Author Archives: Graham

About Graham

I make it faster and easier for you to create high-quality code.

Using GNUstep libraries with Xcode

Posted on 2012-05-17 by Graham

I was recently asked about building projects that use GNUstep from Xcode. The fact is, it’s incredibly easy. By default, GNUstep on Mac OS X installs its libraries to /usr/local/lib and its frameworks to /Library/Frameworks. Therefore if you want to … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, gnustep, tool-support | 1 Comment

Building a unit test target with GNUstep make

Posted on 2012-05-16 by Graham

Just a quick note on how I build my test tools (they run separately, either by manual invocation or via CI) when I’m working in GNUstep. Firstly, you’ll need Catch. Then given test files that look like this: test_class.mm #define … Continue reading →

Posted in TDD | Comments Off on Building a unit test target with GNUstep make

So you’re off to WWDC

Posted on 2012-05-16 by Graham

Jeff has updated his excellent WWDC first-timer’s guide, and I thought I’d augment that with some things I’ve noticed. The easiest and cheapest way to get from SFO to San Francisco is via BART. Once you get to the arrivals … Continue reading →

Posted in WWDC | Comments Off on So you’re off to WWDC

Metacognition-driven development

Posted on 2012-05-14 by Graham

To find out what techniques work for you in a field of practice, you often need to think about how you think. To decide what it is that drives your learning processes, and then adapt your practices to suit that. … Continue reading →

Posted in advancement of the self, software-engineering, TDD | Comments Off on Metacognition-driven development

Messing about with Clang

Posted on 2012-05-07 by Graham

I’ve been reading the Smalltalk-80 blue book (pdf) recently, and started to wonder what a Smalltalk style object browser for Objective-C would look like. Not just from the perspective of presenting the information that makes up Objective-C classes in novel … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, Mac, software-engineering, tool-support | 5 Comments

Classes are globals, too

Posted on 2012-05-04 by Graham

Software engineers are used to the notion that global variables are a bad idea. Globals are usually accessed by asking, not by telling. They introduce tight coupling between any module that uses the global and the one that declares it, … Continue reading →

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Software-ICs and a component marketplace

Posted on 2012-04-28 by Graham

In the previous post, I was talking about Object-Oriented Programming, an Evolutionary Approach. What follows is a thought experiment based on that. Chapter 6 of Brad Cox’s book, once he’s finished explaining how ObjC works (and who to buy it … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, code-level, OOP | Comments Off on Software-ICs and a component marketplace

Comparing Objective-C and Objective-C with Objective-C

Posted on 2012-04-28 by Graham

A while back, I wrote an object-oriented dispatch system for Objective-C. It defines only three things: an object type (the BlockObject), a way to create new objects (the BlockConstructor), and a way to message objects (the dispatch mechanism). That’s all … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, OOP, software-engineering | Comments Off on Comparing Objective-C and Objective-C with Objective-C

The debugger of royalty

Posted on 2012-04-27 by Graham

We’ve all got little libraries of code or scripts that help us with debugging. Often these are for logging information in a particular way, or wrapping logs/tests such that they’re only invoked in Debug builds but not in production. Or … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, iPad, iPhone, Mac, TDiOSD | 11 Comments

TDD and crypto in one place

Posted on 2012-04-19 by Graham

Well, I suppose if I’ve written two books, it’s about time I wrote a contorted blog post that references both of the worlds. I recently wrote an encryption module for an app, and thought it’d be useful to share something … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, Crypto, TDD | Comments Off on TDD and crypto in one place