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Chiron Codex: helping software engineers become centaurs. APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Author Archives: Graham
An observation designed to aid the reading of books on software
Wherever a book on writing software describes the 1968 NATO conference in Garmisch on Software Engineering, consider whether the clarity of the argument can be improved by adding the following parenthetical clause: […], a straw man version of an otherwise … Continue reading
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Anyone Can Write A Manifesto And You Can Too!™
Over a small number of years, I have helped to write some software. During this time I have come to value: Solving problems over rejecting what has passed before Solving problems over congratulating ourselves Solving problems over creating problems Solving … Continue reading
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Talking about talking
I recently gave a talk to my colleagues about giving talks. Here is an annotated collection of the notes I made in preparation. – What do you want the audience to get out of the talk? As you’re constructing your … Continue reading
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Detecting overflows, undefined behaviour and other nasties
You will remember that a previous post discussed what happens when you add one to an integer, and that the answer isn’t always obvious. Indeed, the answer isn’t always defined. As it happens, there are plenty of weird cases that … Continue reading
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An open letter to Xcode
The post below has been filed verbatim as an Apple Developer Tools bug report with ID 13051064. Dear Xcode, imagine that you had a combine harvester. Only, this combine harvester, instead of having a hopper into which the winnowed wheat … Continue reading
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Retiring the “Apple developers are insular” meme
There’s an old trope used in discussions of Mac and iOS developers, that says they’re too inward-looking. They only think about software in ways that have been “blessed” by Apple, their platform vendor. I’m pretty sure that I’ve used this … Continue reading
Posted in advancement of the self, code-level, Responsibility, software-engineering
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What happens when you add one to an integer?
It depends. You saw in the previous post that there are plenty of different integer types, some with known sizes and some where the size is set by the implementation. Well for each size of integer type there are two … Continue reading
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How big is an integer?
In the beginning, when all was without form and void, Kernighan and Ritchie created char. And they said, “let it be of a size chosen by the compiler, guaranteed to be large enough to hold one character from the execution … Continue reading
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Server-side Objective-C
Recently, Kevin Lawler posted an “Informal Technical Note” saying that Apple could clean up on licence sales if only they’d support web backend development. There are only two problems with this argument: it’s flawed, and the precondition probably won’t be … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, OOP, server, software-engineering, WebObjects
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Can code be “readable”?
Did Isaac Asimov write good stories? Different people will answer that question in different ways. People who don’t read English and don’t have access to a translation will probably be unable to answer. People who don’t like science fiction on … Continue reading
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