Volodymyr Obrizan: personal website - 12

The Book “Scrum and XP from the Trenches: How We Do Scrum” by Henrik Kniberg

2015-11-12T22:23:00+02:00

A week ago I finished reading “Scrum and XP from the Trenches: How We Do Scrum” by Henrik Kniberg. It turned out to be a good follow-up to “Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time” by Jeff Sutherland, which is more about the philosophy of Scrum, while this one is about the practice of implementing it.

The book has had two editions: in 2007 and in 2015. Usually, in later editions, outdated bits are thrown out or rewritten. Here, though, the author decided to stay honest with the reader, so the second edition includes the original 2007 text, supplemented with comments after seven years of experience. It’s very interesting to read when the author first writes one thing, and then in a comment says: “That was wrong.”

Another interesting thing is that even after years of practicing Scrum, the author still writes in some places something like: there are four ways to do this or that ritual, we tried all four, settled on this one, and you should try them yourself and pick the method you like.

The book devotes little time to user stories and planning. For that you need to read a separate book.

Overall, the book is very lively and good. The author writes that he wrote the book over a weekend. Sat down on Saturday morning, got up on Saturday evening. I’m happy with the read; I’ll use it at work as a guide to action.

The book can be downloaded completely free of charge: http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches-2 And paper copies, of course, cost money.

How to Become a Certified Moron 2, or About the Profession of a Station Whore

2015-07-12T12:11:00+03:00

We continue the topic of the degradation of domestic education and society as a whole, raised in the post How to Become a Certified Moron for 2700 UAH.

An unknown woman wrote to me with an offer to start writing student papers to order: term papers, essays, theses.

I went to see how they have it all set up. A few quotes from the site:

Our active author in technical disciplines (mostly construction and mechanics) completed 15 orders in JUNE 2014, including 4 thesis papers, 5 term papers, 2 tests, 3 drawings, and 1 set of calculation problems.

What does this productivity tell us? That the author of these works is an unemployed loser, and the quality of these works is complete shit.

Author reviews (bolding mine):

Svetlana, from 1,000 UAH – average monthly earnings

I have been working with the company “Dipservis” for about a year and a half now, while also raising my little daughter. I think that writing various kinds of papers to order is not a bad way to earn money. And most importantly, it is an opportunity to develop one’s intellectual potential.

Lyubov, from 2,500 UAH – average monthly earnings

The company “Dipservis” has exceptional service for Clients and Partners. Live communication and the ability to resolve all issues that arise in a timely and quick manner. From my very first days of work I realized that at Dipservis Company, the Person comes first, and the Company does everything necessary for the growth and well-being of each of its Partners.

Yulia, from 2,000 UAH – average monthly earnings

Another important point is that my earnings depend entirely on me, i.e. if there is a desire to work, “Dipservis” will always provide an opportunity to earn. Isn’t that motivation? With “Dipservis” I’m already halfway to the cherished purchase of a car

Yevgeny, about 6,000 UAH – average monthly earnings

The work is appealing because I like research activity, and this work is in fact exactly that.

What intellectual potential? What scientific activity? What Person? While one piece of scum is saving up money for a rusty bucket, another piece of scum is carrying the shit-thesis written by the first one to the university and will receive (rest assured, will receive!) the qualification of engineer, master’s degree holder, and so on.

As a result, the labor market is filled with completely unqualified specialists.

This week I watched the promotional video Ukraine. Open for U. In one of the segments, a young man is shown with the caption: "16,000 graduates of IT specialties every year".

According to DOU statistics (http://jobs.dou.ua/top25/), in the period from January 2014 to January 2015 the 25 largest IT companies in Ukraine grew by 1,403 technical specialists (9% of 16,000). At the same time, as of January 2015, these 25 market leaders had announced 1,253 vacancies. So where is the remaining 91%? That is 14.5 thousand specialists. Why didn’t they fill all the vacancies? Because there is no qualification there at all. Because there is an industry, there are people who professionally work to make students enter the labor market as morons, so they can’t get jobs, so there is no one to hire, so there is no one to export IT services and products.

And the last fact for today. India has 2.7 million software engineers; there is a company there that hires 17,000 employees per quarter. (Computer World)

That’s how things are in our country.

