Author Archives: Graham

About Graham

I make it faster and easier for you to create high-quality code.

Cap in Hand

Posted on 2021-02-14 by Graham

You’re probably aware that between this blog, De Programmatica Ipsum, and various books, I write a lot about software engineering and software engineers. You may know that I also present a podcast on software engineering topics, and co-host two live … Continue reading →

Posted in advancement of the self, books, learning, meta-waffle, podcast | Leave a comment

“Best practice” is less of a scam than claimed

Posted on 2021-02-05 by Graham

Another day, another developer explaining that they don’t follow some popular practice. And their reason? Nothing more than because other people do the thing. “Best practices don’t exist,” they airily intone. “They’re really mediocre practices”. In one sense, they’re correct. … Continue reading →

Posted in whatevs | Leave a comment

[objc retain] stream

Posted on 2021-02-03 by Graham

Starting next week: [objc retain]; in which Steven Baker and I live-code Objective-C on a modern free software platform. Wednesday, February 10th, 1900UTC. More info at objc-retain.com.

Posted in gnustep, objc | Leave a comment

“Reasoning about code” is a scam

Posted on 2021-01-28 by Graham

Another day, another post telling me to do something, or not do something, or adopt some technology, or not adopt some technology, or whatever it is that they want me to do, because it makes it easier to “reason about … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level | 5 Comments

Ubiquitous computing

Posted on 2021-01-25 by Graham

I, along with many others, have written about the influence of Xerox PARC on Apple. The NeXT workstation was a great example of getting an approximation to the Smalltalk concept out using off-the-shelf parts, and Jobs often presaged iCloud with … Continue reading →

Posted in AAPL | Tagged | Leave a comment

GNUstep development on LIVEstep

Posted on 2021-01-20 by Graham

LIVEstep is a GNUstep desktop on a FreeBSD live CD, and it comes with the GNUstep developer tools including ProjectCenter. This video is a “Hello, World” walkthrough using ProjectCenter on LIVEstep. PC is much more influenced by the NeXT Project … Continue reading →

Posted in FLOSS, gnustep | Leave a comment

Data curation during a pandemic

Posted on 2021-01-14 by Graham

Here’s what I’ve been working on (with others, of course) since February.

Posted in academia | Leave a comment

Novel bean incoming

Posted on 2021-01-02 by Graham

You may remember in July I updated the open source Bean word processor to work with then-latest Xcode and macOS. Over the last couple of days I’ve added iCloud Drive support (obviously only if the app is associated with an … Continue reading →

Posted in cocoa | Leave a comment

The Silent Network

Posted on 2020-11-17 by Graham

People say that the internet, or maybe specifically the web, holds the world’s information and makes it accessible. Maybe there was a time when that was true. But currently it’s not: probably not because the information is missing, but because … Continue reading →

Posted in ipod, meta-interwebs | 3 Comments

Apple Silicon, Xeon Phi, and Amigas

Posted on 2020-11-13 by Graham

The new M1 chip in the new Macs has 8-16GB of DRAM on the package, just like many mobile phones or single-board computers. But unlike many desktop, laptop or workstation computers (there are exceptions). In the first tranche of Macs … Continue reading →

Posted in Amiga, arm, HPC, Mac | 7 Comments