Author Archives: Graham

About Graham

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

On NSInvocation

Posted on 2011-03-16 by Graham

I was going to get down to doing some writing, but then I got some new kit I needed to set up, so that isn’t going to happen. Besides which, I was talking to one developer about NSInvocation and writing … Continue reading →

Posted in Foundation, iPad, iPhone, Mac, software-engineering | Leave a comment

On comment docs

Posted on 2011-03-12 by Graham

Something I’m looking at right now is generation of (in my case, HTML) API documentation from some simple markup format. The usual way to do this is by writing documentation markup inline in the source code, using specially formatted comments … Continue reading →

Posted in books, documentation, software-engineering | 5 Comments

On Being a Software Person

Posted on 2011-03-11 by Graham

On Wednesday I spoke at Qcon London, about “Mobile App Security and Privacy: You’re Doing It Wrong (and so am I)” as part of @akosma’s track on iOS and Android. The whole track was full of win: particularly, if you … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on On Being a Software Person

On Singleton(s)

Posted on 2011-02-24 by Graham

I woke up this morning to a discussion on Twitter over how different implementations of the Singleton pattern compare. This is like comparing your Herpes: no matter whose is better or more efficient, you still have unsightly blisters. Overview: wtf … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

On, or rather in, Seattle

Posted on 2011-02-23 by Graham

I’ve never been to Washington before, so I’m looking forward to Voices That Matter: iPhone Developers Conference in April. Of course, you know I like the sound of my own voice enough to be speaking: my talk this year will … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

On repeatable builds

Posted on 2011-02-16 by Graham

One of the key features of software engineering, as distinct from cowboy coding or hacking, is that it should be repeatable. That doesn’t mean that you should do the same project twice in identical ways from beginning to end: that … Continue reading →

Posted in software-engineering | 1 Comment

On squeezing out that last ounce of performance

Posted on 2011-02-07 by Graham

As I get confused by a component of an application that should be network-bound actually being limited by CPU availability, I get reminded of the times in my career that I’ve dealt with application performance. I used to work on … Continue reading →

Posted in antivirus, software-engineering | Comments Off on On squeezing out that last ounce of performance

On Timeless Programming Books

Posted on 2011-01-26 by Graham

Recently, the Dog Spanner wrote about Programming With Quartz, a book written at the tail end of 2005 but which is still useful to Mac developers everywhere. I have to agree, this book is still on my shelf and gets … Continue reading →

Posted in books, Mac | 1 Comment

On the broken(?) Mac App Store

Posted on 2011-01-07 by Graham

A day after the Mac App Store was launched, people are reporting that it has been cracked. There are two separate stories here, a vapourware circumvention of the FairPlay DRM used to generate the receipts and a report that certain … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Crypto, Encryption, Mac, Vulnerability | 1 Comment

Protecting source code

Posted on 2010-12-15 by Graham

As I mentioned on the missing iDeveloper.tv Live episode, one of the consequences of the Gawker hack was that their source code for their internal software was leaked into the Internet. I doubt any of my readers would want that … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, code-level, Data Leakage, Encryption, Policy, Responsibility, software-engineering | 5 Comments