APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Monthly Archives: July 2012
What’s a software architect?
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
On free apps
This post is sort-of a follow-on to @daveaddey’s post on the average app; although in reality it’s a follow-on to the response that comes out every time a post on app store revenue is written. Events go like this: Some … Continue reading
Inheritance is old and busted
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
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On Null Objects
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
Illuminative-C
In addition to being a mildly accomplished software engineer, I’ve done some studying and armchair research in the field of ancient languages and palaeography. What happens if we smoosh those fields together? In a very slight way, art historian and … Continue reading
Posted in advancement of the self, books, code-level, documentation, PCAS, software-engineering, UI
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On community
This is a post that had been boiling for a while; I talked a little about the topic when I was in Appsterdam earlier this year, and had a few more thoughts which were completely supplanted and rearranged by watching
Posted in AAPL, advancement of the self, books, Business, iDeveloper.TV, iPhone, Mac, NSConf, OOP, Responsibility, software-engineering, Talk, WebObjects
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Password checking with CommonCrypto
I previously described a system for storing and checking credentials on Mac OS and iOS based on using many rounds of a hashing function to generate a key from the password. Time has moved on, and Apple has extended the … Continue reading
Posted in Authentication, code-level, Crypto, password
1 Comment
Sound bites considered harmful
Knuth said: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Only, what he actually said was: There is no doubt that the grail of efficiency leads to abuse. Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the … Continue reading
Posted in software-engineering
1 Comment
How people learn
Don’t you hate those times when you go to a talk or article that says “you should be doing this”, but then doesn’t explain how to do that? I just wrote one. In “Coding. Standards.” I explained that what software … Continue reading
Posted in advancement of the self, books, Talk
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Coding. Standards.
I just realised that this month marks the 10th anniversary of my first payment for writing software (on, of all the weird things to be writing software on in 2002, a NeXTstation)! What have I learned from those ten years? … Continue reading
Posted in advancement of the self, Business, code-level, OOP, software-engineering
2 Comments