How to Become a Certified Moron for 2,700 UAH

2015-04-12T22:30:00+03:00

I’m the kind of person who watches ads (and they work on me) and reads spam.

Recently an email landed in my inbox offering to order a diploma in the humanities for just 2,700 UAH ($115). Humanities people have it better here than techies: according to students, an “all inclusive” thesis at our faculty in 2014 cost around 600 US dollars.

There are a few points here.

The first, individual point is that only a complete moron would pay for a diploma. I cannot imagine a situation in which a diploma would help you become successful in life. (But you’re smarter than I am, so now in the comments you’ll tell me how without a diploma they won’t hire you somewhere.) Paying for a diploma is money down the drain. You can not pay for a diploma, because it won’t add anything to your head, and the 2,700 UAH will still be in your pocket.

I’m also amazed by students’ irrational cowardice, their inability to just put an end to this circus: write an application and drop out of the university. You’d think everyone is independent, ready to take off at a moment’s notice, but here they are: several years of suffering, and then, in the end, paying several hundred dollars for a diploma which, I repeat and emphasize: will be of no use whatsoever in their lives.

The second point is social: corruption in a broader sense than the one they show on TV news. The function of a university is to train specialists who, after graduation, will enter the labor market, join the country’s economy, and be able to work productively and effectively so that domestic services and products are competitive on the world market. One manifestation of corruption is when some state or public institution stops performing its function. In this specific case, the university has produced a “specialist” good for nothing.

Moreover, there is a harmful market made up of “teachers and candidates of sciences from your universities,” for whom this is a business. They are interested in there being as many morons as possible. For them, “the worse, the better.” They are attacking our state.

So when you bring money for a term paper or a diploma, or when you take money for a term paper or a diploma — it is you who are to blame for everything being so bad. You are the one wrecking our country.

Course on iPhones and clouds (spring 2015)

2015-02-12T01:01:00+02:00

This spring, for the fourth time already (jeez, how time flies), I’ll be teaching two courses at KhNURE:

Mobile Platform Programming.
Cloud Computing, Systems, and Networks.

In the first one we discuss the Objective-C language, Foundation, Cocoa Touch, interfaces, working with the network, databases, testing. 28 hours of lectures and consultations, 16 hours of labs.

In the second one we discuss Google App Engine and Amazon Web Services from a programmer’s point of view: Python, boto, webapp2, EC2, SDB, S3, ELB. 24 hours of lectures and consultations, 20 hours of labs.

For people who want to get acquainted with the subjects and start studying them — just what you need!

This time, it looks like I won’t be able to devote time to Python. I recommend the free online Python course on Coursera. If you register this week, you won’t miss the first tests.

Link to the schedule: http://cist.kture.kharkov.ua. Admission is free.

He Said “Let’s Go!” and Waved His Hand

2014-04-12T22:45:00+03:00

On April 12, 1961, citizen of the Soviet Union Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin, aboard the Vostok-1 spacecraft, made a flight into space — he orbited the Earth in 108 minutes.

A long time ago, I found a very beautiful speech by Yuri Gagarin on Red Square in Moscow. Please have a listen:

A transcription for unhurried, thoughtful reading and reflection:

Our people, with their genius, with their heroic labor, created the world’s splendid Vostok spacecraft and its very intelligent, very reliable equipment. From launch all the way to landing, I had no doubt whatsoever about the successful outcome of the spaceflight. I would like to sincerely thank our scientists, engineers, technicians, all the Soviet workers who created such a spacecraft, one on which the mysteries of outer space can be confidently explored.

Allow me also to thank all the comrades and the entire team that prepared me for the spaceflight. I am convinced that all my friends, the pilot-cosmonauts, are likewise ready at any time to make a flight around our planet. We can say with confidence that we, on our Soviet spacecraft, will also fly along more distant routes. I am immeasurably glad that my beloved Fatherland was the first in the world to make this flight, the first in the world to penetrate Space. The first airplane, the first satellite, the first spacecraft, and the first spaceflight — these are the stages of my Motherland’s great path toward mastering the mysteries of nature.

And now reread it once more, mentally creating all the images Gagarin speaks about.

Glory to Gagarin! Glory to Soviet scientists, engineers, technicians, pilots, and all workers! There was and will be a place for everyone in the common feat.

Where’s Obrizan?

