By A Correspondent
Life’s so very unpredictable. Until around 8pm-odd, Vijay Mukhi spent a few hours deliberating on plans to launch his just-printed book on Artificial Intelligence. A few weeks back, he had launched a 900-odd-page techie book on Bitcoins. And he was just getting set to write another book on Bitcoins over the next few months.
Mukhi, who said he turned 60 last month, did his engineering from VJTI, Mumbai. He taught programming languages like C, C++ and numerous other things in computing technology at his training institute called Vijay Mukhi’s Computer Institute or VMCI. He also wrote some 80 books ranging from traditional programming languages like C++ , Bitcoins to the just printed book for layperson on Artificial Intelligence.
His books have been translated into languages like Japanese and Portuguese. Over the years, he has worked with law enforcement agencies guiding the police on handling cybercrime.
But what Mukhi is best known for is his evangelising of all things digital. And he would do that with childlike enthusiasm. Along with friends Raj Saraf and Harish Mehta, as also Atul Nishar and in later years various other leading lights, he set up various groupings like the Bombay Computer Club, the Internet Users Club of India and the Bombay Technology Club. Along with Pritish Nandy, he set up a Cybercafe with much fan fare at the Leela in Mumbai. He started writing for the science magazine 2001 (eka Science Today), The Economic Times, Business India and Dataquest magazine. He also published special editions tracking the computer industry then with senior journalist Raju Chellam. He later wrote a column for the Indian Express and Mid-Day. For a while, he even wrote for MxMIndia.
His writings were always actively discussed in the industry and one such column headlined ‘Only Fools Use COBOL’ had the entire Indian IT community debating the issues he had raised.
In the 1980s, he would train on productivity tools like dBase and Lotus 1-2-3, but his real interest was in higher end programming languages.
There are a few generations of geeks and industry professionals who have learnt programming – especially C and C++ – from him. There is an even larger group of people who have benefitted much from just knowing him.