On life

44

graker — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 08:25:00 +0000

I grew up a little today, and here is what I want to say. In autumn, as usual, I again didn't manage to complete everything I wanted to. Neural networks are like this: with them you can fail to get done far more than without them.

Mia Romanovna started kindergarten, so there may be a little more time. But so far she has brought back a bucket of snot from there: enough for everyone.

I am sitting at home, working through my personal record PR of 600+ changes. Fortunately, the shore is already in sight, thanks to the tests and perseverance. I would like to get it merged in September.

Russia's traffic filtering boxes have been raging lately. Some time ago I wrote a monitor bot for quick notifications in Telegram (or Max) that a site is down. But for a couple of weeks now almost all monitors keep sending false alarms. You go to check, and everything is fine. Everything is fine, but the site cannot be seen from the bot's subnet. And 10 minutes later all is well.

But we do not lose heart, we will overcome everything. The main thing is to keep looking at the world with curiosity and humor. Which is what I wish you too, dear friends!

Дуовщина

graker — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:15:00 +0000

Duolingo suddenly told me that today is, it turns out, the 7th duoversary of my registration. Seven years ago I came to Duo to learn some German and got hooked for about two years — I don't remember exactly anymore (same as German, ha-ha-ha).

It was interesting and fun, and here's an old post about it that I just dug up. Some of it did stick in my head: I deal with German-language websites almost every day, and I still recognize familiar words.

But at some point I stopped practicing. And recently the interest came back in the form of a desire to learn Chinese. A pity, of course, that such desires show up more often the less time you have to act on them.

But while I still have a little time, I'm holding on and practicing. And the app is good, yes — since it stuck with me for so long.

By the way, if anyone's interested, besides various languages Duo has added chess, math and music theory courses. I already know how to play chess, I've had enough calculus for a lifetime, but music is something I could try.

Доклад на ZelDevMeetup

graker — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 10:20:00 +0000

Yesterday the stars aligned just right and I managed to give a talk at the Zeldev meetup.

The talk is called «Robots write the code, but we answer for it» — based on my April article. I originally planned to give it in May, but this turned out even better — over these months I've added a few new ideas.

In my opinion it went quite well, I haven't lost the skill over a decade. Thanks everyone, especially the organizers for the opportunity!

The slides are attached below the fold, they're in a progressive HTML format, so you can view them right in the frame. I made the deck in Claude Design (where else would you make a presentation about neural networks?), which is probably why clicking back and forth through the slides works a bit oddly, not quite like in PowerPoint or Impress.

There's no video recording.

Unleash my inner speaker

graker — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 10:40:00 +0000

Time to unleash my inner speaker. I'll be giving a talk at the https://zeldev.ru/agentikus meetup in a week. The talk is based on my April theses, so to speak — almost half a year has passed, and I have things to add.

The last time I gave a public talk was probably around 2015. So I'll have to prepare: I'll be drawing the slides with pebbles in my mouth like Demosthenes. Hopefully it'll turn out interesting.

Про слияние аккаунтов Контура

graker — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 07:00:00 +0000

Yesterday Kontur.Elba suddenly distinguished itself.

I have two accounts there, an LLC and a sole proprietorship, on different emails but the same phone number (that used to be allowed). On top of that, Diadoc and Extern for the LLC hang off one email. Kontur Bank for the sole proprietorship hangs off the other. And so, some time ago, Elba started pushily offering on login to "merge accounts" into a common, unified, invincible Kontur account. And I usually have no time for that, I just want to log in, do what I need and get out quickly. So every time I politely declined. Figuring that this "merge", if anyone needs it, isn't me, and all I'd get from it is hardship.

And that's pretty much how it turned out. Yesterday I log into Elba to do some work and see that the polite decline option has suddenly disappeared. Got it: you don't want to — we'll make you. Well, I logged in, what else could I do. And instantly a complete and irreversible merge happened: they replaced the sole proprietorship's email with the LLC's, trampling all uniqueness checks. So now you can log into the sole proprietorship with the LLC's email, and you can't log into the LLC account at all. I tried going into their unified account, added the LLC there via a digital signature, but it won't log me into Elba from there. It just opens the sole proprietorship account and that's it. Such a wonderful merge has come to pass.

And on the first of the month I usually send out invoices and make certificates of completion. Plus there's a letter from the tax service to answer. And then this. I immediately wrote to every support channel — how am I supposed to work? Some say: change the email in your Kontur account and try again. I changed it, tried, got the same result. Reliable, stable.

