Volodymyr Obrizan: personal website - 16

With AI, the need for knowledge doesn't disappear — it changes

2026-09-16T11:23:14+03:00

With AI, the need for knowledge doesn't disappear — it changes.

I've noticed an interesting paradox.

On the one hand: when I suggest trying my own product, testinel.dev, people tell me: "Pfft, why do we need that? We just give the logs to AI and it fixes everything."
On the other hand: engineers complain that AI is expensive, that they need to save tokens, that sessions run out quickly, what are we supposed to do for five hours without AI?

Meanwhile, my product is being built precisely to optimize spending on AI.

What I hear is something like: "Let's delegate the work to AI that we can't afford." A conflict between the marketing slogan "AI will replace us all" and a real engineering problem involving limits on budget, operator skills, and time.

Does AI replace an engineer when it comes to diagnosing problems? In many ways, it does.

Do you need to know how to configure and optimize all this? Of course you do!

And how do you learn to configure it and optimize costs and speed? Figure it out and study it! 🙂

Read 54 Books. One Year Later

2016-10-16T21:14:00+03:00

On October 12, 2015, I decided to read 54 books in a year (more details: Reading 54 Books in a Year). One year later, I’m sharing my impressions. The main takeaways are these.

Over the past year, from 10/12/2015 to 10/15/2016, I started reading 34 books. Of those:

31 I read all the way through;
1 I dropped at 25% — turned out to be puke-inducing shit;
1 I started reading twice — Napoleon Hill’s "Think and Grow Rich";
2 I didn’t finish because they’re big and basically desk references: Moscon’s management and Keller’s marketing;
1 fiction — 1984.
8 books in English.

Why didn’t I manage to read 54 books in a year? Let’s look at how the starts of books are distributed across the year:

Back on February 4, 2016, I wrote that I was one week ahead of my reading schedule. But then, from February 17 to April 21, I attended a business school that changed a lot of things in my life, including how and what I read. The school hadn’t even ended yet, and I’d already started implementing some things into the workflow, and I had to work more. My lifestyle changed; there was less time for books.

Nevertheless, I think reading even 60 books in a year is perfectly realistic, because I can see the opportunities for it.

What does that take?

Have a reading plan. Several books should already be written down for the next month.
Have a device for reading e-books.
Download books to the device in advance.
Don’t waste time on fiction — it’s useless for personal growth.
Don’t waste time on puke-inducing crap. At the first signs of it — drop it and start a new one.
If, in a good book, some paragraphs or chapters aren’t working for you — skip them and keep reading.
Read books that are interesting. For example, ones that answer questions you care about.
Look for book recommendations from authoritative sources in advance.
The most important thing is to force yourself to read and follow the plan.

Where can you find time to read books? In the morning after waking up, at night before going to bed, on public transportation, in lines, at work, on weekends.

Some people would reproach me:

— Vova, at that pace you don’t remember anything. I like reading books slowly and thoughtfully; that kind of plan doesn’t work for me.
— And how many books did you read slowly and thoughtfully over the past year?
— Zero.

Guys, come on! Yes, I don’t remember 90–95% of the information, but the most important questions — I find them and remember them, use them in life, implement them at work. So there’s no need to hide laziness and aimless existence behind "slow and thoughtful reading"; that doesn’t work for me.

Anyway, overall it was an awesome book year. And it’s going to be even more awesome!

You can read my opinion and reviews of books under the "books" tag: http://obrizan.livejournal.com/tag/книги

All right, do what you want, but I’m off to read Henry Ford’s autobiography.

Students Ask™ 8: What Year Should You Start Working?

2016-09-16T07:38:00+03:00

Students ask:

Volodymyr Ihorovych, I got into KhNURE, specifically KIU. How do I get into some company as quickly as possible? What year should I start working?

As quickly as possible means, from day one, make a list of companies, write a résumé, and start sending it down the list, asking to carry shells for programmers.

You need to start working in your first year.

Any engineering discipline always leads to a practical result. At the university, practical classes are sharply limited in time. For example, in my course "Programming for Mobile Platforms," the labs were limited to 16 hours. 4 labs at 4 hours each. For comparison: at work, the estimate for a not-very-complicated mobile project starts at a hundred developer-hours. And that estimate is made on the basis that an experienced developer will be doing it, not a student. Every instructor dreams that students will spend more time on the subject than the curriculum allots. Without practical application of knowledge, any theoretical knowledge evaporates from your head very quickly. Try right now to solve a system of logarithmic equations. You can’t? How come, you learned this in school, didn’t you?