2014-04-12T11:00:00+03:00

Today, April 12, 2014, at 11:00, the mass start of the Kharkiv Marathon began. Races of 42 km, 21 km, 10 km, 5 km, and 3 km.

I’m running the 21 km distance. You can see the race route on the website http://kharkivmarathon.com/martshryt.html

With a 10-second delay, the website http://www.gdeobrizan.com shows my current location.

The marathon uses an electronic system for registering distance checkpoints. Intermediate and official results can be viewed on the website: http://kharkivmarathon.com/live-result.html

— Let’s run! Or are you going to sit at home like a moron and watch TV shows?

Bring It Out into the Open

2014-02-12T01:01:00+02:00

The success of a software project can be judged by two characteristics: a) quality; b) delivery time. If one of these characteristics is unsatisfactory, several interesting questions arise:

How conscientiously does the developer perform their duties?
How competent is the developer?

If a project manager doesn’t have a technical background, it’s very easy to end up in a situation where you’re sort of no longer a project manager, but a rack for the developer to hang noodles on your ears.

I propose a relatively simple method for getting answers to these questions: ask the programmer to document the project’s current technical debt. One workday should be allocated for this. Why that much time? That much time is needed for two things: a) to make it clear that the task is serious; b) enough time to go over the whole project once more and describe everything in detail.

As a result, there may be several situations.

A good scenario is when the developer is simply bursting with ideas about what could be redone in this project: improve the model, refactor, write tests. What matters here is that the developer isn’t just throwing around buzzwords, but has a concrete plan for which places need what done. Let’s not forget that they were given more than five minutes. With a developer like that, you can and should continue the conversation about understanding the project’s mistakes and learning lessons.

A bad scenario is an empty report (or a report with template items like "refactor", "write unit tests" and no specifics). An empty report will be submitted by an idiot, a lazybones, or a person incapable of critically assessing objective reality, incapable of reflection. It’s unclear how such a person ended up on your project. That person needs to be shown the door.

Project managers, no thanks necessary.

The Road of Talent

2011-11-12T11:53:00+02:00

Every now and then various corporations publish shorts about the future: “What will things be like with information technology after the 2012 presidential election in the Russian Federation?” The latest film is published by Microsoft.

Productivity Future Vision (2011)

A few weeks after watching it, I came across the musings of a certain Bret Victor on the substance of this film. Bret says that this vision is merely a timid attempt to take a small step away from what we already have now. He then explains in plain language why he thinks so and where interfaces ought to develop.

But today is not about interfaces. Bret Victor worked at Apple from 2007 to 2010 as an inventor of human-machine interfaces. I was interested in how he himself writes about his work. He researched experimental hardware platforms and information input technologies, developed new concepts, designed, prototyped, and showed developments at internal meetings.

Bret ends like this:

I made many, many things. These things, which I cared about deeply, for the most part did not become popular.

I would like to show you all these things; maybe they will inspire you. In the rectangle below I have placed all my inventions that I am allowed to show publicly:

**F. A. Q. **

— But this rectangle is empty! It’s an empty rectangle! — That is correct.

— All right then. I thought you’d made a mistake. — That is correct.

Service Pack for the Studio

2011-03-12T08:24:00+02:00

Bless, O Lord, my computer for the successful installation of the first service pack for Visual Studio; deliver the installer from the evil one and grant rest to the souls of the temporary files. Amen!

The service pack installer is competently made. As the components are downloaded, they start getting installed. Thus saving the user time. You can’t do that with an offline installer — after all, you first have to download everything and then install it.

A small thing, but nice.

By the way, Microsoft has long had a technology called Click-Once. It’s a web installer that lets you update an application component by component. Well, say you have a 100-meg app, and you’ve replaced only a couple of files. Downloading the whole installer for two files is a real pain. But Click-Once checks for new files on the server every time the application starts and offers to download and replace them. It saves a lot of time not only for the user, but also for the developer: Click-Once is enabled with a single checkbox in the solution settings. Nothing else needs to be done.

But as it turned out, the miracles don’t end there. If you dig deeper into this technology, you can control the order and timing of component installation from the program itself. I’ll explain with an example. You’re developing an analog of Visual Studio. Your studio is also stuffed to the gills with features and gizmos. The installer has swollen to several hundred megs. But as we know, 20% of the features are used 80% of the time. With Click-Once, you can install the code editor and compiler first, and download and install the remaining 80% of the features in the background. That is, the program isn’t fully installed yet, not all the features are enabled yet, but the user can already start working. Mega-cool.

