I have a close-to-infinite list of unanswered emails in my inbox. As Paul Graham suggests, some errands, like replying to letters, go away if you ignore them (perhaps taking friends with them). I wonder how many friends that’ll cost me… I have been, actually, following Paul’s advise for the good part of my life. I tend to set aside “less important things” in favor of devoting all my time to “more important things.” It happens, that most of the time I am very preoccupied with one of these “more important things” - like studying, doing research, and applying to PhD programs, most of which are way out of my league. Naturally, replying to my friends’ emails, reading the novels from my long list of “things to enjoy,” going to the gym and running more than once a month - all that usually goes down the drain with lots of other “less important stuff.” Is it worth it? I had better be winning the Nobel prize some time soon to justify all these sacrifices…

My friends to whom I haven’t replied in ages: I apologize. I have been racing against time this semester: I was busy applying to doctoral programs. Filling out an application form is relatively easy. Having some research experience and interesting ideas to back your personal statement is the tough one. Research becomes possible once you have the programming and theoretical background, so learning this or that language/framework/approach changes from being the goal to being only the means to something by far more complicated and time consuming. The second requirement is interesting ideas. These come (as they tell me) after A LOT of thinking about your subject. You think about it day and night - and eventually they may come. Chances are, they won’t. But if you don’t even try - they never will. No, I’m not complaining - it’s all fun… but it can take all your time - what happens to me too often.

No great ideas so far. However, for those who are interested, here’s part of my research statement …which I have to post as a separate entry. It appears that when I coded my blog software, I didn’t anticipate entries longer than 8000 characters. Whoops… How embarassing… Must recode.

I’ve been to my first computer science conference. I made new friends, I met interesting people (most of them infinitely smarter than I’ll ever be…), I had fun. So much to write about… I suppose I have enough material and inspiration for a series of essays of such grandeur and significance that they would challenge and even surpass the works of many renowned masters of both prose and poetry. But I am so busy with my PhD applications that I won’t venture there..

Besides, my advisor has already done that (maybe not the “surpassing” part, although who am I to judge?) - his series of articles/reports on this OOPSLA, in my opinion, are not to be missed by anyone interested in OOP and computer science in general.

I am truly dreadfully busy with my PhD applications. Here’s a very brief account of my trip to OOPSLA.

It was great. I was a student volunteer which, besides free registration, gave me an opportunity to meet with other student volunteers who came literally from all over the world. The conference in general was very international - I met computer scientists, doctoral and masters students from Brazil, Chili, Mexico, Canada, Egypt, Austria, Sweden, France, UK, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Japan - that’s just to mention a few of the ones I personally met. Amazing! Also, many student volunteers, unlike myself, came to the U.S. specially for the conference - which, I think, is quite impressive - so, major kudos to the conference organizers!

I won’t even attempt to describe the sessions - for that, again, try reading my advisor’s essays. Unfortunately, some of the sessions I attended were not exactly within my area of interest -so I didn’t gain much insight from every talk or workshop. Also, I think I won’t be attending many workshops at future conferences. A workshop at OOPSLA was a 3-hour session during which the speaker (or workshop leader) tried to teach the audience a skill or a tool. Didn’t work in most cases. Or rather, in my humble opinion, it wasn’t the most efficient way to learn a skill or a tool. Maybe I feel that way because i am a graduate student and I have grown accustomed to learning myself what I can’t learn in class in a much more efficient manner. maybe if I were in industry, a workshop would be an ideal solution. Although, quite possibly, I will change my opinion after attending a conference on information retrieval, which, I suppose, is closer to my area of research than OOP, agile, TDD, wikis and other topics discussed at OOPSLA.

Listening to keynote speakers, but most importantly - interacting with other conference participants - was what I found to be most insightful and interesting. My new friends and me - we talked about my research, we talked about their research, we talked about grad school and research in general, we talked about our future and what not…

I was pleasantly surprised when my research topic was very well received by my more experienced peers. My idea (which is not entirely mine - Professor O’Kane deserves at least half the credit for it (hint-hint: better grade, please, professor? - the idea I’ve described before - about using Open Directory to auto-classify the Wikipedia English content - was found interesting and quite promising. So I might be onto something intereting.

My new friends -

Hani is originally from Egypt, he is a student at University at Buffalo, SUNY, he is currently working on visualizing errors in OO programs. Like myself, he comes from a different academic background and has been doing computer science for several years - not since childhood. He’s very happy with his field, I think he’ll end up starting his own company some day. Hani succeeded in dragging me out to the gym - but only once. We both have athletic backgrounds in the same sport, the difference is - he still works out and stays in shape, I don’t. Although I’ve recently started running (I ran about 7 miles one afternoon at the conference!) I’m still ages away from Hani. Because i am lazy.