At work, they’ll hold you to real standards for the quality of your knowledge, not the kindergarten stuff they’ll ask of you at the university. And the higher the standards, the more motivation you have to reach them, the cooler a specialist you’ll be.

If someone starts telling you, like, if you start working, there won’t be time left for PE, philosophy, or, God help us, Ukrainian history. Yes, there won’t be. All academic disciplines can’t have the same priority. If the first priority is software engineering, then all the other disciplines naturally get much less attention. And that’s normal; ask any successful person about priorities and they’ll confirm that priorities have to exist, and for success you have to follow them.

Well, and to finish you off, I’ll tell you a little story.

One 13-year-old schoolboy was interested in electronics. For something he was building, he was missing some parts. He found the biggest company in town in the phone book, called its director, and asked for the missing parts. The director gave the schoolboy those parts and invited him to come tighten screws at the factory over the summer. Working at the factory made such an impression on the schoolboy that he later founded his own company, which changed the computer market forever.

Let’s plug in the unknowns. The factory belonged to Hewlett-Packard, the director’s name was Bill Hewlett, the schoolboy was Steve Jobs, and his company — everyone reading these lines knows what that company is called and how it changed the market.

Imagine if, when you were a schoolkid, Elon Musk had invited you to tighten screws at Tesla. How would that have affected you?

There are very many companies in Kharkiv and very many talented programmers and managers.

Not a single student has later told me: "Vova, I regret that I went to work while I was a student."

In previous installments:

— Students ask why write term papers.
— Students ask about the reality of expulsion.
— Schoolkids ask whether belles-lettres is needed.
— Students ask about choosing a major.
— Students ask about completing a course after the deadline.
— Students ask about choosing a programming language.
— Students ask about turning in a diploma thesis.

Interested in my opinion on any issue of university life? Send your questions to volodymyr.obrizan@gmail.com. Anonymity is guaranteed. Answers will be published as questions come in. You can also ask questions through the anonymous-questions site http://ask.fm/obrizan

Went to See Jobs

2015-11-16T16:03:00+02:00

Went to see the film "Steve Jobs: Divorcee Strikes Back" (2015).

When I was walking into the theater, I got wary: it was 3/4 women. For the first fifteen minutes I couldn’t understand why Jim Carrey was on the screen, and when they were finally going to show Steve Jobs. The women in the theater explained that Jim Carrey was Steve Jobs.

Brief synopsis of the film. Each time, an hour before three presentations (the Mac, NeXT, and the iMac), five people take turns coming into Jobs’s dressing room and start messing with Jobs’s head.

Jobs’s ex broad, demanding money out of nowhere.
Jobs’s illegitimate daughter, at first just tagging along with mommy, and when she’s older — with moral lectures for her father.
Steve Wozniak, with a request to indulge his sense of self-importance.
Apple’s CEO, whose life fell apart after he initiated Jobs’s firing.
The marketing director, who asks Jobs to smooth things over with the previous four.

I kept waiting for Jobs to pick up an assault rifle toward the end and just start shooting everyone. Why come an hour before the most important presentations of his life and get in the way is unclear. Apparently, they’ll show that plotline in the sequel.

There’s nothing else in the film. There’s nothing about Apple, or the Mac, or inventions. The whole plot is Jobs doing his thing, while everyone barges in from the side with nothing to do and gets in the way.

But the women in the theater really liked it. "What a piece of shit Jobs was!" the women said, clicking their tongues.

One important detail. Imagine that a Hollywood director reads your biography, written by some writer, and makes a film based on it. Imagine what that film would be like? What will your close relatives and friends say when they watch this film? Without a doubt, there will be exactly one thing in common between your personality and what’s happening on screen — your name.

This is worth keeping in mind when watching the film "Steve Jobs".

Python at APVT

2015-10-16T17:19:00+03:00

— Shhh, kid... Want a little self-education?

