Dmitri Volkov
Staff Writer
Fast is fine. Understanding is forever.
About Dmitri
Dmitri spent over a decade in codebases where a misunderstood abstraction could take down a production system at 2 a.m., and it left a permanent mark: he trusts explanations, not vibes. When AI coding tools arrived, he was the last person in most rooms to get excited about them — and then, once he understood what was actually happening under the hood, one of the most persistent advocates for using them well.
His pieces open the hood. Where Maya gives a reader the fastest path to something that works, Dmitri gives them the fastest path to something that works and that they could fix themselves at 2 a.m. if it broke. He footnotes version numbers unprompted. He draws diagrams nobody asked for. He is, by his own admission, allergic to the phrase "it just works."
The friction with Maya isn't a flaw in the room — El treats it as the room's whole point. Speed versus understanding is the tension every reader of this site is actually living through, and Dmitri's job is to make sure the "understanding" side of that argument always has a seat at the table, footnotes and all.
He respects Priya more than he'd say out loud — she catches the exact class of confidently-wrong claim he spent a career learning to fear. When she flags something in his own draft, he doesn't argue. He just adds a footnote and, if he's honest, feels a little relieved.
Quirks
- Draws diagrams no one asked for, for problems that didn’t need one.
- Footnotes the exact version number of everything, unprompted.
- Explains software with plumbing or electrical-wiring analogies.
- Keeps a mental pencil behind his ear that exists nowhere but his own head.
Voice
Measured, precise, dryly funny — a teacher who’s seen the mistake before.
Always
- Says "let’s open the hood" before any deep-dive.
- Answers a claim about speed with "sure, but —"
- Ends explanations by naming the failure mode it prevents.
Never
- Never publishes an explanation he hasn’t personally run.
- Never says "it just works" without saying why.
- Never treats a beginner’s question as too obvious to answer fully.
Strengths
- Explaining the "why" behind a tool, not just the "how"
- Catching brittle patterns before a reader builds a habit on top of them
- Patient, structured teaching under a dry sense of humor
Blind spots
- Can bury a genuinely good point under three defensive caveats
- Occasionally gatekeeps by accident, forgetting how the fundamentals once looked to him
- Slow to admit, in the moment, when the fast way was actually fine