APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Author Archives: Graham
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
It’s been almost a year since my first day at Facebook, sitting in an overcrowded meeting room with my bootcamp class because 42 Earlham Street was full and it’d be another week before we moved to 10 Brock Street, with … Continue reading
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A kata above
The code kata is a method software craftspeople use to practice their craft. The idea is that you take a problem you understand, like FizzBuzz or Conway’s Life, and build an application that implements it. Then build another one. And … Continue reading
Posted in advancement of the self
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In The Design of Design, Fred Brooks makes an interesting point about ESR’s description of the Bazaar model of Linux (and, by extension, “Open Source”) development. Linux was actually designed in a cathedral. The design was supplied by Unix, where … Continue reading
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.
Beware the IDEs
I recently had the opportunity to talk with a couple of software project managers from IBM. That company is of a kind that I have never worked at, and many of the companies I have worked at are of kinds … Continue reading
Posted in tool-support
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Hiding behind messages
A problem I think about every so often is how to combine the software design practice of hiding implementations behind interfaces with the engineering practice of parallel execution. What are the trade-offs between making parallelism explicit and information hiding? Where … Continue reading
Posted in architecture of sorts, code-level, OOP
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It depends? It depends.
Sometimes you ask a question which has a small collection of actionable answers: yes or no. You ask someone who should be able to give that yes or no answer, and they go for the third: it depends. Maybe they … Continue reading
Posted in learning
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GNU Terry Pratchett
(post-hoc prescript: I admit to being in two minds about sharing this post. Name-dropping can be the ultimate in reflected vanity: I have worth because I knew this worthy person. I title it about them, but we both know it’s … Continue reading
Posted in whatevs
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Linus’s Bystanders
For some reason, when Eric S. Raymond wanted to make a point about the “bazaar” model of open source software development, he named it after someone else. Thus we have Linus’s Law: Linus was directly aiming to maximize the number … Continue reading
Posted in social-science
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Inspired by Swift
Gulliver meets the Oopers Lemuel Gulliver’s world was black. No light, no sound, infinite darkness and solitude. Am I dead?, he asked himself. No, surely not. He opened his eyes. Still, everything remained black. My God, I am dead! Lemuel … Continue reading
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