In another chat they immediately suggested I write an application for a login change, stamp it and send them a scan. I asked how it happened that you can't handle the obvious account-merge scenario, and I'm the one who has to run around with applications? They answered evasively and couldn't help.

So while I was torturing support in all the chats and by email, almost the whole working day went by. By the end of the day they fixed it, yes. I had to go into the Kontur account and add the sole proprietorship's digital signature (there's a gotcha of its own there, I'll tell you another time), and that finally let them separate the conjoined twin accounts of the sole proprietorship and the LLC. The best vibe surgeons were separating them, the operation lasted almost 5 hours. They managed it by the time I'd even got through to phone support and asked everyone to double-check properly.

But they managed, yes. By the evening I finally generated my documents.

You've probably already guessed what I'm getting at? If you worry that you did something less than perfectly, don't. Here's a nationally known group of companies handling an account merge scenario like this (and it's been going on for several months). So you'll do just fine. And even if not, whatever breaks can be fixed. And as everyone knows, only those who do nothing make no mistakes.

Реклама на Рутубе

graker — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 10:05:00 +0000

A post in support of everyone suffering from impostor syndrome.

I've been watching World Cup match highlights on Rutube. Watching whole matches takes too long, and they're mostly on late anyway, so highlights are just the thing. I tried YouTube, but you run into fakes and all sorts of junk, so I had to go this way.

Ads on Rutube are very aggressive, I get shown at least 3 ads per 6–8 minute video. And the one that comes up most often is some strange ad with Yura Borisov. I must have watched it about 20 times by now, and the most interesting thing is that I still don't know what it's advertising. There's something about fashionable, then something about eternal. But right at the moment when they should name what's being advertised, the "Skip" button becomes active for me :)

So people got together for a shoot, invited a famous actor, who was probably paid a lot of money. They did all of it, recorded it, edited it. And at launch nobody thought to check that the company's name is heard (or at least shown) before most viewers skip the video.

And you're still worried you'll do something wrong in your work? Don't worry, you'll do just fine!

Как двигать проекты и не двинуться кукухой

graker — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 13:45:00 +0000

On a recent random coffee call (a form of networking I happily indulge in once a week) the following question came up. How do you take part in (run, team-lead, handle, manage and even code) 10+, 15+ projects without going cuckoo? And I was like: right, how?

I mean, there I am in my channel singing songs about time tracking. So it's probably not all sunshine and rainbows. But I'm holding on somehow.

As I see it, the main difficulties are three things:

— context switching,
— the constant stream of messages,
— and the general lack of time, of course.

Obviously, we're talking about projects that don't take 30 hours a week of involvement each. Otherwise it's all pointless, and the cuckoo flies off to warmer climes without us. Still, they do take quite a lot.

Long story short, over the years of all this parallelism I've developed some habits, and that's what I'm going to write about. Hard to say how critical they are, but without them my cuckoo and I would have a hard time fighting these difficulties.

Про софт-скиллы на работе

graker — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 17:25:00 +0000

Over my years of work I've heard all sorts of things about so-called soft skills, from people in charge, from HR, and from those who are (not) expected to have these very skills. During this time I've done some managing myself: as the head of my own studio, as a hired team lead, and as the head of a laboratory.

So here's what I have to say about the most important soft skills, especially for an inexperienced developer or one who has recently joined a team. So important, in fact, that if you master them, you'll be head and shoulders above many others — even if they code better. And if you're a novice team lead, they're an absolute must.

Always add value
If you're given the floor at a meeting, if a ticket is assigned to you, if someone asks you something in a chat — never leave the discussion in the same state it was in before you. Always add at least a little value to it. Don't play ping-pong with tickets…

С Днём программиста!

graker — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 12:40:00 +0000

Happy Programmer's Day, programmers!

Today we can all bathe in torrents and smash up internet cafes!

Про звонки и совещания, часть 2

graker — Mon, 19 May 2025 18:20:00 +0000

Part one

At the same time, I joined another international team that practiced SCRUM and other agile stuff. And there were a lot of meetings/calls, given my team lead role. But you know what? It was almost the perfect example of "how it should be done" (and not only when it comes to meetings and calls).

The team had German roots, so order and punctuality reigned in all processes. You're expected to come to meetings on time; being three minutes late is a reason to apologize (although I never heard anyone being told off for it). At the same time, though, everything is strictly to the point. If you're needed, you have to come. If you're not needed, you won't be invited, no need to sit there warming a chair. If there's no agenda, there either won't be a meeting, or it will take 2 minutes (which isn't so bad, once a week).