Have you come across programs like that? Do you use web installers in your own development? Or are you still publishing all your files in those moronic self-extractors?

P.S. Developers in the clouds, please don’t bother.

Saint Petersburg

2010-10-12T00:01:00+03:00

09/16/2010–09/20/2010

I don’t get to Saint Petersburg often. The last time was in the summer of 2008, for a concert by the vocal-instrumental ensemble Metallica. This time I went to the conference “East-West. Design and Diagnostics — 2010” to give a talk on the synthesis of interfaces and transactors, and also to listen to other distinguished scientists.

I traveled by proletarian transport — train. There was no chance to get bored: next to me was a five-year-old Black boy, entertaining us with all kinds of stories. It was hot in the carriage. I got out to breathe at various stations. The station in Kursk surprised me with its signs.

I stayed at the “Benois Hotel”, a small, quiet, cozy hotel in the central district of Saint Petersburg and 15 minutes on foot from the conference venue (the location played a key role in the choice). Here is what a pedestrian sees at 26 Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt.

What’s good about Saint Petersburg is that you can confidently turn into any side street and it will still be clean, beautiful, and interesting. Lev Tolstoy Street, Andrei Mironov Theater:

Television tower. Not a bad landmark so you don’t get lost. At night the tower looks damn beautiful — it flickers with bright little blue and white lights.

The tower closer up.

Sometimes it felt like I hadn’t left Kharkiv at all. This is probably because both cities were built up at about the same time.

I saw some incomprehensible sign.

A Petersburg tram on Ligovsky Prospekt. Transport is organized very interestingly here. A separate lane is reserved for trams, buses, and trolleybuses. Thus, when the avenue is stuck in traffic, the working class has the opportunity to keep moving along at an unhurried pace.

A Petersburg articulated bus in the same place.

The traffic light caught the girl off guard.

Passing by the botanical garden, I saw trees dying.

The first building of the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute — the conference venue. I didn’t manage to get inside, since all the sessions were held in buildings that had apparently been built during the Soviet Union. Sometimes the layout of the rooms was baffling.

The conference itself is devoted to issues of design, testing, diagnostics, and operation of software-hardware computer systems. In format, the conference is divided into three parts. The first is invited talks, which usually last 30 minutes. The speakers are invited people who cover key issues. For example, in the photo below, Rich Goldman from Synopsys reports on the impact of the economic crisis on the microelectronics design industry. The second part is the regular talks (10–15 minutes, depending on how lucky you are with the schedule), and the third part is the cultural program.

Yervant Zorian reports on the economics of integrated circuit development, on ecosystems, and on reducing development costs. The graph shows that the higher the degree of integration, the higher the development cost.

Professor Zain Navabi from Iran gave a talk on the problems of high-level design (so-called Electronic System Level Design). His slides are very substantial and easy to understand.

During the conference, the mobile network started acting stupid and sending strange messages.

In the time free from scientific discussions, we rode along the Neva.

The famous cruiser.

Some scary things (S-300?).

From the water, the city looks no less beautiful than from land.

Oops... I did it again...

We saw all sorts of things on the canals.

The second part of the cooltural program — a visit to Peterhof.

A Beeline cat got stuck in the window vent.

Now I know that rainbows come from chimneys.

But the most useful part of the conference starts late in the evening, when the scientific sessions and cultural programs have long since ended. Several young scientists from Ukraine, Russia, and Estonia gathered together to discuss important global scientific problems that are acute for all of humanity. We got so carried away with these discussions (they even gave me a pre-defense of my dissertation — instead of a projector I drew everything on napkins) that we didn’t even notice how quickly time flew by. It was five in the morning.

I went into the hotel, packed my things, and headed to the bus station, where at 8:10 the Saint Petersburg—Moscow bus was waiting for me. But more about that next time.

On the Design of Online Magazines

2010-09-12T09:56:00+03:00

People used to say that movies would kill theater. Then they said television would kill movies. Then they said the internet would kill television, movies, theater, books, magazines, radio. But for now, somehow, they all live together. The internet did not become a replacement for the things mentioned. It became the medium through which all of it can be delivered to consumers.

