Jobs: the story of Maxim Kuz'kina architect Parallels

I combine multiple roles in the company - has historically been the system architect of our desktop virtualization products. They are based on a single platform, in the creation of which I was directly involved. Therefore, I am also actively involved in the coordination of functional many of our decisions, determining how we will develop from a technical point of view. From the latest projects - a Parallels Upgrade to Windows 7 (One of the most difficult in terms of performance scenarios product) Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac, and Parallels Workstation Extreme. Of course, often have to himself and to program - the eve of the release of hands is never enough.

How does your workplace?

My workplace - this is a great table by the window, which is always two laptops. One - PC, the other - Mac. On my desk is always a lot of books and paper. I really love all over again to write on paper, try to structure their thoughts on how best to tackle the task of developing a particular features, etc. Then we all as a team discussing, redraw, and only then undertake the development. In general, I support the idea, first think about it and then do it. Because in the long run program is not as difficult thing to understand, that in fact you need to create, to invest in the product. From my experience of working with very advanced people - good thing it happened that a lot of good to Parallels engineers - no problem to do something, when there is a good understanding of the problem. At the same time, problems can arise when it is not clear what should be done, or misunderstood the idea of ​​the market. A book I prefer to read "old-fashioned" paper - even favorite iPad I still could not rid myself of this habit.

What hardware do you use?

As I said, I always work with two machines in a very similar configuration:

- Lenovo Thinkpad T500 15.4 "Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB RAM (multi-boot between Windows 7 Pro 64-bit and Ubuntu 9.10« Karmic »64-bit)

- Apple MacBook Pro 15.4 "with Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB RAM (multi-boot between Mac OS 10.6.4 and Windows XP Pro SP3 32-bit in Boot Camp)

In general, to the choice of iron I come solely as consumers are not bothered. For me the most important thing is that it was a lot of memory and present hardware virtualization. Now almost all computers meet these requirements.

Depending on what project I'm doing, I use either one or the other machine. Switch between platforms I have globally a few times a year. Therefore, it is impossible to give preference to any particular operating system - I appreciate it. And between laptops is certainly worth a phone. In my work, this is a very important tool, because because of the geographical distribution of our company, the difference in time zones is necessary to participate in a variety of konfkollov discussing with the status command projects. Of course, I have been actively using the mobile phone. iPhone has become a gadget for me, without which it is hard for me to imagine my life. At the same time, a long time I resisted, not fundamentally bought his iPhone, considering it a "fashionable toy." But one day I gave it, and away we go! Now he is completely satisfied with me, and like a telephone, and as a means of mobile Internet access, as well as to work email. I used various smartphones based on Windows Mobile, Symbian and Blackberry - is not gone. But iPhone'om I was filled and even transplanted the whole family on it.

Houses have a computer store that seamlessly distributed throughout the apartment... Once I decided to count and counted more than 10 cars. Everyone in the family has a laptop. One common computer for watching movies and for gaming (Core 2 Quad with 8GB RAM and nVidia GeForce GTS 250 running Windows 7 Home 64-bit, connected to a home theater by HDMI). At home I have two servers are (pretty little old single-core Pentium II + SUSE 8.2 and Pentium IV + Windows 2003): my home infrastructure is distributed between them. I can not say that it is very advanced, but in any case, that's all I need to complete the work of the home, if needed: VPN, mail server, backup, file server, a torrent server, version control, and bugtracker. Houses are two marshutizatora: D-Link DI-808HV stands at the entrance to the local area network (it was chosen mainly because of the very convenient housing - it was easy mount), and in addition should Linksys WRT160N (I set it so that you can work at home with 802.11n network, because of the speed of Wifi up to this often not enough). I can quickly work in isolation if necessary! But in general I am very enemy remote work in our business. Development of commercial software, but still difficult in the case of Parallels - it's a team work, a lot of things sensible born in the process of personal communication of the whole team involved in project. But, of course, if someone from my children need to work from home episodically - is not a disaster.

What software do you use?

Firstly, I work completely with all existing operating systems and their latest versions. On the PC I have Windows 7 Pro 64-bit on the Mac - last updated Mac OS X (10.6.4). As a rule, I put the last updated Mac OS X, as soon as it becomes available through the Apple Developer Connection (ie somewhat earlier than the end user).

If we talk about the application, on Windows-based machine - this is MS Office 2007. I set in 2010, but it is I do not go - loaded, when it will be more stable work. Certainly without MS Outlook / Exchange nowhere. A lot of work in Power Point, Excel, Visio - painted specification Parallels desktop products out there. Messenger - Skype. Without any Skype for some time of his life I can not imagine - an indispensable thing. For very old contact should ICQ, but in the last year for me personally, it was released in circulation. I use all browsers. But by default, probably I would work with FireFox-though he from release to release more upsets me. I am more inclined to go to Safari completely. Google has not caught on. At the same time, I am actively use RSS (Omea Reader) - there read all the news, so especially for personal use my browser and do not need. And if we talk about the "everyday" - that every computer I have iTunes.

Special attention should be paid to the development of Tulsa, which I am actively working on. Obviously, they are different on different platforms. On Windows, this Far Manager (Thank Eugene Roshal Lazarevich for his work on this tool!) - a very useful tulza, without which I would have been much harder work - VIM (As the default editor for Far) - there is nothing better in the VIM text (all fans of Emacs, please do not be offended)! HIEW I often use as the default viewer in the Far - often working with him enjoyable than, say, the IDA. Putty - indispensable SSH client for Windows, also use it very often. I have been programming mostly in C, sometimes C ++ / Qt, often have to do things in Python. IDEs I use infrequently, as in my view, they are too overwhelmed by unnecessary functionality. Nevertheless, I stand Visual Studio 6, 7 and 8 (a tool I choose depending on the task). On Linux and Mac, I work mostly right in the terminal, and vim is my most important tool of development.

What there is a configuration dreams?

I would here shared hardware and software.

In terms of "hardware", I do not like to see computers as a certain individual devices. I believe that access to information should be as negligible as possible in terms of any physical effort to not have to carry with them some Soup, ensure their connection to the network, to charge them regularly. I want to be maximally simple interface interaction.

In terms of software, the most important breakthrough for me would be the separation of data and physical storage media in everyday life. And here it is just the idea of ​​access to data over the Internet - "cloud" services - immediately becomes very tangible. I want to be able to work with their documents and programs from anywhere in the world, without risking confidentiality and without sacrificing usability. I think, in one form or another, it's going to create this kind of infrastructure (for example, Google Chrome OS, in fact, is the first "cloud" operating system) - a look at what all this will result in 5-10 years. In addition, Parallels, we are directly involved in software development for the most "cloud" providers, so they can just offer end small businesses IT as a service, run them with the minimum for yourself costs. In general, I am interested.