Notes

I was developing payment documents in our configuration last week and came across an incredibly redundant solution to a primitive problem. Sorry, I can't keep to myself.

Just imagine: you have a document, which contains several tabular sections. Each of them has a comment field. You make a print form for this document; if at least one row of any TS contains a comment — you need to use one template 1, if there are no comments — template 2.

The task is pretty primitive, isn't it? All of us have done something like this a million times. Just read the selection, use IsBlankString() on the comment field and load the appropriate template. Coffee time!

However, instead of a short cycle, I saw this:

There is a chain of queries, in the lowest of which we scan all the TS (which, I remind you, we just raked out for printing). We are looking for comments in them, then we group the result several times and return it to the script.

Well, I'm not even talking about the load on the DBMS (I would venture to guess that this trick doesn't give a noticeable effect — after all, the selection is going to be small). It's just… Well… Checking a selection of rows is, like, five lines of code. Clear, simple, short, Sonar has no room to swear. How could you give birth to this? Because of great love for queries?

You know what? I bet that it's the correct answer. I can almost see this programmer, who has just mastered the query language more or less tolerably. He is in the absolute delight of new opportunities, so… If all you have is a hammer, everything around looks like nails.

15 September 2021 1С work code smell

I did not notice when I gave up the habit of pedantically commenting on every method with which I have to work. This practice has some clever name for sure, but I don't care, to be honest. I mean the style when a description is added to every meaningful block of code, like this:

The meaning here is simple: when you dig in some dense legacy and run back and forth between chaotically scattered, big procedures — it is rather difficult to keep the logic of each of them in your head. The next cup of coffee will wash everything away. Therefore, such notes greatly speed up orientation on the ground, and the more time passes between approaches to the code, the more noticeable the effect.

However, at some point it became clear that this know-how is just a crutch supporting the frankly crappy code design. If you have a long procedure or function - take a breath, sit down and cut the fatty one into smaller methods. You will save both time and nerves, and you will figure out the code faster, and you will delight SonarCube.

8 September 2021 1С code smell

I posted on GitHub a Python script which I use to sync files between my PC and a NAS. I have a Synology DS220j; a lot of software comes with it, including a backup utility. However, it seems to have been made for show only: the program began to fail even at the setup stage, so I lost confidence in it pretty fast.

I suffered with the problem for some time and eventually returned to the good old rclone, which has only two problems for me. Firstly, I can't normally connect to an SMB share: yes, the login and password can be saved in Windows and rclone will use them, but OS will forget it as soon as possible. I got out of the situation by connecting my NAS as an external drive.

Secondly, I had many files and folders to sync: a directory here, a directory there, a config from there, a profile from here… In order not to produce spaghetti code, I wrote a simple script that takes sources and receivers from a config file, and then executes rclone for each pair.

7 June 2021 done Python workplace

On the screenshot above my little one is just letting me know where she is: walking down the street, at the school, at a playground. It's not her fault that I have a sort of nerd view: when I look at this chat I see nothing but code on Gherkin, which is just a bit broken. A little patch here and there and it will be fine :-)

And I exit home
Then I enter school
And I exit school
Then I gonna swing

We use Gherkin to write our autotests for Vanessa Automation. I can't say I've made very many of them, especially in comparison with some of my colleagues… Well, it seems like I've made them enough to twist the reality a few.

19 October 2020 1С family work

Yesterday morning, I was buying gifts for my women. While a florist was makings bouquets for me, we had a small talk and I suddenly caught her eye. She was looking at the growing crowd of customers with calmness and a clearly readable shadow of doom. This is probably how sailors looking at a surging wave which is about to bury their boat :-)

People outside the flower industry grin sometimes — they say, eight of March is such a magical holiday for all the florists who make a fortune in ten hours. Well, income is really good these days, but literally anybody who has ever worked in this sphere more often associates the holiday (and a couple of days before it, by the way) with a monstrous strain on health and nerves.

