APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Category Archives: architecture of sorts
The death of scripting
Back in the day, when programmers knew that they couldn’t possibly think of everything somebody might want to do with a computer, there were scripts. If somebody could find enough of the pieces of the thing that they wanted to … Continue reading
Posted in architecture of sorts, script
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Object-Oriented Programming in Objective-C
UIKonf 1995 Keynote : Object-Oriented Programming in Objective-C Introduction Welcome to the keynote for UIKonf 1995. I’m really excited for what 1995 will bring. Customers are upgrading to last year’s OpenStep release, which means that we get to use the … Continue reading
Posted in architecture of sorts, OOP
2 Comments
Getting better at doing it wrong
For around a month at the end of last year, I kept a long text note called “doing doing it wrong right”. I was trying to understand error handling in programming, look at some common designs and work out a … Continue reading
Posted in architecture of sorts, code-level, OOP
2 Comments
In The Design of Design, Fred Brooks makes an interesting point about ESR’s description of the Bazaar model of Linux (and, by extension, “Open Source”) development. Linux was actually designed in a cathedral. The design was supplied by Unix, where … Continue reading
Hiding behind messages
A problem I think about every so often is how to combine the software design practice of hiding implementations behind interfaces with the engineering practice of parallel execution. What are the trade-offs between making parallelism explicit and information hiding? Where … Continue reading
Posted in architecture of sorts, code-level, OOP
4 Comments
I’ve realised that when I read that a tool or framework is “opinionated”, I interpret that as meaning that I’m going to have to spend time on working out how to express my solution in its terms. I have enough … Continue reading
…and in the end there will be the command line.
You’re pretty happy with the car that the dealer is showing you. It looks comfortable, stylish, and has all of the features you want. There’s a lot of space in the trunk for your luggage. The independent reviews that you’ve … Continue reading
Posted in architecture of sorts
3 Comments
Layers of Distraction
A discussion I was involved in over on Facebook reminded me of some other issues I’d already drafted for this blog, so I stuck the two together and here we are. Software systems can often be seen as aggregations of … Continue reading
http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2687011 There’s no such thing as a General-purpose processor, and belief in such a device is harmful.
The next phase in technological convergence will be harder than the last, because it can’t be solved with technology. Last time the devices converged, some phone makers just needed to buy a photoelectric detector, a lens, and licenses for some … Continue reading
