APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Category Archives: advancement of the self
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
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Learning phases
I’ve been trying to learn things this week (specifically Haskell). So far I’ve been through a lot of different moods, and I thought it’d be handy to write them down so that next time I’m the teacher I can remember … Continue reading
Posted in advancement of the self, edjercashun
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On switching to Linux
In November, I switched to GNU/Linux at home (I still use OS X at work, because I still write Objective-C in Xcode at work). Or rather, I switched back: I’d been using it around a decade ago. In December, I … Continue reading
Posted in advancement of the self, GNU, Mac
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Fuck. This. Shit.
Enough with the subtle allusions of the previous posts. What’s going on here is not right. It’s not right that I get to pass as a member of the group of people who can work in technology, while others have … Continue reading
Posted in advancement of the self, learning, Responsibility
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Sitting on the Sidelines
Thank you, James Hague, for your article You Can’t Sit on the Sidelines and Become a Philosopher. I got a lot out of reading it, because I identified myself in it. Specifically in this paragraph: There’s another option, too: you … Continue reading
Intra-curricular activities
I’m apparently fascinated by the idea of defining curricula for learning programming. I’ve written about how we need to be careful what we try to pay forward from the way we learned in the past, and I’ve talked about how … Continue reading
Posted in academia, advancement of the self, books, edjercashun, learning
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Things I believe
The task of producing software is one of choosing and creating constraints, rules and abstractions inside a system which provides very few a priori. Typically we select a large collection of pre-existing constraints, rules and abstractions upon which to base … Continue reading
Preparing for Computing’s Big One-Oh-Oh
However you slice the pie, we’re between two and three decades away from the centenary celebration for applied computing (which is of course significantly after theoretical or hypothetical advances made by the likes of Lovelace, Turing and others). You might … Continue reading
Posted in academia, advancement of the self, books, learning, Responsibility, software-engineering, tool-support
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On too much and too little
In the following text, remember that words like me or I are to be construed in the broadest possible terms. It’s easy to be comfortable with my current level of knowledge. Or perhaps it’s not the value, but the derivative … Continue reading
Some so-called expert
There’s a comedy sketch being frequently tweeted called The Expert. Now, all programmers will be aware that there is nothing funnier than interpreting a joke literally and telling everyone the many ways in which it’s wrong, and that there is … Continue reading
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