APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Category Archives: tool-support
Mapping software engineering tools
Despite the theory that everything can be done in software (and of course, anything that can’t be done could in principle be approximated using numerical methods, or fudged using machine learning), software engineering itself, the business of writing software, seems … Continue reading
Posted in architecture of sorts, tool-support
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Figurative Programming and Gloom: the [G]raphical [LOOM]
Donald Knuth is pretty cool. One of the books he wrote that I own and have actually read[*] is Literate Programming, in which he describes (among other things) weaving program text and documentation together in a single narrative. Two of … Continue reading
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Packaging software
I’ve been learning about Debian Packaging. I’ve built OS X packages, RPMs, Dockerfiles, JARs, and others, but never dpkgs, so I thought I’d give it a go. My goal is to make a suite of GNUstep packages for Debian. There … Continue reading
More on UIAutomation tests
Update The information below is mostly redundant. After filing a bug report with Apple, their engineers determined that the Xcode-detected set of macro actions (find a text field, double click, enter text) weren’t working because the double click action wasn’t … Continue reading
Posted in AAPL, Mac, TDD, tool-support
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To become a beginner, first become an expert
We have a whole load of practices in programming that only really work well if you’re already good at whatever the process is supposed to help with. Scrum is a process improvement framework, but only if you already know how … Continue reading
Posted in advancement of the self, software-engineering, TDD, tool-support
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In which new developer tools are dull
Over on lobste.rs I said that I don’t hold out much hope for another “blue plane” style event in developer tools. In one of Alan Kay’s presentations, he referred to the ordinary way of things as the pink plane, and … Continue reading
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Why I don’t have a favourite programming language
This is my take on Ilya Sher’s similar post, though from a different context. He is mainly interested in systems programming, I have mostly written user apps and backend services, and also some developer tools. I originally thought that I … Continue reading
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Literate Programming with LibreOffice
This post comes in the form of an OpenDocumentFormat document containing a program that can extract programs from ODF documents, including the program contained in this document.
Posted in code-level, software-engineering, tool-support
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Your build needs to be better
I’ve said it before, build systems are a huge annoyance. If your build is anything other than seemingly instantaneous, it’s costing you severe money. Your developers are probably off reading HN, or writing blog posts about how slow builds cost … Continue reading
Posted in architecture of sorts, code-level, tool-support
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An acceptable tool It’s easy to forget that adequacy is, well, adequate. It’s easy to go all-in on making some code structure perfect, when good enough would be good enough.
