Author Archives: Graham

About Graham

I make it faster and easier for you to create high-quality code.

Up or to the right

Posted on 2014-11-04 by Graham

Sometimes in describing a concept X in one domain, someone will ask “oh, is that like X’?” where X’ is the same concept or a very similar one, expressed in a different domain. The quick answer is “Yes”, but that … Continue reading →

Posted in edjercashun | 2 Comments

The next phase in technological convergence will be harder than the last, because it can’t be solved with technology. Last time the devices converged, some phone makers just needed to buy a photoelectric detector, a lens, and licenses for some … Continue reading →

Posted on 2014-11-03 by Graham | Leave a comment

Turn and face the strange

Posted on 2014-11-02 by Graham

I’ve made some changes around here, and they impact how both you and I interact with this blog. Firstly, I added asides, which are untitled posts in the main stream. I think of them as something like Daring Fireball’s Linked … Continue reading →

Posted in meta-waffle | 1 Comment

Is Social Psychology Biased Against Republicans? Pretty interesting, and an often unmentioned aspect of diversity (probably because political leaning is supposed to be a secret in democratic countries, if not because it’s usually acceptable to display ingroup/outgroup bias politically). But … Continue reading →

Posted on 2014-11-02 by Graham | Leave a comment

Reversing the polarity of the message flow

Posted on 2014-10-30 by Graham

On receiving a message with a parameter, sometimes an object just reverses the sense of what just happened and sends another message to the parameter object with itself as the parameter of this message. That’s a pretty hard sentence to … Continue reading →

Posted in OOP | Comments Off on Reversing the polarity of the message flow

The Humpty-Dumpty Guide to OOP

Posted on 2014-10-26 by Graham

Everybody knows that the best way to sound intellectual and demonstrate the superiority of your approach to that thing you do is to wrap it in a fancy-schmancy noun term. This works particularly well with a term that can be … Continue reading →

Posted in OOP | Leave a comment

Fuck. This. Shit.

Posted on 2014-10-16 by Graham

Enough with the subtle allusions of the previous posts. What’s going on here is not right. It’s not right that I get to pass as a member of the group of people who can work in technology, while others have … Continue reading →

Posted in advancement of the self, learning, Responsibility | Comments Off on Fuck. This. Shit.

More on Layers

Posted on 2014-10-15 by Graham

I was told yesterday that entity-relationship diagrams can be OK as high level descriptions of database schemata, but are not appropriate for designing a database. Enough information is missing that they are not able to model the problem. Could the … Continue reading →

Posted in architecture of sorts | Leave a comment

The trouble with layers

Posted on 2014-10-13 by Graham

In describing Inside-Out Apps I expressed my distrust of the “everything is MVC” school of design. […]when you get overly attached to MVC, then you look at every class you create and ask the question “is this a model, a … Continue reading →

Posted in architecture of sorts | Comments Off on The trouble with layers

Yes, you may delete tests

Posted on 2014-10-12 by Graham

A frequently-presented objection to the concept of writing automated tests is that it ossifies the implementation of the system under test. “If I’ve got all the tests you’re proposing,” I hear, “then I won’t be able to make any changes … Continue reading →

Posted in TDD | Comments Off on Yes, you may delete tests