I can say that I got off cheaply: was just deploying and servicing some IT of a local net of flower shops, nothing more (by the way, I want to proudly recommend my former colleagues!). Nonetheless, the smell of flowers caused me Vietnam syndrome for a long time :-)

9 Marth 2020 meanwhile

You're sliding down the side of a mountain and trying to feel an equilibrium point, for the hundredth time. However, your nagging back is the only thing you're able to feel, and the Vaas speech from Far Cry 3 isn't going out of your mind.

Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact… Same fucking thing… Over and over again expecting… Shit to change… That. Is. Crazy.

― Vaas Montenegro, Far Cry 3

Surprisingly, you're certainly satisfied with the trip when it's done.

There's some kind of magic in it.

1 December 2018 sport

There is a good note from Maxim Ilyahov about a way of analyzing something which doesn't concern you but annoys you anyway. It's reminded me of an American principle of non-judgemental attitude which I read about a couple of years ago. As for me, it uses different words to make the same point.

By the way, this principle presents in Russia too — there is even a famous adage “don't be judgemental so you won't be judged”. What a pity for us that it isn't so widespread yet.

2 September 2018 meanwhile

Natalia O'Shea has sung a Jaina's song in a Russian version of a trailer for a future update of World of Warcraft. As for me, she's extraordinary good in it — I mean, she knows how to make a proper mood and season a speech with steel.

By the way, speaking about her and “Melnitsa” as a whole thing — all of their most powerful songs are about something particular. We were at a concert dedicated to the “Luciferase” release and it's hard to compare, seriously. Perhaps, I didn't know something essential to understanding a context, but sometimes it was even barely possible to figure out a story which I was hearing.

Just watch a video I posted under. You don't need to know something special about the World of Warcraft universe, do you? For example, I haven't played WoW and not planning to do it, but the end of the song literally creeps me out :-)

29 Jule 2018 videogames

Perhaps you already know that Eliezer Yudkowsky's “Methods of Rationality” in Russian is going to be published as a standard book (thanks to “Evolution” and other information partners), but I still want to remind again.

The book is really good, I had written about it a couple of years ago. It teaches useful things in such an attractive way that it's really hard to stop reading. The whole text is in public access, but if you want a hard copy — you can make a request now.

22 Jule 2018 books

Cambridge just sent me results of my FCE exam in June and — dramatic drum roll — I passed it! According to the statement of results, I made a bunch of mistakes in writing tasks but particularly took it out during a Speaking test. It's a pity that examiners don't give comments and reasons so it's hard to estimate the results properly; however, it's quite clear what to do next :) My English teacher said that Cambridge used to provide an overall score only earlier and it sounded like “take it any way you want, dear pretenders”.

Well, I guess I should begin my preparation for CAE in the next year.

Speaking about languages, I remembered Feynman with his famous “Surely You're Joking”. Among many things, he told that he learned to play on a frigideira when he lived in Brazil and had reached so high level of skill that he served as a model for local musicians.

My theory is that it's like a person who speaks French who comes to America. At first they're making all kinds of mistakes, and you can hardly understand them. Then they keep on practicing until they speak rather well, and you find there's a delightful twist to their way of speaking their accent is rather nice, and you love to listen to it.

― Richard Feynman, ”Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!”

As for me, there is a lot of efforts between “all kinds of mistakes” and “love to listen”, but it is such a good synopsis. Working on it!

15 Jule 2018 books English

1C:Enterprise has a convenient and accustomed method of showing information for a user — it's a UserMessage object. It outputs messages at the bottom of a form and suddenly it's a potential problem. The thing is, most users don't look at it. It's like: well, I see no critical errors for now so there is nothing to worry about.

Therefore, in case an error happens or you just have an essential message, you should show it through a dialogue window — by the ShowQueryBox() method or a ShowMessageBox() method, for example. Otherwise, a user may not notice a problem and continue to work in spite of some action might not be executed or might be executed in a wrong way. The issue will come out later and you will be rightfully blamed for it.

