APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
FSF
Category Archives: Responsibility
Open Source and the Lehrer-von Braun defence
Tom Lehrer’s song about Wernher von Braun is of a man who should not be described as hypocritical: Say rather that he’s apolitical. “Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department,” says Wernher … Continue reading
Preparing for Computing’s Big One-Oh-Oh
However you slice the pie, we’re between two and three decades away from the centenary celebration for applied computing (which is of course significantly after theoretical or hypothetical advances made by the likes of Lovelace, Turing and others). You might … Continue reading
Posted in academia, advancement of the self, books, learning, Responsibility, software-engineering, tool-support
Comments Off on Preparing for Computing’s Big One-Oh-Oh
ClassBrowser’s public face
I made a couple of things: ClassBrowser discussion list The project website‘s source is now visible and MIT licensed I should’ve done both of these things at the beginning of the project. I believe that the fact I opened the … Continue reading
Posted in Responsibility, software-engineering
Comments Off on ClassBrowser’s public face
Laggards don’t buy apps: devil’s advocate edition
Silky-voiced star of podcasts and all-round nice developer person Brent Simmons just published a pair of articles on dropping support for older OS releases. His argument is reasonable, and is based on a number of axioms including this one: People … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Responsibility
Comments Off on Laggards don’t buy apps: devil’s advocate edition
The First Flaw
As she left her desk at the grandiosely-named United States Robotics, Susan reflected on her relationship with the engineering team she was about to meet. Many of its members were juvenile and frivolous in her opinion, and she refused to … Continue reading
Posted in Fiction, Responsibility, social-science
Leave a comment
It’s about solving problems
As ever, there’s a touchstone issue on the programmers’ corner of the intarwebs (the programmers’ corner is actually the same intarwebs everyone else is using, just we model it with geometry so it can have a corner). Here it is: … Continue reading
Posted in learning, Responsibility, TDD
Leave a comment
Programming as a societal roadblock
Introduction People who make software are instigators of and obstacles to social interactions. We are secondarily technologists, in that we apply technology to enable and block these transactions. This article explores the results. Programmers as arbiters of death I would … Continue reading
Posted in Responsibility
Comments Off on Programming as a societal roadblock
Standing at the Crossroads
A while back I wrote Conflicts in my Mental Model of Objective-C, in which I listed a few small scale dichotomies or cognitive dissonances that plagued my notion of my work. I just worked out what the overall picture is, … Continue reading
Posted in AAPL, iPad, OOP, Responsibility
Leave a comment
How to answer questions the smart way
You may have read how to ask questions the smart way by Eric S. Raymond. You may have even quoted it when faced with a question you thought was badly-formed. I want you to take a look at a section … Continue reading
Story points: because I don’t know what I’m doing
The scenario [Int. developer’s office. Developer sits at a desk that faces the wall. Two of the monitors on Developer’s desk are on stands, if you look closely you see that the third is balanced on the box set of … Continue reading
