Category Archives: software-engineering

Server-side Objective-C

Posted on 2012-12-12 by Graham

Recently, Kevin Lawler posted an “Informal Technical Note” saying that Apple could clean up on licence sales if only they’d support web backend development. There are only two problems with this argument: it’s flawed, and the precondition probably won’t be … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, OOP, server, software-engineering, WebObjects | Comments Off

Can code be “readable”?

Posted on 2012-12-08 by Graham

Did Isaac Asimov write good stories? Different people will answer that question in different ways. People who don’t read English and don’t have access to a translation will probably be unable to answer. People who don’t like science fiction on … Continue reading →

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

I published a new book!

Posted on 2012-12-04 by Graham

Executive summary: it’s called APPropriate Behaviour, head over to the LeanPub site to check it out. For quite a while, I’ve noticed that posts here are moving away from nuts and bolts code towards questions about evaluating my own performance, … Continue reading →

Posted in advancement of the self, books, Business, code-level, Responsibility, software-engineering | Comments Off

Surprising ARC performance characteristics

Posted on 2012-11-28 by Graham

The project I’m working on at the moment has quite tight performance constraints. It needs to start up quickly, do its work at a particular rate and, being an iOS app, there’s a hard limit on how much RAM can … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, performance, software-engineering | Comments Off

Object-Oriented callback design

Posted on 2012-11-17 by Graham

One of the early promises of object-oriented programming, encapsulated in the design of the Smalltalk APIs, was a reduction – or really an encapsulation – of the complexity of code. Many programmers believe that the more complex a method or … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, OOP, software-engineering | Comments Off

An apology to readers of Test-Driven iOS Development

Posted on 2012-09-03 by Graham

I made a mistake. Not a typo or a bug in some pasted code (actually I’ve made some of those, too). I perpetuated what seems (now, since I analyse it) to be a big myth in software engineering. I uncritically … Continue reading →

Posted in books, Responsibility, software-engineering, TDiOSD | Comments Off

Does that thing you like doing actually work?

Posted on 2012-08-29 by Graham

Genuine question. I’ve written before about Test-Driven Development, and I’m sure some of you practice it: can you show evidence that it’s better than (or, for that matter, evidence that it’s worse than) some other practice? Statistically significant evidence? How … Continue reading →

Posted in advancement of the self, documentation, software-engineering | Comments Off

What’s a software architect?

Posted on 2012-07-29 by Graham

After a discussion on the twitters with Kellabyte and Iris Classon about software architects, I thought I’d summarise my position. Feel welcome to disagree. What does a software architect do? A software architect is there to identify risks that affect … Continue reading →

Posted in Responsibility, software-engineering | 2 Comments

Inheritance is old and busted

Posted on 2012-07-25 by Graham

Back when I started reading about Object-Oriented Programming (which was when Java was new, I was using Delphi and maybe the ArcGIS scripting language, which also had OO features) the entire hotness was inheritance. Class hierarchies as complicated as biological … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, OOP, software-engineering | Comments Off

On Null Objects

Posted on 2012-07-21 by Graham

I’ve said before, NSNull is an anti-pattern. It’s nice that we have the nil object, which allows us to have a stand-in for any object that doesn’t do anything. Unfortunately, it’s not a universal stand-in. You can’t add nil to … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, OOP, software-engineering | 3 Comments