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Ruby Programming

A Ruby Developer's Life In Kharkiv, Ukraine (theregister.com) 144

Posted by BeauHD from the coding-in-a-war-zone dept.
In an interview with The Register, Victor Shepelev, a Ruby developer and software architect who lives in Kharkiv, Ukraine, shares his experience living in a country being invaded by Russia. He hopes that his situation will encourage international political action to help Ukraine prevail. Here's an excerpt from the interview: The Register: Has your technical knowledge proven useful in your current situation and if so in what way?

Shepelev: Not directly, unfortunately. I am mostly experienced in writing expressive code, designing architectures of long-living systems, and mentoring people, not the most required abilities in wartime.

The Register: Does the Ruby/open source community provide community and support in wartime? Should it function any differently than it has in the context of a crisis?

Shepelev: Sad to say, but I don't feel much support. There are some people in my social circles in the Ruby community who do a lot, but as for the community as a whole, I think it stays mostly indifferent. My pleas to spread the information are by and large ignored. Maybe I am being selfish here, but I see that even small steps that could be done (like banners on sites of big projects, tweets from prominent Rubyists, mentions in newsletters) -- those steps aren't done even by a lot of people I know personally. I know some of them are sending money or helping in some other private ways, but I really lack the feeling of public support, people still mostly think it is some "politics they shouldn't mix with their everyday life." There are others, of course, and to them, I am eternally grateful.

The Register: Is there anything else you'd want people outside Ukraine to know?

Shepelev: We are standing, and we will not fall. But we need as much help as the world can give: with spreading information, with supporting the Ukrainian army, refugees, and humanitarian causes, and with pressuring Russia with any measures that are available. The more help we get, the sooner it will end, the less innocent people struggle or die.
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A Ruby Developer's Life In Kharkiv, Ukraine

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  • The more help we get, the sooner it will end, the less innocent people struggle or die.

    That ... doesn't follow.

    It's just as possible that with more help, it will just prolong the conflict. Sad, but true.

  • The only way forward is real and sincere negotiations for peace. How many times has not negotiating worked out well for the US in foreign policy?
    • Putin has no intention of negotiating. He fooled the whole world for months, saying that he was doing "military exercises" while he was amassing troops to invade Ukraine, something that he had already decided to carry out, and we have evidence of that.

      Still TODAY, Russia are still claiming that they did not invade Ukraine! What negotiation can you have with these people? Their word is worth nothing, and they are morally bankrupt.

      • Negotiations don't work when the other side refuses to acknowledge the validity of Russia's concerns; namely, Russia doesn't accept Ukraine being brought in to NATO or defacto becoming a nuclear weapons armed vassal state of the US. The US has shown, in very recent history, a willingness to invade and destroy whom ever they wish. The US has a much more aggressive and recent history of invading countries through direct and indirect means. Why isn't that acknowledged as a legitimate concern for Russia?
        • I can think about many reasons.
          1) Ukraine isn't a province of Russia. If they want to join NATO, they have all the rights to do so. Ukraine is a subject, not an object.
          2) Ukraine isn't in NATO. Yet Russia have already invaded them twice, and conquered three important pieces of its territory. Conquest isn't recognized by the UN as a legitimate means to alter international borders.
          3) NATO being a defensive alliance, it can't be a threat to any country; it can be a threat, if anything, to a country's aims o

        • Negotiations don't work when the other side refuses to acknowledge the validity of Russia's concerns; namely, Russia doesn't accept Ukraine being brought in to NATO or defacto becoming a nuclear weapons armed vassal state of the US.

          Do you really believe that there was a possibility of Ukraine joining NATO?

          NATO doesn't accept countries with active territorial disputes, much less active territorial disputes with Russia. At least since 2014 NATO membership for Ukraine would have been impossible.

          The US has shown, in very recent history, a willingness to invade and destroy whom ever they wish. The US has a much more aggressive and recent history of invading countries through direct and indirect means. Why isn't that acknowledged as a legitimate concern for Russia?

          Concern in what sense? That the US would invade Russia? That the US would invade Ukraine?

          Can you understand why Ukraine and other former USSR members would want to join NATO?

          • If Ukraine wasn't going to join NATO, why not just agree to Russia's very basic demand that they don't join NATO? It's clear there were plans as billions of dollars of weapons were flooding into Ukraine.

            • If Ukraine wasn't going to join NATO, why not just agree to Russia's very basic demand that they don't join NATO? It's clear there were plans as billions of dollars of weapons were flooding into Ukraine.

              For one thing it was a matter of principal. Russia has no right to tell Ukraine it can't join NATO, for Ukraine to agree to that condition implies that it's a valid request, so it's definitely not something you give away.

              Moreover, even though NATO membership is impossible there is a very strong Ukrainian desire to join NATO since the threat of invasion from Russia is so dire, so it's a very painful concession to make.