Stephane is from Montreal. His father is a professor of computer science - so he was among the lucky once who grew up knowing all the concepts the rest of us have to study hard. (although I was lucky too - my parents were linguists and my father spoke only English to me - so I grew up knowing both languages, while the rest of …you? had to study a second language. They say it’s hard - studying a foreign language - oh well, maybe it is - you tell me.. The day before the conference we went to see the Ocean (I miss it so much here in Iowa!) and ended up playing catch in the waves with a tennis ball we found in the seaweeds. Not that we gathered a crowd, but the people were quite amazed - we were the only ones in the water besides the surfers, who had wetsuits. But hey, one form Canada, the other from Russia - we have our own definitions of cold!

I also met Daniel from the Digital Enterprise Research Institute in Austria who works on using wikis to develop ontologies. Our areas might be related - so we agreed to share ideas. I met Rebecca from Sweden who is a graphic designer - not a computer scientist - and yet is very involved in the patterns community. Rebecca was lots of fun, the most memorable occasion was going out to a salsa club - Rebecca and 9 OOPSLA guys - she danced with most of us (those who dared!) - even those who didn’t know what they were doing, like yours truly!

To sum up my experience at OOPSLA, I’ll say this: I think I have sort of “arrived” - I’ve seen the community a member of which I’m gradually becoming, and it felt very much “at home.” Now watch me fail at my PhD applications and go to New York to become a cabbie

Everybody knows that 42 is the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. Even Google Calculator knows that. But who can boast having their picture taken in deep space on board of the Heart of Rust (the predecessor of the Heart of Gold)!

do click for full picture

I must post several pages of research diaries tonight… I just had to give myself a break

Yesterday I came up with an idea which should help me post more often. As I have mentioned on several occasions, writing about my classes and research helps me better understand the concepts I’m trying to master in computer science. The more I write about it, the easier it gets. However, I don’t write as often as I’d like to (big surprise!). The reason for that is not the absence of material - there’s plenty! - but rather my fear to post poorly structured entries, entries I could’ve worked on and eventually perfected (to a certain extent of course). That’s the journalist in me speaking.

Another reason which holds me back from posting is quite ridiculous. Often my thoughts float in area only a few nerds like myself care about. True, there’re millions of us somewhere out there; but still, I fear that students like myself have their own problems to solve and my entry would be just too subjective to provide any kind of interest to anyone other than myself. I think I’m wrong.

All this forces me to reconsider every time I think of posting a random thought on this or that area of my studies. So I’ve found a compromise. I’ve added Research Diaries to my blog – it’s a blog within a blog. These entries will be random, they will be geared towards …hmm… myself, they will be related to my classes and research. To spare my readers from encounting my streams of thought in the raw (what a dreadful thing that is!), I’ll be posting the full text version of my diaries in the Research section of this site. Only the first paragraph will appear in this blog (with a link to the fuill text), and the posting will be tagged as a “research diaries entry.”

It is possible that I am entirely wrong, and I do indeed have readers who come to this site to read about my research. If so, this new feature might be annoying (two clicks instead of one!) – in which case, please let me know, and I’ll continue posting full-text entries, no matter whether it’s an essay about Life, the Universe and Everything, or a frustraited post about my inability to cope with the Pumping lemma. By the way, over the past month I’ve had a little over 500 unique visitors (excluding known robots) from all over the world. Thanks for reading, folks! I’ll post more often.

 Update from 12/6/2007: it didn’t work. Posting regular entries still makes most sense.

It’s been three months since my last entry. I’m concerned that I don’t post more often, for I was hoping that my blog would help me in my studies. Reflecting on my day-to-day progress in computer science would cause me to rethink the concepts I have learned (or failed to learn), thus helping me get a better understanding of the complicated subjects I’m trying to master. And yet, I hardly ever post an entry.

My problem is not time. My problem lies in my expectations. Maybe I should blame my background in journalism, maybe - the high quality essays I read on other blogs; but the fact is - every time I sit down to write a post, I write something, deem it not good enough – and that’s the end of it – for it goes to the “drafts” folder where it is forgotten and eventually quietly dies, alone, in the rain…

Therefore, I have to remind myself, that this blog is mine, that “this task has been appointed to me, and if I do not find a way – no one will…” (naturally, being a Tolkien geek, I can’t help inserting quotes from The LOTR, both where they belong, and where they don’t). I apologize to my readers (believe it or not, I’ve had a few over the past months!), for this blog from now on will be, most likely, less entertaining. I certainly promise to stay away from the “daily routine” style of blogging; but I’ll try to focus a lot more on my daily studies, discussing projects only myself and my professors care about, describing programs of great value to me (and zero value for the rest of the world), and sharing my frustrations about simple algorithms which the rest of the world understands – but I don’t.

