Volodymyr Obrizan: personal website - 22

KhNURE Photos

2016-02-22T23:20:00+02:00

Figure out the year of the shot and the place in KhNURE shown in this photo:

Why am I bringing this up? I found a little archive here:

Many of the photos are more than 10 years old. It’s interesting to look at how it was back then and compare it with how it is now.

Another interesting photo. Who can say how it differs from today’s view?

Barbara Sher’s Book “Refuse to Choose!”

2015-11-22T20:30:00+02:00

I recently finished reading Barbara Sher’s “Refuse to Choose!” (150 UAH, electronic version).

For many years I thought about the fact that people who have lots of ideas and interests in their heads are extremely unhappy people. Let’s argue from the opposite: there’s a person who has no ideas in their head, no interests, wants nothing in life. So they’re happy — they achieved nothing, but then they didn’t want anything either. The goal and the result matched. But a person who wants a lot is unhappy, because you can’t manage to do everything.

And I really didn’t think I would ever come across a book where this problem would be examined in detail.

Barbara Sher came up with a term for people like that, who are constantly trying something new, jumping from one activity to another — “scanners.” And in the book she looks at many different types of scanners and suggests methods for how scanners can live a full life.

For example, she recommends writing down every impulse, every idea in a special scanner’s notebook. To do this, you need to set aside a spread in the notebook, write down the idea, and start writing out some facts. Even this initial documentation of an idea can substantially ease a scanner’s suffering. The ideas are written down, your head is clear, and at any moment you can open the notebook, return to an old idea, and work on it some more.

And what about work that doesn’t give you the chance to do absolutely everything? Here the author recommends choosing a profession that would let you do many things at once. For example, a schoolteacher or lecturer — guaranteed three months of vacation a year. And in three months you can get a lot done. Or find an “umbrella job” — one that brings several interests under it at once. For example, consulting work is helping others, communication, professional development, travel, lectures, trainings, and the prospect of writing a book. Besides that, Barbara writes, like, why not make money from your interests and just open your own business?

The main idea of the book is: if several ideas or interests are “tearing you to pieces” at once, then you’re all right. You just need to learn to live with it and benefit from it.

If this is something you run into, I recommend reading it.

Summary of the Fifth Meeting of the "Python at APVT" Club

2015-11-22T10:14:00+02:00

On November 21, the fifth meeting of the "Python at APVT" club took place. The meeting was held in room 318 of the APVT department from 11:15 to 13:30.

It was a magical, unusual meeting. If at previous meetings several people took an active part — the speakers, the question-askers, the discussers — then at this one we managed to achieve 100% involvement in the process.

We held a programming competition. We split into 8 teams of 2 people. In my life I’ve run a hundred lab sessions. Experience shows that when there are 2 or more people in a team, only one person works — the one at the keyboard — while the others sit nearby, and thanks if they at least watch and follow along. More often they look out the window or look at their phone. So first I asked people how they were progressing with the Coursera course, what experience they had. Those with less experience we put at the keyboards. The remaining people, those with more experience, we sat next to them. Thus, the solution to the problem went from the expert’s head through the speech apparatus and through vibrations in the air into the head of the person
at the keyboard. Then, through contractions of the arm muscles and keystrokes, and then by electromagnetic oscillations, the solution to the problem finally got into the computer. Everyone was busy, everyone was interested.

Sergey and Tatyana

We had to solve 6 little problems:

Find the sum of a series of numbers.
Determine whether three segments are the sides of a triangle.
Determine whether a number is in the Fibonacci sequence.
Determine whether a number is prime.
Find the most expensive car among the products.
Correct the spelling in a text.

The problems and solution can be downloaded at the link: http://bit.ly/python-apvt-test-1

Valentina and Alexander

Everyone liked it a lot. The volume of problems was calculated for about 1.5 hours, and even when the meeting time had run out, nobody was in a hurry to stop solving the problems. We had to forcibly interrupt the competition.

Alexandra and Roman

It wasn’t without a few snags. There was an error in the automatic test for checking the fifth assignment. Because of it, one team’s result didn’t match. As soon as the tests were fixed, the problem was marked as correctly solved.

Final table with the results:

The most problems — 5 — were solved by the schoolboy Kirill and his dad Oleg (in the photo below). An unexpected excellent result! The next generation is growing up!