It has already been said that the internet not only lets you make samizdat available to everyone, but also shortens the delivery cycle. You can read news in blogs, download e-books, listen to internet radio, watch television over the internet. Nevertheless, the internet has not solved the problem of content and its quality. Let’s say more: the internet has made this problem worse. To write and publish a book, you have to spend a lot of money, effort, and time. No one would do all that for the sake of yet another turd. Samizdat on the internet developed along this path: personal site → blog → Twitter. Each transition made publishing simpler. The cost of a Twitter post is zero. All this simplicity, convenience, and free-of-chargeness has produced a great deal of motley content, or simply informational garbage.

Unabomber writes that on the internet you can do three things: consume information, process information, produce new information. All the time spent on the internet is the sum of the three activities mentioned. And every additional blog added to an RSS reader, or every new link received through Twitter or ICQ, loads up the first activity: consuming content. Thereby crowding out of life actions related to processing information and producing new information.

All right, since the post is called “On the Design of Online Magazines,” let’s get closer to design. Today, in yet another specialized mailing list, I received a batch of articles about electronics. Only one interested me: “Do we need an international EDA roadmap?”. We won’t get into the substance of the article; we’ll go straight to the formatting.

Because the column is narrow, the images have to be squeezed down. Because the images are small, the phrases are very hard to read. There is no “Enlarge” button. The pictures are not clickable. It is also sad to see graphs compressed in JPEG format. Try, for example, to read what is written in the red oval.

Or here is a more serious case (you can see Microsoft Word’s ears sticking out from behind the table):

You can look through the entire image folder. http://www.eetimes.com/ContentEETimes/ Out of more than 500 images, only 12 are in PNG format.

Another design move that irritates me is page numbering. I don’t think this is done for the reader’s convenience or to save their traffic (everyone has broadband access now). It is done for two reasons: a) to generate more ad impressions; b) to assess the depth of the reader’s interest in one topic or another (the farther they clicked, the more interesting it is).

With the appearance of the World Wide Web, the concept of a “page” changed. Now it is not something rectangular, limited in area, but effectively unlimited space for placing information. If before, division into pages was dictated by the amount of information (the page ran out of room — start a new one), now it happens by units of information: post, article, topic (the post ended — start a new page).

Undoubtedly, over time design on the internet keeps getting better and better. It is already hard to find a site with green letters on a red background. Sites and blogs come with predefined themes, thereby sparing the author the need to delve into web design technologies. But just as often now you can find a situation where the author of a site, not knowing the history behind the creation of a particular design, does not understand what it is for and where and how to apply it. Just as dress shoes are not suitable for playing sports, a design with a narrow column and small type is not suitable for long articles with tables and illustrations.

Form and content are different things, but they are directly connected to each other.

Funny Situations

2009-04-12T11:10:00+03:00

On April first I started teaching the course "Introduction to Software Performance Optimization" for third-year SCS students. For the introductory lecture I decided not to use slides and a projector, and just printed out a short lecture outline for myself. In class I asked the students whether it was more convenient for them with a projector or without one. We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches, but decided to hold the lectures with slides. For the next class I brought a laptop, a projector, and an extension cord. And in room 314i there are no outlets. And there are no outlets in the hallway next to the classroom either.

Now I remember that various amusing situations happen to me. I’ll give a few examples. In the winter of 2008, some friends and I went to the Carpathians to ski. I bragged to everyone about how compactly I had packed everything into one little backpack, while the others were traveling with big bags. When we got there, it turned out I had forgotten to put my ski suit in my compact little backpack. On the very first run down the mountain, after several falls, my jeans were very badly torn. I arranged to buy used ski pants from the owner of the little house where we were staying. The pants turned out to be one size smaller than I needed. By the end of the trip they had torn too.

Before the trip to the mountains I ordered two new plastic cards: one for my salary, the other — Master Card — for paying in online stores. I opened the envelopes with the secret PIN codes and thought: "Oh! What nice PIN codes, so easy to remember"! Then I crumpled up the envelopes and threw them away. After returning from the Carpathians, I couldn’t even roughly remember which digits were in the combinations. The interval between ordering and reordering the two cards was only two weeks.