges, testimonials, etc. Customization of course content for specific clients may be possible, and can be determined on a case-to-case basis.

Other courses may be added over time. Check with me if interested in other topics - I may be able to help you in some cases, or redirect you to someone else who can.

Products:

Creation of software products is another area I work on.

xtopdf, my Python toolkit for PDF creation from other formats, is an open source product which is in use by Packt Publishing of the UK, the Software Freedom Law Center of the USA, and ESRI.nl, among others. xtopdf can be used for creation of PDF reports from many other input formats, and for creating simple ebooks from text or XML input. Here's a good online presentation about xtopdf.

I was the team leader for a successful database middleware product, written in C on Windows, at a large company where I worked earlier. It was subsequently deployed in many large projects by that company.

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I started this blog to write about my findings and thoughts about happenings in the area of software innovation (both open source and proprietary, worldwide), which is my main interest, professionally speaking.

I'm an elected member (a Fellow) of the Python Software Foundation and a member of the McKinsey Online Executive Panel. My web site https://vasudevram.github.io/ has more information about my background and skills, software products that I've independently developed, services I offer, technical articles I've published for IBM developerWorks, Packt Publishing and Linux For You magazine (now called Open Source For You) - A vi quickstart tutorial and How Knoppix saved the day. Here is my contact information.

I was interviewed on PyDev of the Week in 2015.

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Here are my Bitbucket and Github accounts with some of my open source software projects (distinguish the ones that are just forks of others'). Here are my Python and other code recipes on ActiveState. This is my Google Profile. And this is my Codementor Profile.

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