APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Author Archives: Graham
Blame culture
The tweet that started this post off: Candidate for the worst name of any SCM feature: “blame”. Don’t use it for that. I was recently watching a couple of conference talks (given by people working at the same company) where … Continue reading
Posted in version-control
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The code you wrote six months ago
We have this trope in programming that you should hate the code you wrote six months ago. This is a figurative way of saying that you should be constantly learning and assimilating new ideas, so that you can look at … Continue reading
Posted in advancement of the self, books, code-level, learning, Responsibility, software-engineering, Talk
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Separating user interface from work
Here’s a design I’ve had knocking around my head for a while, and between a discussion we had a few weeks ago at work and Saul Mora’s excellent design patterns talk at QCon I’ve built it. A quick heads-up: currently … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, OOP, performance, Talk
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Fiction: The Ouroborus School pt 1
On a warm Spring day, the camera follows a butterfly as it wends its coruscating way around a buddleia bush. The plant is growing in the well-kept border surrounding an immaculately manicured lawn, the quadrangle of an imposing Jacobean building. … Continue reading
Posted in Fiction
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On the design of iOS 7 and iconographoclasm
As I write this, the WWDC keynote presentation has been over for a little more than half a day. That, apparently, is plenty of time in which to evaluate a new version of an operating system based on a few … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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Lighter UIViewControllers
The first issue of Objective-C periodical objc.io has just been announced: Issue #1 is about lighter view controllers. The introduction tells you a bit more about this issue and us. First, Chris writes about lighter view controllers. Florian expands on … Continue reading
enum class in C++11
I’ve opened the new edition of Cuboid Stroustrup exactly once, and I’ve already learned exactly one useful thing. Before going into what that thing was, a comment on the book: The C++ Programming Language is, along with Object-Oriented Software Construction … Continue reading
An entirely unwarranted comparison between software engineering and astronomy
Back in the early days of astronomy, the problem of the stars that wander from fixed positions in the sky needed solving. Many astronomers, not the first of which was Ptolemy, proposed that these “planetai” could be modeled as following … Continue reading
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Short Objective-C on the server update
It’s been over a year since I looked at GNUstepWeb as a server platform for Objective-C development. I’ve recently had time to dig in a bit more, send the project some patches, and get the platform to a state on … Continue reading
Posted in UNIX, WebObjects
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On protocols that aren’t
There’s a common assumption when dealing with Objective-C protocols or Java interfaces (or abstract classes, I suppose): that you’re abstracting away the implementation of an object leaving just its interface. “Oh, don’t mind how I quack, all you need to … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, OOP
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