APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Author Archives: Graham
An update on the HURD project
Last time, on Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programmers, I was building an object-oriented programming system on top of the HURD, and had realised that I needed to use its trivfs library for a sender to be able to discover … Continue reading
Posted in GNU, OOP, techradar
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Gently HURDing the side projects
I find it problematic that even at times when I’m avoiding computing outside of work, I still have ideas about things I would like to try out or improve in computing “if I had the time”. I tend to capture … Continue reading
Posted in GNU, learning, OOP, techradar
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Head of Architecture
My current job title is Head of Architecture, though the word “architecture” means different things to different people in the world of software. So what does it mean to me, what do I do when I’m playing Head of Architecture? … Continue reading
Posted in architecture of sorts
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MUI
In my last post I talked about investigating AROS, the modern, open source[*] implementation of the Amiga Operating System. Today I’ve spent some more time on that study, and found some things: my strategy last time was to read the … Continue reading
AROS
I spent the weekend teaching myself some Amiga GUI (Intuition) programming using AROS via the Icaros Desktop distribution, their developer guides, and the Amiga developer CD. It’s a nice enough system to program in that works like most other GUI … Continue reading
Computing’s fundamental Principle of No Learning
I haven’t used Taligent’s frameworks or operating systems directly; what I know of it comes from their documentation and the book Inside Taligent Technology. I put some small effort into finding out whether it’s possible to use the Taligent system … Continue reading
Reasoning about reasoning about software
Functional programmers like to claim that you can’t reason about mutable state programs. Some thoughts: the first half of the book A Discipline of Programming by Edsger W. Dijkstra tells you how to do it. That half of the book … Continue reading
All the things
It’s been a long time since I had a side project, or one that didn’t get abandoned very early on. I tend to get sidetracked by other thoughts about computing, or think “while I’m doing this, I’m leaving that unsolved” … Continue reading
Posted in advancement of the self, documentation, learning, techradar
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Against our values as a company
I’m going to pick on Patreon, not because they’re special, but because they’re typical. Here is a quote from a blog post in which they Back-pedalled a change to their pricing structure: We overstepped our bounds and injected ourselves into … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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Falsehoods programmers believe about programming
There is no ethical impact of my job; I build technological systems and it’s up to others how they use them. Software is a purely technical discipline. There is some innate affinity for computer programming which you must be born … Continue reading
Posted in code-level
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