APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Author Archives: Graham
How to excel at IDE design
When people have the “which IDE is best” argument, what they’re actually discussing is “which slightly souped-up monospace text editor with a build button do you like using”. Eclipse, Xcode, IntelliJ, Visual Studio…all of these tools riff on the same … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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An apology to readers of Test-Driven iOS Development
I made a mistake. Not a typo or a bug in some pasted code (actually I’ve made some of those, too). I perpetuated what seems (now, since I analyse it) to be a big myth in software engineering. I uncritically … Continue reading
Posted in books, Responsibility, software-engineering, TDiOSD
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It’s not @jnozzi’s fault!
My last post was about how we don’t use evidence-based techniques in software engineering. If we don’t rely on previous results to guide us, what do we use? The answer is that the industry is guided by anecdote. Plenty of … Continue reading
Posted in books
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Does that thing you like doing actually work?
Genuine question. I’ve written before about Test-Driven Development, and I’m sure some of you practice it: can you show evidence that it’s better than (or, for that matter, evidence that it’s worse than) some other practice? Statistically significant evidence? How … Continue reading
Posted in advancement of the self, documentation, software-engineering
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I made a web!
That is, I made a C program using the literate programming tool, CWEB. The product it outputs is, almost by definition, self-documenting, so find out about the algorithm and how I built it by reading the PDF. This post is … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, documentation, tool-support
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A brief history of talking on the interwebs (or: why I’m not on app.net)
When I first went to university, I was part of an Actual September, though it took place in October. Going from a dial-up internet service shared with the telephone line to the latest iteration of SuperJANET with its multi-megabit connection … Continue reading
Posted in Twitter, user-error
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What’s a software architect?
After a discussion on the twitters with Kellabyte and Iris Classon about software architects, I thought I’d summarise my position. Feel welcome to disagree. What does a software architect do? A software architect is there to identify risks that affect … Continue reading
Posted in Responsibility, software-engineering
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On free apps
This post is sort-of a follow-on to @daveaddey’s post on the average app; although in reality it’s a follow-on to the response that comes out every time a post on app store revenue is written. Events go like this: Some … Continue reading
Inheritance is old and busted
Back when I started reading about Object-Oriented Programming (which was when Java was new, I was using Delphi and maybe the ArcGIS scripting language, which also had OO features) the entire hotness was inheritance. Class hierarchies as complicated as biological … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, OOP, software-engineering
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On Null Objects
I’ve said before, NSNull is an anti-pattern. It’s nice that we have the nil object, which allows us to have a stand-in for any object that doesn’t do anything. Unfortunately, it’s not a universal stand-in. You can’t add nil to … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, OOP, software-engineering
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