Developing Emotional Intelligence for Enhanced Team Collaboration

Developing Emotional Intelligence for Enhanced Team Collaboration

Picture this: You’re in a meeting where tensions are rising faster than a soufflé in a hot oven, and suddenly someone with the emotional intelligence of a seasoned diplomat steps in. They don’t just defuse the situation – they transform it into a productive discussion that leaves everyone feeling heard and energized. That’s not workplace magic; that’s emotional intelligence (EQ) in action, and it’s the secret sauce that turns good teams into extraordinary ones....

October 5, 2025 · 7 min · 1417 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Ignoring Performance Metrics to Focus on User Experience

Ignoring Performance Metrics to Focus on User Experience

Picture this: your application loads in 50 milliseconds, has zero memory leaks, and your CPU usage graph looks like a perfectly flat line. Your engineering team is high-fiving in the hallway, the stakeholders are nodding approvingly at the dashboard, and then… users hate it. They’re abandoning your app faster than people leaving a meeting that could’ve been an email. Welcome to the great paradox of modern software development, where we’ve become so obsessed with measuring the machine that we’ve forgotten about the human sitting behind the screen, probably cursing at our “perfectly optimized” creation....

October 5, 2025 · 10 min · 2125 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Building Automated API Testing Systems with Postman and Newman

Building Automated API Testing Systems with Postman and Newman

Let’s face it - manually testing APIs is about as exciting as watching paint dry, and twice as error-prone. If you’ve ever found yourself clicking through the same API endpoints for the hundredth time, muttering under your breath about the futility of human existence, then this article is your salvation. We’re going to build a bulletproof automated API testing system using Postman and Newman that will make your life infinitely easier (and your APIs infinitely more reliable)....

October 4, 2025 · 9 min · 1715 words · Maxim Zhirnov
When Your AI Copilot Becomes a Security Liability: The Hidden Dangers of AI-Generated Code

When Your AI Copilot Becomes a Security Liability: The Hidden Dangers of AI-Generated Code

Picture this: you’re cruising through your morning standup, sipping that perfectly brewed coffee, when your teammate proudly announces they’ve just shipped a feature in record time thanks to their new AI coding assistant. “Generated 200 lines of production code in 10 minutes!” they beam. Meanwhile, somewhere in the depths of your application, a ticking time bomb has just been planted—and it’s wearing a very convincing disguise of clean, functional code. Welcome to the wild west of AI-assisted development, where productivity gains come with a side of existential security dread....

October 4, 2025 · 10 min · 2025 words · Maxim Zhirnov
The Myth of the Self-Taught Programmer: Why Formal Education Still Matters

The Myth of the Self-Taught Programmer: Why Formal Education Still Matters

Let me start with a confession that might ruffle some feathers: I’m tired of the “self-taught programmer success story” narrative that’s been dominating tech Twitter for the past decade. Don’t get me wrong – I have immense respect for anyone who’s clawed their way into this industry through sheer determination and Stack Overflow deep-dives. But somewhere along the way, we’ve created a myth that formal education is not just unnecessary, but somehow inferior to the “real world” learning experience....

October 3, 2025 · 10 min · 2061 words · Maxim Zhirnov