Category Archives: software-engineering

On internal quality

Posted on 2011-04-10 by Graham

I was asked by attendees at my VTM talk on test-driven development a small collection of questions on a similar theme, which I’ll summarise here. How do I do TDD when my boss doesn’t want me to? What do I … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, code-level, Responsibility, software-engineering, Talk, TDD, VTM | 6 Comments

On my own competency

Posted on 2011-04-04 by Graham

There was a question on programmers.stackexchange.com about whether to put your Stack Overflow reputation in your CV. I don’t, and answered as much: there’s no point in writing for its own sake, unless you want to be a writer. If … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, software-engineering | Comments Off on On my own competency

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 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

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

On Fuzzy Aliens

Posted on 2010-12-03 by Graham

I have just launched a new company, Fuzzy Aliens[*], offering application security consultancy services for smartphone app developers. This is not the FAQ list, this is the “questions I want to answer so that they don’t become frequently asked” list. … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, code-level, iPad, iPhone, Privacy, software-engineering, threatmodel | Leave a comment

What do you think of this?

Posted on 2010-10-23 by Graham

I’m interested to find out what us Cocoa developers (alright, I know my opinion already) think of the following distinction between Foundation and, well any other object-oriented foundation library. The distinction is this. In many libraries, compound objects (not only … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, software-engineering | 2 Comments

An example of unit testing working for me

Posted on 2010-10-18 by Graham

Some specific feedback I was given regarding my unit testing talk at VTM: iPhone fall conference was that the talk was short on real-world application of unit testing. That statement is definitely true, and it’s unfortunate that I didn’t meet … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, iPad, iPhone, Mac, software-engineering, TDD, tool-support, VTM | 1 Comment