Articles

Thoughts

On Video Game Addiction

May 12, 2021

I wanted to sound like an intellectual again and write a several page long essay with references to scientific literature and everything but I stopped myself. Let me tell you a story instead. Once upon a time in my childhood I stumbled upon a particularly unusual book. It was a fantasy fiction book set in the world of Conan the Barbarian. The difference from a normal book was that the story was branched.

On Fake News

April 1, 2021

I have a very fun story on this topic, actually. Here on the Russian internet we have a news website https://panorama.pub/ Nothing on this website is true, except the tiny almost invisible letters “satirical periodical” under the logo. Not only do they post fake news, they deliberately invent the most absurd over-the-top headlines and body copy. That’s not what’s funny about this story. What’s really funny is that sometimes, more often than not, people in social media mistake the news from Panorama for real stuff and repost them with all seriousness.

It's just a Game

February 18, 2021

Have found an interesting video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPYYHTjw-fY Hmm…. I wonder how deep we can go when we wouldn’t constraint ourselves with cinematics from the AAA-tier games of the 2010+… In no particular order, trying to not spoil anything: Darksiders I - “No. Not alone”. Warframe - “And take its pain away” (fuck, it brings tears to my eyes just typing this out) Nier: Automata - “Look my way”, 9S playthrough opening level, “Become as gods”, Pascal’s mistake, “Do you still wish to rescue someone - a total stranger - in spite of this?

On Refactoring and Rewriting

January 24, 2020

Speaking from experience. Trying to “rewrite” a significant piece of the software while still looking back at the old implementation and/or copying pieces of the code from there is the worst decision one can do. For example, backend is in completely miserable state precisely because of that decision of mine. There’s two points to note. If you want to rewrite code from the completely blank state, it will take tons of time, especially if you want to cover it with automatic tests alongside (as you should).

On Performance

September 18, 2019

Performance of your workstation is important and I’ll tell you why.

On Jobs

August 7, 2019

Today I have seen (again) a mention of a situation in the Western countries like USA or Germany where it’s punishable by law that you do some elementary repairs which could be done by professionals. It literally prevented me from sleeping so I decided that I will write my thoughts and opinions on this topic here.

In short, my opinion on this is that it’s such a total bullshit, it’s criminal.

Programming is neither math nor building

January 24, 2015

Programming is not math, contrary to common belief. Neither software development is the same as bridge- or building-building.

Why do people forget that software, which runs on the hardware, is the instructions for the hardware?

On Lisp Loop

January 23, 2015

It seems there is a strong disdain about the Common Lisp’s loop macro. A lot of people talk about replacing it with special library iterate. I totally do not understand it, at all.

lisp  rants 

The (not so great) Return

October 21, 2014

Well, no luck with Logdown. Call me greedy for fame, but here in Blogger, integrated with Google+, I have a lot larger audience coverage than at Logdown.