Meetings related to the iterative development process (sprints, reviews, etc.) are usually agreed upon with everyone and scheduled at a fixed time on a fixed day of the week, for a long time ahead. Only the end of the project, World War III, or the switch to summer/winter time, which unfortunately is still alive in Germany, can interrupt that schedule.

If an unscheduled meeting is needed, the participants agree on a time among themselves based on free slots, and once agreed, everyone connects when needed. No "I'll give you a call sometime tomorrow afternoon" (meaning, sit and wait), no "we gathered at five, but the important participants can't make it, so let's wait till seven", and not even "quickly drop everything and answer the question I wrote three minutes ago".

Working on the home market in parallel was a bit wild in the light of such organization. Here we had to deal with unreliability, and demands to answer instantly at any time of day or night, and funny situations where rank-and-file employees switch to ferocious boss mode and demand everything at once. But fortunately, such situations are becoming rarer lately, and a professional approach prevails.

Про звонки и совещания, часть 1

graker — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 11:15:00 +0000

Every action or activity presumably has a purpose. We walk to get somewhere, run to get there faster, rest to regain strength, and click all the crosswalks in pictures to prove we're human. But there is one activity that many developers will confidently call pointless, meaningless and useless, and those who make others do it should be ~~shot~~ punished. I'm talking, of course, about meetings.

But is it really that bad? Actually, no. You can get something useful even out of "bad" meetings, just maybe not what you were hoping for. Besides, the fact that you or I personally didn't find anything useful in a meeting doesn't mean nobody else did. Say, the boss who needs to decide who won't get a bonus this month has already made a note of a couple of sour, uninterested faces.

Over 20 years of work I've of course taken part in all kinds of meetings. And at first many of them followed the same script. The team got together and had a heated discussion of the current project. Lots of ideas and opinions were voiced, it went on for two hours. And then what? Right, then at the next meeting it turned out that almost nobody had done a damn thing of what was said.

However, ten-something years ago I ended up in a working group collaborating with some Brits in the microelectronics industry. And one thing struck me right away. Every meeting call had a moderator, or a secretary, so to speak. He didn't know the answers to most questions himself, but he had the agenda (of his own side, at least), he owned the schedule, he shared his screen and took notes right there in SharePoint. And in these notes he didn't just briefly record what was discussed. But — most importantly — he immediately wrote down the actionables. That is, what action had to be taken as a result of the discussion. And — again, most importantly — who! had to take it.

After the meeting, all participants got access to the notes and the list of actions. And this had a dramatic effect on the results. Just try not reporting on the great successes you've achieved when, a couple of weeks later, you and all your colleagues are called upon to report on what was written down earlier!

This practice stuck with me forever, and I came across it many times later in other projects, mostly international ones. I recommend it to everyone: do it, appoint a secretary, or appoint yourself, keep at least basic minutes, and the output of all that talk will be noticeable. Especially if it wasn't before.

Especially since nowadays there are tools for recording a meeting, if taking notes on the go is inconvenient, and even for transcribing it afterwards.

The process in that group, however, also had a serious drawback, in my opinion. The thing is, when a call had an agenda only from our side, our foreign colleagues sent just the secretary. We voiced our questions, and the answer to them was always the same: I'll check with my colleagues and get back to you. That was very annoying, of course: why on earth did ten of us show up, when the whole session could have been replaced with one email with questions, and the meeting could have been scheduled when the answers were ready.

This also stuck with me, and in my dealings with clients I always stress: there will be no broken telephone with managers on my side. Only a discussion with the person who has first-hand information. That is, with me.

Then for several years I freelanced for an American team, on a highly automated e-commerce project. Which ran on Drupal 6 even when Drupal 9 was already out. I built online accounting automation for them, Stripe and lots of other stuff. The team was remarkable in that it held exactly zero meetings. Everything that needed discussing could be discussed in Slack.

And this had two main perks. First, of course, it's paradise for those who don't like calls. No need to spend time, get interrupted, synchronize. Finished a task — wrote up a thorough report. Second, written communication is always more to the point. If you can't put a thought in writing, it isn't ready yet, think some more. And write it so that the other person understands you. And they write back something you understand. Which, again, saves everyone time.

To be continued.

Про Notion, Obsidian и управление делишками

graker — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 16:45:00 +0000

Since sanctions made me urgently look for a Notion replacement, and I managed to find a wonderful little app called Obsidian, it's a good occasion to tell how I take notes, why I take them, how to migrate to Obsidian, why it's good, and whether it's good at all.

The note has a lot of letters, a few pictures and links, and mentions words like GTD and the swear words that come with them.