On October 27, another Python course starts on Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/learn/python In 2015, Python made it into the top five most popular programming languages (see TIOBE Index for October 2015), and interest in it continues to grow:

This time we’ve gathered a small group of students to supplement online education with in-person meetings at the APVT department of Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics. Once a week we’ll meet in room 318, discuss Python, discuss the lectures, solve little problems.

As with the online course, admission to our meetings is open and costs nothing.

Fill out the form if you’re interested in getting news about the meetings of the “Python at APVT” club: http://bit.ly/python-apvt-reg The mailing list will be the main channel for information about the meetings. Besides that, I invite you to join the VKontakte and Facebook groups: https://vk.com/python.apvt and https://www.facebook.com/groups/python.apvt respectively. Those folks I’ve already talked to about this, please register too.

Questions? You can contact me personally: volodymyr.obrizan@gmail.com

What Will the VIP Terminal in Kharkiv Look Like?

2011-05-16T13:53:00+03:00

Renderings of the interior of the Kharkiv airport’s VIP terminal have become available online. For example, here’s the waiting lounge:

And here’s the check-in desk:

Compared with how it used to be, it’s night and day.

Kharkiv is getting better and better, and that can’t help but be a good thing.

See more: renderings of the Kharkiv airport VIP terminal.

Free essayz downlod site

2011-01-16T12:12:00+02:00

Yesterday Wikipedia—the No. 1 site with free term papers on all knowledge—turned 10. It was decided to mark the date with the whole Kharkiv community of Wikipedia contributors.

The meetup began with a visit to the Kharkiv Art Museum. The exhibition of photographs by Alexey Ivanitsky (1854–1920). was visited. Ivanitsky was born in Belgorod, but lived and worked in Kharkiv, and had a photo studio at 22 Yekaterinoslavskaya Street (now Poltavskyi Shliakh). He took portraits, graduation albums, photographed Kharkiv; Ivanitsky is also famous for a series of photographs from the site of the tsar’s train wreck on October 17, 1888, near Borki station outside Kharkiv. The dining car, where Emperor Alexander III and his family were, is the second car from the left, the one that is completely flattened.

The emperor’s family miraculously survived. No one even got a bruise. The Cathedral of Christ the Savior was built at the crash site, but it has not survived to our day. Now only a small chapel reminds one of the Divine Intervention. You can see it if you take a train south from Kharkiv.

The exhibition is not very large; I think no more than 100 photographs, but it is worth visiting. You should hurry: the exhibition runs through January 30. The damage is 7 hryvnias. Museum address: 9 Sovnarkomovskaya.

The main part of the event celebrating Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary took place in the “Tolstyi Dom” cafeteria, at 2 Sumskaya St. Both active contributors with many years under their belts and people who had simply seen the banner with information about the celebration showed up for the meetup. There was also a correspondent from the newspaper Vecherny Kharkov, who interviewed each participant, patiently writing things down and figuring out the tricky technical terms. Don’t forget to buy the newspaper on Monday and read about how the holiday went.

The last part of the celebration (already unofficial) took place at the Lopan/Kharkiv confluence. By that time, of the eight participants only four were left. We looked at the new pedestrian bridge, witnessed them turning on its lighting, admired the new building on the embankment, checked out the new park.

Our city is getting better and better. And that can’t help but make you happy.

The Morning Ritual of Checking the Stats

2010-11-16T09:38:00+02:00

So I’m checking the blg’s visitor stats in the morning and I see:

Who would have thought people read from iPads more often than from Windows NT. By the way, Other Unix is probably Ubuntu. I knew it: they don’t count that distro as Linux.

Doxygen for SystemC 2.2.0

2009-10-16T11:00:00+03:00

Often, when studying a new library, you need to look at the class hierarchy or the list of methods of a particular class. Jumping from file to file via “Show Declaration” links in Visual Studio is not always convenient. There is a utility called Doxygen that parses projects written in various languages and generates a hypertext site. On this site you can view the list of all classes, the hierarchy in UML form, and the list of methods with descriptions.

In the course “Computer Technologies in Automated Design” we are studying SystemC, and this kind of documentation would be very useful. I found several published documentation sites on the Internet, but with outdated versions. So I decided to generate and publish it myself: http://kiu.kture.kharkov.ua/systemc/html

Unfortunately, the implementation of the SystemC library from the official site does not have built-in documentation in Doxygen format, so descriptions of methods and classes are not available.