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Chiron Codex: helping software engineers become centaurs. APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Category Archives: software-engineering
On squeezing out that last ounce of performance
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
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Protecting source code
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
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On Fuzzy Aliens
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
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What do you think of this?
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
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An example of unit testing working for me
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
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On documentation
Over at the daily WTF, Alex Papadimoulis writes about Documentation Done Right. His conclusion is spot on: The immediate answer to what’s the right way to do documentation is clear: produce the least amount of documentation needed to facilitate the … Continue reading
Posted in software-engineering, tool-support
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On private methods
Let’s invent a hypothetical situation. You’re the software architect for an Objective-C application framework at a large company. This framework is used by many thousands of developers to create all sorts of applications for a particular platform. However, you have … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, iPad, iPhone, Mac, PCAS, software-engineering
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On authorization proxy objects
Authorization Services is quite a nice way to build in discretionary access controls to a Mac application. There’s a whole chapter in Professional Cocoa Application Security (Chapter 6) dedicated to the topic, if you’re interested in how it works. The … Continue reading
Posted in Authorization, code-level, Mac, PCAS, software-engineering
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NSConference MINI videos available
During WWDC week I talked at NSConference MINI, a one-day conference organised by Scotty and the MDN. The videos are now available: free to attendees, or $50 for all 10 for non-attendees. My own talk was on extending the Clang … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, NSConf, software-engineering, tool-support
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On detecting God Classes
Opinion on Twitter was divided when I suggested the following static analyser behaviour: report on any class that conforms to too many protocols. Firstly, a warning: “too many” is highly contextual. Almost all objects implement NSObject and you couldn’t do … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, iPad, iPhone, Mac, software-engineering, tool-support
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