In addition, using of a UserMessage object should be prohibited in case of small service forms. Yes, in fact, it's hard to overlook a text if a window is small, but that's a different matter: the messages below literally devour form's workspace and it becomes hard to work with.

30 April 2018 1С

The artist is Adam Ellis.

As for me, it's a great illustration for an everlasting moan “why do you always stare at your smartphone blah blah blah”. A reason is quite simple: people have their friends, books, podcasts, games, and YouTube in their smartphones. It's much more fun than a frowning man or a grim women with guru syndrome next to them, for example.

The same is true of children. Social networks are full of arguments about it, but a reason is still the same: if a teenager flips through pictures in his phone in front of you, you bore him and a problem obviously is you.

31 Marth 2018 meanwhile

I was trying to understand how to transliterate my surname properly yesterday. Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it should be written as “Kostianetskii” in English — with double “i” at the end. It's the quite rare combination: “skiing” is the only frequency word that I'm able to remember.

It caused my curiosity and I googled it. The possible reason I came across is funny: cursive writing! Double “i” looks well only on a computer screen but it suddenly turns into “u” when you try to write it on paper.

More details are here.

9 Marth 2018 English

Feedback is one of the coolest things in my work. It's not my first year of programming and I've written a lot of tools, mechanics and interfaces. However, ever complicated mechanism working as it should is… I don't know. It's like hearing “yes” on a graduation party, again and again :-)

It partially compensates another side of the coin. I mean a case when you are trying to understand one hundred levels of some application's abstraction for the hundredth time, again and again, through a lot of mistakes. Meanwhile, it's 2 a.m. already and coffee had replaced blood in your veins ages ago.

5 Marth 2018 work

Sometimes when you developing some complex mechanic you don't have enough time time for the adequate naming of variables. As a result, there is a lot of mysterious WhatTheHeck, ApplyMagic and bunch of other LivingFailures.

It's what you should avoid despite it looks funny. You'll rewrite code you've written month or two later and it will be hard to shame its author because it is you.

17 February 2018 1С films

I have translated Stardew Valley fan manga on a wave of enthusiasm at the end of July (SV is an enormously addictive farmer simulator which went out a couple of years ago).

It was an amusing experience. Firstly, an author of the manga is Chinese and her work was already translated from Chinese to English. I'm not sure what was the bigger problem — cultural differences or language skills, but several frames were a bit difficult to understand what's going on. Secondly, I've figured out that it's a real challenge to pick proper Russian words and not to get something like a quote from an official government's letter in the end.

So, a part of sense had lost during the process, I guess, although I tried to keep everything I could and even had a word with the author in order to solve the most problematic cases. It was quite funny — I don't know Chinese, she doesn't know Russian, so our a bit poor English was the only way to understand each other.

Something could have been translated better, I suppose, and several pictures definitely could have been changed more accurately. But you know what? Hell it out, perfection is a cruel mistress and I like the result yet. Yeah, there is no big deal or something like it — a drawing style is quite common, a plot has no significant differences with the game, but… I don't know. Perhaps, visual novels made a too sentimental son of a bitch out of me :-)

Thanks to Alice for helping me with image processing, Lem for helping me with the translation and Marika for the inspiration. And, sure, thanks to Quantus for the manga.

14 August 2017 English videogames

Just finished reading “Harry Potter and Methods of Rationality” — the epic fanfic based on the you-know-whose universe. An author is a tough specialist in the field of artificial intelligence and interesting on his own, but his book is what I insistently recommend to read.

First of all, it is the magnificent rethinking of the original saga. Many aspects seem not less fascinating, I may say; moreover, the plot itself is certainly excellent — I read two-thirds of the story without switching Gene Wilder off :-) Nevertheless, the author was skillful enough to make all points meet and finish a storyline in such a pretty way that I had almost nothing to complain about.

In any case, this book is a well way to meet with a lot of scientific and just interesting things which were mentioned along the way. The author is smart and his book is a smart one too.

6 November 2016 books