APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Author Archives: Graham
On a re-read you realise this isn’t really about Swift
It’s a bit early to have formed an opinion on a recently-announced programming language, but as the requisite number of people have asked what mine is (i.e. at least zero) I thought I’d type and see what happens. Rules in … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, nearly linguistics
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It doesn’t take an Oracle to see that coming
Today has largely been brought to you by nostalgia brought about by this article, reporting on a get-together of former Sun Microsystems employees. I have never been a former Sun Microsystems employee, and of course now I never will be … Continue reading
Is TDD Dead? My questions
These are my questions for parts 5 and 6 of Is TDD Dead?. I’d like to start by thanking the panellists for publishing their discussions. TDD the Principle Kent and Martin, why is it that you practise test-driven development? What … Continue reading
Posted in TDD
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The lighter side of open source
In a recent post I talked about the apolitical, amoral nature of open source software and how it puts the interests of a small programming class before the interests of the broad collection of people who interact with programmers’ output. … Continue reading
Posted in Business, economics
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I use mocks and I’m happy with that
Both Kent Beck and Martin Fowler have said that they don’t use mock objects in their test-driven development. I do. I use them mostly for the sense described first in my BNR blog post on Mock Objects, namely to stand … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, OOP, TDD, TDiOSD
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One meeellleeon
A teacher recently asked her computing class if there was any question they would like to ask me. One of the students came up with a question: how could they make a million pounds? I think my answer would be … Continue reading
Posted in edjercashun
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Open Source and the Lehrer-von Braun defence
Tom Lehrer’s song about Wernher von Braun is of a man who should not be described as hypocritical: Say rather that he’s apolitical. “Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department,” says Wernher … Continue reading
It’s just like English
Fans of the RSpec tool for writing tests will be familiar with its English-like(fn1) syntax for describing tests, which looks like this. describe StrawMan do context “when interpreting a test in RSpec” do it “is written in plain English” do … Continue reading
Posted in nearly linguistics
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Code longevity
I recently wrote about the impending centenary of applied computing; a time when we could reflect on the first hundred years to make it easier for people to progress beyond our position into the second hundred years. This necessitates looking … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, economics, software-engineering
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Preparing for Computing’s Big One-Oh-Oh
However you slice the pie, we’re between two and three decades away from the centenary celebration for applied computing (which is of course significantly after theoretical or hypothetical advances made by the likes of Lovelace, Turing and others). You might … Continue reading
Posted in academia, advancement of the self, books, learning, Responsibility, software-engineering, tool-support
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