Volodymyr Obrizan: personal website - 11

ChatGPT was writing my letters back in 2013

2026-08-11T23:38:32+03:00

I have proof that ChatGPT was writing letters for me way back in 2013. :)

Because what normal person would use em dashes — in letters.

AI wrote this post too. Good night. :)

Practice Only, No Theory!

2018-07-11T10:32:00+03:00

The stupidest thing in the world is educational events under the slogan “Practice only, no theory.”

Know this: the presenters at such events are charlatans and crooks.

A person who doesn’t know the theory of their field is an ignoramus, incapable of learning, incapable of analytical and abstract thinking.

An employee who doesn’t know the theory of their field cannot be considered a professional.

An employee who does their job without knowing the theory is like an animal in a circus. It, too, was shown simple movements and promised food after performing them.

Forward this post to every organizer of an event under the slogan “no theory, practice only.”

Or maybe you personally run such events?

Telephone Marketing

2016-09-11T19:11:00+03:00

Telephone marketing is when someone calls you from an unknown number and starts pushing some useless crap on you. It’s easier to swat away an annoying fly than an unwanted offer over the phone.

A couple of years ago, a woman called my work phone, introduced herself as a parishioner of the Jehovah’s Witnesses church, and suggested that we study the Bible together over the phone. Usually I got rid of uninvited guests on the phone quickly, but I couldn’t answer a religious woman sharply. We had roughly this dialogue:

— And why did you call me specifically?
— We’re calling everyone in the area to help people in need who want to study the Bible.
— But I don’t need to study the Bible.
— Maybe we should still try?
— We can certainly try, but I’m worried that somewhere out there there’s a person who really is in need, waiting for your call, and you’ll spend your time on me, and I’m not in need.
— Yes, you’re right. All the best, goodbye!

Since then I never brush off telephone marketers; instead, I try as hard as I can to help them make me an offer I can’t refuse.

But for some reason the marketers themselves don’t want to help me.

They call from a bank and offer to issue a new card with special terms from the bank’s partners. And I say that yes, I’m interested, but I already have five cards and ask them to apply the special terms to an existing one. The bank says it can’t. Says it will check with the central branch and call back. And doesn’t call back.

They call from another bank and offer magical service terms. I ask them to forward me the terms by email so I can look them over. They didn’t forward anything.

They call from a marketing agency and offer to promote my offline business (which I don’t have). I ask them to promote my mobile apps in the App Store. The agency can’t; they don’t have that kind of experience.

They call from an internet provider and offer their services. I’m interested, but I’m in a meeting, busy, and ask them to call back after 6:00 p.m. Mu-ha-ha, what kind of idiot would work after 6:00 p.m. The internet provider didn’t call back.

Every time someone calls me, I ask them either to call back or write me an email or give me some substantial discount. For some reason, they all disappear very quickly after that.

And here, for dessert, is an interesting compilation of salespeople brushing off customers:

I’m Quitting the University

2016-06-11T18:50:00+03:00

I’m resigning from KhNURE of my own accord. This is where there should have been a long post about why I made this decision and what events led up to it. Or maybe some lyrical post with a bunch of historical photographs, ending with the words, "I would have kept teaching a while longer, but you can’t get the years back."

I’ll definitely dump some pink snot into your feed, but later. For today, there are two more important issues.

First — the department needs someone to replace me. I taught the two coolest courses ever offered at our university: "Programming Mobile Platforms" (iPhones, Androids) and "Cloud Computing" (Amazon, Google). We had it like in the best bakeries or the best newspapers: late at night in San Francisco, Steve Jobs would release a new operating system, and the next morning at 7:45 I was already at the board talking about what was new. Many people still don’t know what "cloud" is (for them it’s that little gray cloud on network diagrams), while my students were programming and testing automatic scaling using AWS EC2, ELB, CloudWatch.

If you’re ready to maintain such a high bar, or maybe even raise it higher, write to me at volodymyr.obrizan@gmail.com

Second — I’m opening my own IT school. I analyzed the market for commercial courses and wrote a unique concept. I’m not the first person who will teach iPhone programming in Kharkiv, but I can offer a product that will differ substantially in quality.

Besides that, I’m asking all my students to write me a recommendation in whatever way is convenient for you: by email at volodymyr.obrizan@gmail.com or in private messages on Facebook. What was good about my courses? What was bad? How did getting to know me in the courses affect your life? Did someone find a better job? Get a pay raise? Move abroad? Drink yourself into oblivion and become a downshifter? Be prepared for me to publish these reviews on the school’s website under your name. Thanks!

Two Eternal How-To Guides

2016-02-11T22:54:00+02:00

Year after year, you have to explain the same thing to newcomers: “Nothing worked out for me,” “Nothing works for me,” “I can’t do it” — that is not a description of a problem. It is just whining. And whining is emotion, not the substance of the problem. Emotions won’t help the matter. What will help is a good method for describing and solving the problem.

Time to blow the dust off the old how-to guides on this topic.

The first is “How to Report Bugs Effectively.”

The second is “How to Ask Questions the Smart Way.” This guide has a section for those on the other side: “How to Answer Questions Properly and Competently.”

A training course for students should be built on the basis of these guides.

Junior specialists — required reading.

On Reading Books

2014-01-11T22:46:00+02:00

Today in a debate I came across this opinion:

You have to pick up a book and read it, attentively ! Not this thing where it’s 10 little pages today, some more a week later, and so on...

I completely agree with the statements: "you have to pick up a book and read it" and "read attentively." How many pages you should read in one sitting is a purely individual question. And then this week Ludwig Bystronovsky writes:

Rain or heat, a light dusting of snow or awful weather, read fifty pages anyway.

Another interesting little point about how you don’t fish more than a dozen ideas out of a book that fit into your picture of the world. Six months later you need to reread it, so that on top of the dozen that settled in, the next one opens up.

I completely agree with Ludwig that you can’t get through a book in one go, but that’s only a good thing — you know for sure that rereading it will bring new revelations. It would be cool, of course, to dump all the books into your head at once, but then the lazy person would be no different from the hardworking one. A book is a passive source of knowledge; to get that knowledge you have to put in energy. At the very least, open it and read a couple of pages.

I read Eric Evans’s "Domain-Driven Design" in two passes. The first time — quickly, precisely in search of those first ten ideas. The second time — thoughtfully. Rereading some pages several times (those who’ve read it will understand). When you’re reading thoughtfully, it’s not just that you can’t handle 50 pages a day; even ten already counts as a major achievement.

Though Evans’s book is a pleasure. You open the book, read a couple of paragraphs, get hit with an electric shock, close the book, and spend the whole day walking around wide-eyed. Recommended.