How would you design a class that abstracts, say, a file on a disk with certain properties? Let’s say you need to be able to check whether the file exists on the disk or has already been deleted. Would you create an object first and then call the exists() method on it, or would you call Disk.fileExists() first and only then, if TRUE is returned, make an instance of the File class and continue working with it? This may sound like a matter of taste, but it’s not that simple. Capote (2005) by Bennett Miller Let’s see how we can check whether a file exists on the disk or not in different programmi ..read more

One of the most frequently asked questions I hear from junior programmers (no matter their age) is: What should I focus on now to build the best career I can? There are multiple options, including creating a startup, getting a PhD, contributing to open source, working for Google, and many others. In my opinion, the most common mistake is trying to get rich fast. Obviously, money matters and is the ultimate metric of career success, but trying to get it too early is nothing more than gambling with your life at stake. Instead, I suggest focusing on winning some “medals,” which can later be conve ..read more

Я не историк и даже в школе историю не любил. Не любил, но верил, что так все и было: и Французская революция, и восстание Спартака, и война Аттилы с Римом, и охоты на мамонтов с последующими иллюстрациями на стенах древних пещер. Все это было именно так, как рассказывали нам учителя истории (они в моем детстве почему-то часто менялись). Позже, когда появился Internet ..read more

Уже несколько лет мы проводим в России научную конференцию, приглашая в ее программный комитет ученых со всего мира. Последние два года, по понятным причинам, отказов много, особенно от западноевропейских ученых. Однако, интересно вот что: если раньше отказы содержали субъективный негатив вроде “I don’t want to participate in a Russian conference” (я не хочу участвовать в российской конференции), то последнее время они все звучат примерно так: “I can’t speak at your event ..read more

There is a big difference between distributed and collocated teams: the communication in distributed teams is asynchronous, which essentially means that when you ask something, a response doesn’t arrive immediately. Moreover, it may never arrive. This can be very uncomfortable for those who are used to the office work setup, where most communications are synchronous: any question is answered immediately, one way or another. In open-source repositories, everything is asynchronous. Here is a simple rule that may help you decrease the level of frustration in GitHub projects: ping them every time ..read more

I do enjoy ChatGPT a lot. The blog post you’re reading now was written by me and then given to ChatGPT to fix its grammar and polish the writing style. Until recently, since 2014, when I wrote my first blog post, I used the service of a few proofreaders, who charged me $20-40 per hour to rewrite all of my 350+ texts. Now, I pay a few dollars a month to OpenAI. However, while the value of this generative AI is obvious, I also experience serious harm from ChatGPT, especially when reading papers written by my students with its help. Terminator (1984) by James Cameron Should students be allowed to ..read more

I’m helping organize the ICCQ conference this year for the fourth time, with the in-cooperation support of the IEEE Computer Society. Based on this short-term experience, I can assert that reviewing research papers is a skill that even some reputable and experienced academicians either don’t possess or are too lazy to apply. We often encounter sketchy, subjective, and disputable reviews that don’t assist authors but only frustrate and discourage them. In this short blog post, as an absolute amateur in the subject matter, I will try to summarize how to review an academic research paper (thus mo ..read more

Almost every empirical research paper contains two essential sections: Results and Discussion. The former presents the facts collected through the research method, while the latter interprets them to answer the research questions. When interpreting the data, you must address the most obvious concerns that readers may have. For example, in the Results section, you might state: “85% of respondents refused to participate in our survey” (this is a fact). Then, in the Discussion section, you might say: “We believe that programmers are innately lazy and irresponsible” (this is an interpretation). Yo ..read more

Let’s say you are conducting research to discover programmers’ opinions about their work environments: whether they appreciate their office spaces or not. Preparing a survey with a few questions is essential. Their responses will reveal their thoughts and feelings. After working with several student groups, I’ve noticed a common mistake in questionnaire design—they are too obvious with their questions, simply asking, “How do you feel about this?” There’s a more effective approach. Coffee and Cigarettes (2004) by Jim Jarmusch Typically, to understand people’s thoughts and feelings, we might ask ..read more

An email, a document, a research paper, a presentation, and even a JavaDoc code block consist of paragraphs, which are “self-contained units of discourse in writing dealing with a particular point or idea.” Visually, paragraphs are supposed to be separated by a vertical space that is a bit larger than a vertical spacing between lines. To achieve this, for example, in HTML, we wrap paragraphs in the <p> tag, while in LaTeX, we use \par or just an empty line between them. However, some people insert what are called “soft line breaks” inside paragraphs—this is a bad practice that I suggest ..read more