Author Archives: Graham

About Graham

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

On study-only licences

In my previous post, I mused on the value of Freedom Zero and of a non-free licence that allows for study but not for use: I think it would have to be a licence that enabled studying, sharing and modification … Continue reading

Posted in Business | 2 Comments

Is Freedom Zero such a hot idea?

I’ve been thinking lately that if we don’t want to work on the databases that extremist governments use to detain immigrants they have separated from their children, or on the operating systems that well-equipped militaries used to rain autonomous death … Continue reading

Posted in Responsibility | 5 Comments

Story points: there’s no right way to do it

Story points as described represent an attempt to abstract estimation away from “amount of stuff done per unit time”, because we’re bad at doing that and people were traditionally using that to make us look bad. So we introduce an … Continue reading

Posted in process | Leave a comment

OOP the Easy Way

It’s still very much a work in progress, but OOP the Easy Way is now available to purchase from Leanpub (a free sample is also available from the book’s Leanpub page). Following the theme of my conference talks and blog … Continue reading

Posted in books, OOP | Leave a comment

Or maybe, because we want to

How (and Why) Developers Use the Dynamic Features of Programming Languages: The Case of Smalltalk is an interesting analysis of the reality of dynamic programming in Smalltalk (Squeak and Pharo, really). Taking the 1,000 largest projects on SqueakSource, the authors … Continue reading

Posted in OOP | Tagged | Leave a comment

On version 12

Reflecting on another WWDC keynote reminded me of this bit in Tron:Legacy, which I’ve undoubtedly not remembered with 100% accuracy: We’re charging children and schools so much for this, what’s so great about the new version? Well, there’s a 12 … Continue reading

Posted in AAPL | Leave a comment

Warsaw Welcomes Dumbass Commentary

As I’m going to MCE tomorrow, tonight I’m going to my first WWDC keynote event since 2015. I doubt it’ll quite meet the high note of “dissecting” software design issues in the sports lounge at Moscone with Daniel Steinberg and … Continue reading

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The hardest thing

I now have the make the hardest decision in programming. It has nothing to do with naming things or invalidating caches: rather it is which *nix to install on a computer. NextBSD and MidnightBSD both have goals that are relevant … Continue reading

Posted in UNIX | Leave a comment

Swift

Speaking of Swift, what idiot called it swift-evolution and not “A Modest Proposal”?

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Eating the bubble

How far back do you want to go to find people telling you that JavaScript is eating the world? Last year? Two years ago? Three? Five? It’s a slow digestion process, if that’s what is happening. Five years ago, there … Continue reading

Posted in whatevs | Tagged | 1 Comment