Author Archives: Graham

About Graham

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

What Xamarin.Forms taught me about data bindings

Posted on 2021-04-16 by Graham

I’ve spent about a year working on an app for a group in the University where I work, that needed to be available on both Android and iOS. I’ve got a bit of experience working with the Apple-supplied SDKs on … Continue reading →

Posted in mono, msft | 5 Comments

Whoever “wins”, software freedom loses

Posted on 2021-04-01 by Graham

I’d like to start by recapping the three distinct categories of interest in software freedom. This is definitely my categorisation, though only the third is novel and the first two have long histories of common recognition so this is hardly … Continue reading →

Posted in FLOSS, freesoftware, fsf, GNU | 1 Comment

One person per task

Posted on 2021-03-25 by Graham

One of the least teamy things I see with software teams is limiting the maximum and minimum number of items of work in process – tasks, stories, whatever you call them – both to the number of developers on the … Continue reading →

Posted in team | 4 Comments

The Vizzini Effect

Posted on 2021-03-07 by Graham

A bunch of the topics I wanted to discuss all turned out to have a common basis, so I’m going to write the post about the commonality using a couple of examples from the specific topics for illumination. Maybe I’ll … Continue reading →

Posted in whatevs | Leave a comment

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