Kirill and Oleg

It’s also worth noting Roma Podolyaka (in the photo below), who explained to Alexandra in great detail the course of solving two problems and explained the syntax of the Python language in great detail.

Roma

We wrapped up the meeting by going through the two most difficult problems (the fifth and sixth) on the big screen, with explanations and debugging.

Previous meetings:

No. 3, No. 4 07.11.2015, 14.11.2015 Summary of the Third and Fourth Meetings of the "Python at APVT" Club
No. 2 31.10.2015 Summary of the Second Meeting of the "Python at APVT" Club
No. 1 24.10.2015 The first meeting of the "Python at APVT" club took place. Summary

How to get news about meetings of the "Python at APVT" club?

Subscription to news about meetings of the "Python at APVT" club: http://bit.ly/python-apvt-reg The email newsletter will be the main channel for information about meetings.

VKontakte and Facebook groups: https://vk.com/python.apvt and https://www.facebook.com/groups/python.apvt respectively.

A question-and-answer site about Python and the club: http://bit.ly/python-apvt-qa

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

Juniority

2014-01-22T01:10:00+02:00

— Platoooon! Dress right! As you were! Dress right! Atten-hut! Open your notebooks, take notes!

Oddly enough, the question “how do I become a senior?” comes up on the internet much more often than “how do I become a junior?” From this you might get the impression that no one is interested in the question of how to become a junior. Apparently, either everyone knows how to become one, or they don’t even ask themselves that question, and any beginning programmer immediately considers himself a junior by default. Thus, for example, your grandmother is also a junior. Absurd? Yes. That means we need to formulate some criteria that a junior has to meet in order to be called a junior. I’ll say right away that I don’t like the term “junior,” because it is a word from the vocabulary of metasatanists. And I don’t like metasatanists or metasatanism itself (which I’ll write about separately), so here and below the term “junior” will be replaced with “teenager.”

So, let’s introduce a new term.

Juniority — the set of properties inherent in teenagers.

I’d like to unpack this definition through a series of examples.

Juniority is thinking through and proposing at least two possible solutions to a given problem.

Any programmer runs into difficult tasks that can’t be solved on the first try. An experienced programmer is expected to solve them on his own. It’s not worth expecting the same from a teenager, because there isn’t enough experience. Nevertheless, lack of experience is not a reason to put off solving the task. For every problem or task, a competent teenager should come up with (generate, google, overhear, peek at, copy) at least two possible solutions in order to discuss them with a mentor. Better yet, three options, or even five. This approach stimulates the teenager’s brain to solve its own problems independently.

Juniority is reading all the books and remembering which task is solved in which book. Referring to books while working. Keeping books close at hand.

Everything is very simple here. A beginning programmer has to understand and speak the language in which engineers conduct their dialogue. When the mentor says, “Introduce explaining variable,” something should click in the teenager’s head: “Right, Fowler had something like that in his book on refactoring.” After that, the book needs to be opened, the chapter found and read, and the required refactoring carried out. To start with, the teenager should read these books:

Erich Gamma, R. Helm, R. Johnson, J. Vlissides. “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software.”
Martin Fowler. “Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code.”
Eric Evans. “Domain-Driven Design (DDD): Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software.”
Jef Raskin. “The Humane Interface.”

Juniority is maintaining project documentation and meeting minutes.

With project documentation, everything is clear. You just need to take it and write it right in the code using special comments. With minutes, things are a little more complicated. Most of a teenager’s meetings are one-on-one with his mentor. The biggest mistake is failing to write down some important thought from the mentor. So after any meeting, you need to sit down and take notes on everything.

Juniority is writing tests.

A teenager should know how to test both his own programs and other people’s. You should start by writing test scenarios in natural language. At the next step, develop unit tests; at the next step, acceptance tests.

Juniority is doing code reviews for colleagues, and also studying their reviews.

Usually, in any company, your colleagues’ contributions are always in plain sight — Git looks the same for everyone. A teenager should look through his colleagues’ code, leave comments, and also see what comments they leave for other programmers. You can learn from your own mistakes, and from other people’s too.

Juniority is maintaining Jira. Reporting regularly and committing.