There is a reason for me being so concerned about my studies, a reason besides me liking one class or disliking another. There has been a change of plans recently – I have decided to shoot for a PhD in computer science. Therefore, my studies have taken a completely new meaning: instead of trying to learn this or that language or technology which will help me get a job, I’m now trying to understand this or that concept – so that sometime later I can invent my own language or technology.

I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a PhD every once in a while over the past several years, never seriously enough to give it a second thought. My former fellow students were enjoying “the real world” out in Chicago, New York, DC, London – I was too busy dreaming of a “real life,” I couldn’t afford spending extra years in school. Then it happened – I was about to be offered a chance to escape into the world. For reasons I wrote about in my previous entry, I decided to stay in school.

Then interesting things started happening.

First, it became clear to me that what I was doing on my University job was more interesting than what I would’ve ended up doing had I taken the offer from the “real world.” I work for the University; I build multi-tier data-driven applications, mostly using the .Net framework. Sometime soon I’ll blog about the projects I’m working on - I find most of them to be very exciting. My point is this: I’ve noticed that the more I study, the more interesting my work becomes, the more complex systems I’m entrusted to design. Several years ago I designed web sites. Then I started building simple script-based content management systems. Then I moved on to writing real programs. Today I build accounting applications, online stores, communities; I design frameworks for building other applications. Thinking back, it is a bit more exciting than writing html. Thinking even more back, I think I find it way more interesting than negotiating contracts or managing strategies (unless of course we’re not talking of the strategy pattern!) Anyway, the more I learn - the more exciting my day-to-day life becomes. That was a discovery!

I also teach training sessions in .Net for my colleagues (which reminds me that I should have posted the next assignment 2 weeks ago!) - and that probably had an even greater impact on my decision. You see, up until now (or maybe until a few months ago) I did not really know that I knew enough programming to become a professional (not just write code of questionable quality). I certainly didn’t expect I had enough knowledge to share it with others… I may be the worst instructor my colleagues have ever had (teaching OOP and .Net is much more challenging than teaching advertising and PR, which I briefly taught in the past), but the mere fact that people whom I respect as professionals come to class to listen to what I have to say, is a great inspiration for me.

My decision not to look into the possibility of moving on to a “real job” right now, the training sessions I teach, as well as my little personal victories in class led me to the realization that I can, in fact, pursue further studies; that I can, in fact, become a “master programmer” someday, invent my own language, write my own books, teach advanced classes, maybe “launch a google or two” - and in any case, spend my time doing very interesting things in the company of very smart people. Pursuing a PhD in computer science sounds quite fitting.

…That is, until I’m stopped in my tracks by the next algorithm I can’t understand. Then I’ll pack my bags and will run off to New York City to become a cabbie

It’s been a very long time since I posted my last entry. I have been very busy both with my studies and my many jobs, at least too busy to write a meaningful entry. I meant for this blog to be an interesting diary of sorts, which primary purpose would be to reflect on my progress in computer science, certainly with some diversions to other topics which I find interesting. As time goes by, I realize that if I try to make each entry a masterpiece in one way or another, there’ll be no entries. On the other hand, I don’t want to fall to the level of “today was Wednesday, I ate breakfast, went to class, etc…” I’d like to find the perfect, or as Russians say - the Golden Middle, a compromise between writing great stuff and writing at all.

The other day I was looking at a job opportunity. To be quite honest, I’m not even sure it was as close as an actual offer – it looks like I turned down the opportunity before it materialized as a specific set of options; but it was damn close. However, the job was mostly about updating web sites. HTML, scripting, occasional programming here and there… but who knows where it would’ve taken me? You know, I would’ve jumped on that job three, maybe even two years ago, no questions asked. I remember once I was so terrified with my worse than pathetic progress in my studies, I even ran away to Chicago to seek my fortune. Very soon I got hungry, but most importantly – bored – and before too long returned back to my studies. But had I been offered this job at that time – I would’ve taken it no matter what!

I didn’t take it.

There are still areas in computer science I shy away from, some I find boring (well, not really boring, I just can’t catch that spark of excitement which I did in areas like design patterns, programming languages, OOP… In fact, one of my professors who teaches computer systems/architecture has all the right to grin and say “progress indeed!” – especially after grading the test I took today.

And yet, I suppose I’ve been making progress. And no matter how much time and effort my jobs and my classes demand, I end up enjoying most of it (once I get it of course…) I suspect that if I stay on it, I might have a chance of having a rather exciting life, at least more exciting than arranging text on a webpage.

