Recently my colleague and I were going from Kyiv to Dnipropetrovs'k by train. During the journey we had more or less comfortable seats and almost 6 hours of free time. When battery of my laptop ran off after watching the Planet of the Apes we started reading articles opened in many tabs on my colleague's FireFox. Here goes the list (not complete though):

• In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome by Joel Spolsky;
• Five things I hate about Emacs and Vim;
• Editor: vi or emacs?;
• How to Make Wealth by Paul Graham.

Do you think this list is random? I think not.

PS Check out the headline picture of Emacs and Vi. Wouldn't it with symmetrical picture fully describe the situation around Vi and Emacs?

Recently the food superstore I usually visit to buy food for my family introduced new size of parcels that they sell at the check out. Generally it is a good idea to offer smaller (and thus cheaper) parcels for those who do not need large ones. But let's look at this new offer from another point of view. Earlier the dialog at the check out started with

— Do you need a parcel? — Yes, thank you. (or No, thank you.)

And now it goes as

— Do you need a parcel? — Yes. (or No, thank you. And that is ok.) — Large or small one? — Hm... Well... I guess, large one.

You see, now selling a parcel takes at least twice as much time as it did before. And the new offer that was aimed at increasing customer satisfaction those on the line are really irritated by the process of parcel selection.

In fact, the process is more than two times slower. The reason is that first question does not really require a decision from you. You kind of know beforehand whether you need the parcel. But the second question gives you choice and asks to decide. And that is where one really needs to take his time and think.

Generally speaking, choice is good when it adds real alternatives. And in that case the choice should be supported by effective decision making process so that overall efficiency is not affected.

Recently when I got stuck in a traffic jam I noticed a man in a car nearby me. He had his window open so I could see everything inside his car.

You know, every car has seat belts to prevent drivers and passengers from hitting the steering wheel or other elements of the front panel in case of an emergency. Of course, you must fasten your seat belt when you are in car. To remind you that modern cars have a system to warn you when you did not fasten seat belt.

Unfortunately drivers' culture in Ukraine is still low and many see fastening seat belt as a sign of weakness and do not do that even in modern cars which produce that really painful sound to warn. But how can they drive with that sound in ears, you would ask. To get rid of the sound they put the belt through the back of the seat and fasten. This way the system thinks that the belt is ok while the driver is not fastened!

And so did the driver I saw. But he need to somehow ensure his safety, so he put some small icons which you often can see in cars in Ukraine on the front panel. How can it be that a man does nothing to ensure his own safety, but expect God to do everything for him?! I guess it is in post-soviet mentality of our nation. And over time we have to get out of belief that one does not really need to work hard to build his own success, but can expect havens to just give it to him. We must quit the habit of relying on somebody else instead of taking responsibility of our own lives.

So fasten seat belt and go ahead to your success!

No wonder that in developing countries like Ukraine IT ties to educational centers, because graduates usually do not have enough funds to move to another city and paying relocation bonuses is not common as companies want to keep their costs low. And Outsourcing to Ukraine 2007 Market Study by Goal Europe just confirms that. In Ukraine outsourcing companies are located mainly in traditional scientific centers which were able to preserve maturity and experience of scientific schools from Soviet times and amplify their potential by taking opportunities offered by modern world.

The report says

Some of the main reasons for deteriorating quality of education are low salaries of the teaching personnel and outdated theoretical knowledge, as well as the inflexibility of many universities in preventing the practitioners of software development from teaching additional courses in those universities.

Flexibility and willingness to take new opportunities are reasons why some universities take the lead while others are trying to get along with reputation they had in the past.

What surprises me a bit is that report says that there are around 30,000 graduates theoretically (good word, right?) suitable for software development jobs. When I did my own calculation, very inaccurate though, I came to conclusion that there are about 500 IT graduates each year in Dnipropetrovs'k and I can hardly believe that Dnipropetrovs'k produces only 1.6% of all IT graduates. Probably, we use different approaches to calculate the numbers. Anyway it will be interesting to see what other reports or studies say on this matter.

SoftServe continues its lead by achieving most competencies among IT companies in Ukraine. Microsoft also recognizes SoftServe's accomplishments by selecting the company among top finalists for the 2007 Microsoft Partner of the Year Award in Custom Development Solutions, Web Development.

Not only this distinguishes SoftServe from other outsourcing services providers in Eastern Europe and proves that the company is valuable partner for its clients, but also highlights that SoftServe great and exciting place to work at. Check out our vacancies.

I long thought if I want to publish these photos with kind permission of the author. First photo shows greatness of  local university by depicting a braindump of a student before exam on Software Engineering:

Unfortunately, exam was held in this auditorium (and, to my pity, such auditoriums are not uncommon):

Going to REMIX'07 in Budapest I've made a 800 km journey by train through almost all of the Ukraine. To my pity every here and there along the rail-road I saw abandoned industrial buildings which are slowly ruined by rains and winds as the time goes. Such a landscape makes you even more sad if you think that 10-15 years ago some people did build those buildings for purpose. And those buildings were real accomplishments on the way to their goals. But then something changed and suddenly nobody was interested in using and keeping then. Nobody had enough courage (or vision, probably) not to build and nobody had enough persistence (or vision, again) to make real use of the building.

Now all those buildings appear to be a waste. Waste of resources, money and human energy. I'm sure you've seen such monuments of waste everywhere: on the Web, as abandoned sites, in day-to-day life, as goods or tools or whatever that were bought but never used, on the streets, as flower-beds that are no longer taken care about.

You do not have that much time and energy to invest into waste. So carry projects you start through to make sure that your efforts will not be called waste some day and start only project you really want to carry through.

How do you define “dead technology”? My definition is that dead technology is no longer used to build new systems. Old legacy systems may be still running, may be still maintained, but no new development takes place. ComputerWorld proposes top 10 list of dead technologies.

It is amusing how some technologies gained to much momentum that we are speaking of them half-a-century after they were first introduced.

Evaluation period of my copy of BlogJet approaches its end. While I like the tool in general I’m still not sure if I want to spend another $40 on it. I got used to BlogJet as it has all of the features you need for effective blogging, but there are issues that really irritate me:

• I did not manage to get it to work through authentication-protected proxy.
• I did not manage to get image upload to work properly. Somehow it tries to recreate the folder where I want to upload images and naturally fails.
• It does not work with tags on Blogger.

Still have 3 days to think.