Activity in Jira, email reports, commits to the repository — all of this is the teenager’s “pulse,” by which mentors determine whether he is alive or dead. Nobody needs a “dead” employee who is afraid to ask for help in time in order to solve current problems and move on.

The list of properties can be continued further. The idea itself is very simple: if you can meet these requirements for a prolonged period of time, you’re a junior; if you can’t, then you’re some random asshole and a grandmother.

Let’s write down a few derived terms:

Level up your juniority — consistently and regularly practice the advice given above.

Spew teenage bullshit — ignore the advice given above or by your mentor.

You will ask: but what about seniors? Seniors do not exist. A programmer either solves the task set before him or he doesn’t. The logic here is binary.

Electronic “Books”

2011-11-22T00:43:00+02:00

So we were promised that electronic “books” would kill paper books. But in practice it turned out that electronic “books” killed layout, typography, design, illustrations, common sense, eyesight, but not paper books.

Looking death in the face isn’t as scary as looking at the gray screen of an electronic “book.”

I can’t imagine how any self-respecting author would allow his work to be published on an electronic “book” platform.

How anyone reads these “books” is completely unclear. It’s like wolfing down a raw, unpeeled potato instead of having dinner at a restaurant.

Grants from “Kaspersky Lab”

2009-09-22T21:32:00+03:00

Colleagues from Moscow are sending good news.

“Kaspersky Lab” reminds you that applications are still being accepted for participation in the innovation project support program. Students, graduate students, young scientists, instructors at higher education institutions, professors, and research staff can bring their ideas to life this year. The grant amount allocated for a single project may range from 50 to 150 thousand rubles! Applications must be submitted by 18:00 on September 30, 2009. A selection committee made up of leading experts from “Kaspersky Lab” will begin its work immediately after the application deadline and will devote two months to it. As you remember, you can read the regulations of the “Innovation Project Support Program” in detail and download the documents needed to submit an application at http://www.kasperskyacademy.com/ru/grants

Every good story begins with an acquaintance. On March 22—23, 2005, our department held the international conference “Information Technologies — into Science and Education.” Among the conference participants were guests from the Moscow office of “Kaspersky Lab”: Stanislav Shevchenko, Sergey Novikov, and Svetlana Efimova. Their lectures made a strong impression; there were so many people in 301b that some had to stand. Kaspersky Lab employees stated more than once that the company is always glad to cooperate with students and universities. On March 25, Sasha Egorov gathered about 10 students to discuss possible projects with the lab. This date is considered the founding of the “Kaspersky Club” at KhNURE. The photo shows one of the club’s first meetings from those days. A lot was done over four years. For example:

research into malicious code analysis was started;
various “Kaspersky Lab” products were tested;
several versions of “Vivarium” were developed — a document management system for virus analysts;
the course “Computer Viruses and Tools for Fighting Them” was prepared and has been taught for several years;
several term papers and theses were completed and successfully defended.

Another major result is the creation of LLC “Laboratory Design and Test”, whose purpose is research in the field of computer security. Over these four years, our virus analysts prepared more than 5,000 descriptions of malicious programs for www.securelist.com. “Kaspersky Lab” is not standing still and is constantly developing. The competition for innovation projects among students and young scientists is proof of that.

What Is Time Management Really About?

2009-08-22T10:16:00+03:00

Following up on our conversation about time management, I want to share an interesting interview with Yervant Zorian — one of the leaders of the CAD industry:

“There are clearly always many more things to do than time allows. So if you have two or three times more to do than you have the hours to do them in, the issue is about prioritizing. About deciding not which things to do first, but which things will get done at all and which things unfortunately will not get done, and that is actually what time management is about. It's not only about which hour to do which task, but which task I will do at all. Realistically, we all need to learn to choose the right tasks, and learn to drop the others.”

“Obviously, there is always more you could do than time allows. So if you need to do two or three times more things than you have time for, then the whole question is priorities. You need to decide not which tasks to do first, but which tasks will get done, and which things, unfortunately, will not get done at all. That is what time management really is. It’s not only about what hour I’ll do a task, but whether I’ll do it at all. Indeed, all of us need to learn to choose the right tasks, and learn to drop the rest.”

http://www.dac.com/45th/DACEzineDecember2007-PeggyArticle.html