He was our maths professor in the gimnazija in the 2nd and 3rd grade. He would have in the 1st too, but he was in the vojska - actually, stayed with the previous one for a week or two until he came. Very popular among us, for his less than formal style and not really strict rules. Then he went to be a programmer in Gik.
Then in 1986 I tried to get out of teaching and be a programmer that I wanted to be. First he got me into a tezga at stambena, where he taught me Cobol, working with tables and indexes, and the tricks of the trade in general. Then he tried to maneuver the CEO into opening a job for me, which eventually worked.
One of such majstor's tricks was to predict how will the application be used, in real life. He wrote, as a tezga, the payroll and HR tracking for the construction [company], and he wrote it exactly per specs. Handed it over and said it won't work. What do you mean it won't, where did you go wrong? I didn't, you have, the code will work but you won't have the data. Here, look, in a worker's record, the „number of children“ field. When one's wife gives birth, what does he do first, run to his aitchar [guy] to report the change, so the kid will be soon listed for the next deda Mraz for a gift package? Nope, pal, he'll bring a kilo of drink, and even when they all sober up he still won't remember and the value in his field will still be wrong. And you have at least ten such fields.
He was my boss for about two years. Few years later he went into politics, was elected a federal MP, switched parties once or twice, became the CEO of the city's urban development agency, and then I guess he retired - got seriously ill or something.
Died in spring 2012. I knew he wasn't well, heard some rumor of a brain tumor. Then one day I thought I passed a guy who was the chief of erc in one of stour's member companies, and then later realized he must have been returning from the funeral.
„is this not all right or is it all right?“
„like pulling thorns out of a cunt with boxing glove“
„even if you were a pie, it's still no“
8-VII-2011 - 13-VII-2026