              And most importantly, the demand was never just about NATO. It was:

              1) Don't join NATO.
              2) Gi

              • Idk, maybe Russia could put nuclear weapons in Mexico right along the border and see how the USA reacts?

                • So for one thing you're still ignoring the fact that Ukraine joining NATO was an impossibility. They were literally at war with two Russian supplied "breakaway states".

                  And even if Ukraine had joined NATO, the US doesn't station Nukes in many NATO countries, certainly none of the ones close to Russia. [wikipedia.org]

                  Finally, just imagine you were a citizen of Mexico, or Canada (as I am). Would you feel threatened by US invasion? I don't.

                  Now imagine you were a member of the former USSR. Don't you think you'd have a credible

                  • If Ukraine wasn't ever going to be a part of NATO, why not give Russia that assurance?

                    • If Ukraine wasn't ever going to be a part of NATO, why not give Russia that assurance?

                      You're repeating yourself. I already answered that question. Russia had no right to make that demand, accepting the demand implies it was justified, and it was far from Russia's only demand. Giving in would have achieved nothing but make Ukraine weaker in the future.

                    • I repeated myself because the situation is obvious. I assume you are intending to be well meaning and probably have connections to Ukraine. But, the West has been threatening Russia for a long time. The coup, funded out in the open, deposing the neutral government in 2014 was a clear sign of the US's intention to encircle Russia. John Mearsheimer is a pro-US hawk, but even he sees that US foreign policy made this inevitable from 2015: https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4 [youtu.be]

                      Provoking Russia on ideological grounds is

                    • 2014 wasn't a coup. It was a revolution driven by Ukrainians and ultimately caused by the incompetence of pro-Russian President Yanukovych. And even if it was a coup did that really justify the invasion of Ukraine, annexation of Crimea, and creation of the two breakaway states?

                      If you really cared about your Ukrainian friends you'd advocate for sincere peace negotiations.

                      What do you think "sincere peace negotiations" entail? Ukraine poses zero threat to Russia. It wasn't a threat in 2014 and it wasn't a threat in 2022. The only threat was to Putin himself since a Democratic Ukraine showed Russians tha

                    • Ok, I'm ignoring 80% of your comment as it's so extremely biased towards the obviously western MSM narrative. We will likely find out neither side was reporting the situation accurately, but the reporting by western MSM is so extremely biased it's not possible to just split the middle and find the truth.

                      > And you saw the article about what's going on in Donetsk, if you were Ukrainian would you be willing to lay down arms and subject yourself to that?

                      What article?
                    • Also, you conveniently ignored my question: When was the last time US foreign policy was not some kind of bait and switch disaster that turned out to be based entirely on lies?

                    • Ok, I'm ignoring 80% of your comment as it's so extremely biased towards the obviously western MSM narrative. We will likely find out neither side was reporting the situation accurately, but the reporting by western MSM is so extremely biased it's not possible to just split the middle and find the truth.

                      Western MSM isn't perfect. But you seem to be taking the position that the truth lies in the middle between the western MSM and a regime with a history of killing inconvenient journalists and were you can go to jail for 15 years for calling the war a war.

                      > And you saw the article about what's going on in Donetsk, if you were Ukrainian would you be willing to lay down arms and subject yourself to that?

                      What article?

                      Maybe it was in another thread but this [aljazeera.com]. That's not the only account I assure you. Russia has a fairly well documented history of using widespread torture and murder to pacify populations. That's why Ukraine is specifically preparing for an insurgency where [vice.com]

                    • > As for your other question about "bait and switch" the question is vague enough that I can't even begin to think of an appropriate answer. I'd say the Iraq War, easily the least defensible American foreign policy decision since WWII, was vastly more defensible than what Russia did in 2014 or 2022.
                      Well, since you mentioned Iraq, what made it more defensible? How many civilians died through direct US/NATO military action in Iraq? What about the funding of Syrian separatists that ultimately turned into

                    • Well, since you mentioned Iraq, what made it more defensible? How many civilians died through direct US/NATO military action in Iraq?

                      US invaded Iraq to depose a dictator and create a Democracy. Russia invaded Ukraine to install a dictator and destroy a Democracy.

                      Easily more defensible.

                      Now, there's a huge body count because Bush was a moron, though it's hard to tell the eventual body count of Putin's actions now.

                      What about the funding of Syrian separatists that ultimately turned into ISIL?

                      ISIL came from Iraq, not Syria. And the US funded the good Syrian faction.

                      What actually happened is Assad released the Jihadists from jail to help ISIL then focused his forces (and Russia's) on the more secular Democratic minded f

                    • Oh, it's remarkable how many people have died for the US to gift them with "Democracy." I wonder what they and their hypothetical children would vote for if they could? You really should not trust the mainstream/Western narratives about any foreign conflict, in a few years they crumble, but Westerners will have already moved on to "gifting" another country with "Democracy" aka resource extraction, foreign military bases/staging grounds for future invasions, and rock bottom wage jobs.

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