Back to the job opportunity. Have you read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? In the last book, Mostly Harmless, Arthur Dent visits an oracle on planet Hawalius (the entire planet is inhabited by prophets and oracles). He asks her for advice - “…just sort of general advice… what to do with life, that sort of thing…” So she photocopies some notes for him. Is that the advice?

“No,” said the old lady. “It’s the story of my life. You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead. Now, as you look through this document you’ll see that I’ve underlined all the major decisions I ever made to make them stand out. They’re all indexed and cross-referenced. See? All I can suggest is that if you take decisions that are exactly opposite to the sort of decisions that I’ve taken, then maybe you won’t finish up at the end of your life” — she paused, and filled her lungs for a good shout — “in a smelly old cave like this!”

What about the turn I didn’t take a few days ago? Will it be part of a similar story of MY life?

The other day I was discussing my blog with my academic advisor. He suggested that seeing the evolving thinking of a graduate student about his research might make a good serial read. So, I suppose instead of trying to impress my readers with ground-breaking ideas, I’ll simply reflect on my learning process. I know for certain that I will find this both interesting and useful. Maybe I’ll be not the only one

Speaking of “evolving thinking” - here’s how I got here: ages ago, when I was young and hopeful, after experiencing major disappointment with my career (as well as Life, the Universe and Everything), I decided to switch from web design and public relations to something completely new - computer science. Why? Because I wanted to live my life doing something cool. Since I wasn’t about to go to Mars, become James Bond or find a secret passage to Middle-earth (I’m still looking though), I figured becoming a computer scientist might be as close to “cool” as I can get.

Here’s my application essay which I submitted to the Department of Computer Science at UNI in June 2001. It’ll give you an idea of just how clueless I was about the field at that time; but hey - my “thinking has evolved”
Today, in 2005, after retaking numerous classes, spending what seems like centuries in front of the computer screen and watching generations of college students come and go, I’m terrified with the possibility of NOT having made that switch. It has become clear to me that most likely I will be studying/learning new stuff all my life. It has also become clear to me that that’s okay.

Welcome, Visitor!

At the time of this writing I am a graduate student in computer science at the University of Northern Iowa. I’m starting this weblog for many reasons: I like telling stories; I’m often surprised and thrilled by the unexpected twists and turns my life takes, after which I can’t wait to share my experiences. Also, I am fascinated by talking to the “Internet audience” – you never know in what part of the world your homepage might be appearing on the screen; it’s 2005, and yet I still find this to be very cool.

I also have a hope that keeping this online diary will help me with my studies. Maybe through reflection I will better understand the ideas and concepts I am studying; maybe I will learn something new from what I write, and maybe - from those who might be reading this someday.

Since this is my first post, I will briefly introduce myself. I grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia. I got my undergraduate in Journalism at St.Petersburg State University; however, I soon discovered that journalism was not exactly my cup of tea. I like writing, but not to the extent of making it my career; besides news writing is very different from the relaxed, opinion-packed and completely independent creative process I am enjoying right now.

So, instead of becoming a journalist and writing about politics and business and what not, I became somebody else and had a blast playing around with business and what not during the wild and sometimes strange times of the Russian 1990s, when the country was getting its first taste of free market economy with all the glamorous “ups” and disastrous “downs” that came with it. When the smoke settled down, Russia was ready to enter the new millennium, and I was ready to explore the rest of the world.

I came to the U.S. in 1999, as a graduate student in public relations. If it had been not for my involvement with the Public Relations Student Society of America as well as the inspiring enthusiasm of my professors, I would’ve cooled down to PR rather fast. However, I enjoyed an almost unrestricted program of study, exploring the field of communication management through organizing national conferences, researching international corporate mergers and building all sorts of web sites - thus contributing to the field by creating new communication venues. It was very cool! Eventually, with my gloves down and head in the clouds, I missed a straight one from Her Majesty Reality which sent me tumbling over the ropes: real-world public relations was not about conferences, mergers or web sites – it was about writing news releases, and believe me – I was the worst news release writer there ever was.

Certainly, there is a lot more to PR than that; I have only seen the tip of the iceberg. But I suppose I was just too lazy to work my way up (or down – if it’s an iceberg?), so I took some time off, and tried to dig up everything that attracted, excited or intrigued me throughout my life, no matter whether it was reading a sci-fi novel, hosting an event, or playing Stonekeep. Did I find The Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything? I do not know yet. But two months later I applied for the graduate program in computer science at the University of Northern Iowa.

Now, four years later, programming is still like magic to me (which explains the title of this blog); although now I am beginning to learn some spells, and who knows, someday I might be joining the ranks of the high priests of computer science. But no matter where I end up, this journey fascinates me.