About Me

Hey there! I’m Andrew Vasilyev, but online I go by “retran.”

I got hooked on programming when I was just five years old, typing my first program from a book called “Logibul au pays de l’informatique” by Sh. Dvorchik and L. Vasilenki. That little experience kickstarted what would become a lifelong obsession with tech.

I spent my school days competing in programming contests, but eventually chilled out on that by university. For a while, I thought game development might be my thing—glad that didn’t pan out! Instead, I’ve bounced around different tech areas, keeping things interesting.

Over time, I’ve worked with operations research, service-oriented architecture, enterprise software, and lately AI and dev tools. Between 2011 and 2014, I taught “High-Level Language Programming” and “Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning” at Moscow Aviation Institute.

My work history has some cool stops along the way. At Ozon.ru, I led a team building their e-commerce loyalty program that hit 2.5 million users on day one. At Acumatica, I worked on API frameworks for enterprise apps, making mobile client development less of a headache.

Since 2013, I’ve been really into development tools—frameworks, DSLs, metaprogramming, compilers and IDEs. At 1C Company, I helped architect a new enterprise platform and integrate VSCode and Eclipse. I built VMs, debuggers, and cloud tools to make remote development smoother.

In 2018, I landed at JetBrains, where I now lead the ReSharper AI team. We’re plugging AI into .NET and C++ dev tools. We’ve added generative AI, LLMs, and RAG to ReSharper and Rider to help with code suggestions and debugging. Some of our ideas have spread to other teams at JetBrains. If you’re curious, check out this demo.

I’ve always enjoyed teaching and mentoring. At JetBrains, I’ve guided tons of interns (they call me “head of interns” in the .NET Department) and run mentorship workshops. I taught “IDE Development” courses at Higher School of Economics in 2021 and Constructor University in Bremen in 2023. I also mentored students at Practicum by Yandex on algorithms and data structures from 2021 to 2022.

When I’m not coding or teaching, I’m tinkering with hardware, gadgets, or random side projects. My GitHub has some of this stuff. It’s just my way of staying curious and having fun while learning.

Courses I’ve Taught

  1. “IDE Development” 2023, Bremen, Constructor University

  2. “IDE Development” 2021, Moscow, Higher School of Economics, CS Faculty

    Awards:

    • “Best Course for Career Development”
    • “Best Course for Broadening Horizons and Diversity of Knowledge and Skills”
    • “Best Course for New Knowledge and Skills”

    Recordings: YouTube Playlist

  3. “High-Level Programming Languages” 2011-2014, Moscow, Moscow Aviation Institute

  4. “Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning” 2011-2014, Moscow, Moscow Aviation Institute

Media Mentions

  1. Interview about my mentoring experience at Yandex Practicum
  2. JetBrains Hackathon - where our “Hello, Space!” project won first place
  3. How to get started with prompt engineering - InfoWorld article

Connect with Me