Here you will find the list and overview of my writings published on the Medium platform. This essay-writing project was a reaction to my Advanced Software Paradigms course, and therefore my writings are mainly about technical topics related to my profession. Although, over time I added (and I plan to add) essays concerning more general topics.

Quick List

• What I Learned from George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four"

  My notes and immediate impressions from Orwell's classic book, which tracks my intellectual capacity as of November 2022.

• Full Metal Jacket: Duality of Human Nature and Birth of Empathy

  Analyzing war through the prism of humanity, empathy, and the duality of human nature. I suggest reading the essay on this website.

• Lisp is Beyond Good and Evil

  This is how it all began. I was interested in Lisp programming language, so I researched and wrote a decent article on the matter. But there was a big issue: my total lack of experience in Lisp.

• Beginner's Guide to Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR)

  A fine article I had to research for my Master's Thesis.

• How Cybernetics became Deep Learning

  An article about the evolution of deep learning based on the Deep Learning book.

• What You Should Know About Concurrency

  Article series dedicated to concurrency, based on Robert W. Sebesta's great book Concepts of Programming Languages. I was an immature joker at that time (of course not much changed since), and the Part IV somehow deals with a Tarkovsky movie.

  • Part I
  • Part II
  • Part III
  • Part IV

• Programming Languages Created at Google: Go & Dart

  A simple article on Go and Dart programming languages.

• What C++ Doesn't Know in Java

  Another simple article explaining differences between C++ and Java programming languages.

• Prolog in the Sky with Diamonds

  A beatle inspired musical article on Prolog "the programming language" and Logic Programming Paradigm. Based on the aforementioned Sebesta book.

• Blameless Postmortem Culture: How Google Turns Failures into Successes

  Based on Google's Site Reliability Engineering book advised by my University Professor. A nice article, although the title was common Medium-style clickbaity.

• How Google Tackles Frontend Load Balancing

  From the same Site Reliability Engineering book mentioned above, explaining Google's best practices on Frontend Load Balancing.

• First Principles, Clarice. Simplicity.

  Again, from the SRE book above dealing with the concept of simplicity. Nobody seemed to get the reference to The Silence of the Lambs, understanding 'Clarice' as a typo for 'Clarity'. It is a quote from the movie when Hannibal Lecter tries to help Clarice Starling with her investigation:

  "First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?"

  I listened to the advice when I first saw the movie and read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I admired the book, and read other Stoic writings as well. Unfortunately, Stoicism became mainstream soon after; I also realized that our complete admiration toward a specific philosophy comes from our lack of knowledge in (or even ignorance of) all other philosophies.

• Selling Your Soul in the Bazaar

  Inspired by Eric S. Raymond's famous essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar which was my first introduction to Open-Source. Immediately afterward I wished I had my own html blog with minimal css, where I'd publish ESR or Paul Graham style essays. I remember being motivated by the essay called How To Become A Hacker for a good while. Then something happened. Don't remember what.

• Open-source software licenses

  Trying to figure out what open-source licensing meant for the first time.

• Introduction to Software Architecture Concepts

  Summarizes initial chapters of the Software Systems Architecture textbook - a very dull book (especially, after reading Sebesta) with 500-page-long meaningless theorization of common sense that could have been summarized in 50 pages.

• Concurrent Image Processing in Go

  It was my first serious project (which should be concerning): a code explanation written in Go programming language that concurrently pixelizes images. My first StackOverflow question, GitHub push, Concurrency experience. I was proud (especially after my article series on concurrency).

• Well in the Desert

  Peculiar essay on functional programming languages. I attempted to be a philosopher, trying to explain why it could be worth studying obselete and outdated systems. I also tried to criticize rationality and scientific method. The title comes from the quote in The Little Prince:

  "What makes the desert beautiful," the little prince said, "is that it hides a well somewhere."

  At the time I was idealizing Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's writing. I also liked to recall three more quotes from the book:

  "It's the time that you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important."

  I realized long time ago that chess was my rose.

  "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

  I really liked the taming scene from the book:

  "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."

  I admired the book for a long time, until I was told by others that it was an ordinary book. I understood that there should have been something in me that resonated with the book, and that something was the weakness of my character. I still assume that 'The Little Prince' is one of the finest examples of literature, I just don't idealize it anymore.

• Software Architecture Concepts: Architectural Perspectives

  Summarizing some other chapters from the dull Software Systems Architecture book mentioned above. I also put very little effort into writing it, and here it is - my most-viewed article so far.

• Three Seconds

  A short story dedicated to my grandpa. I only now realize that it was written exactly after 3 years since he passed away.

• Implementation of Dijkstra & A* Pathfinding Algorithms in Go

  Another project explanation coded in Golang for the AI course.

• Heilmeier’s “No Excuse” Technology Transfer Policy

  We learned about Heilmeier Catechism during our studies, and I immediately understood that George H. Heilmeier was a bright man, that I could have learned something from his writings or interviews.

• Three Duels of Barry Lyndon

  The number three for some reason keeps hunting me. "Three-hour-long movie shot in 300 days". I don't quite get how by accident I am forced to always type the number three; for example, recently I wrote a LinkedIn post which, out of my will, started with the following sentence:

  During my studies in Washington DC, I visited the Lincoln Memorial not once but three times.

  I don't know what it all means, but one thing is certain: I admire Kubrick's movies. And 'Barry Lyndon' is no exception.