APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Author Archives: Graham
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
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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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I do the stupid so you don’t have to
So you want to use bc for some hexadecimal maths. You set the input base: ibase=16 and the output base: obase=16 Oops! I just set it to output in base 22. I’d already set it to think numbers were input … Continue reading
Posted in UNIX
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Meta-writing
Barely 4,000 years ago, documents were written on heavy, clay tablets. The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest known works of fiction, was written on 11 such tablets with a 12th added later. There was only one thing you … Continue reading
Posted in books, documentation, Talk
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Shell scripts and Xcode
Back in 2009 at the first NSConf, Scotty asked some of the speakers for an Xcode Quick Tip. I’m still using mine today. When your target needs a “Run Shell Script” build phase, don’t write the script into the box … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, tool-support
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