Category Archives: architecture of sorts

More on Layers

Posted on 2014-10-15 by Graham

I was told yesterday that entity-relationship diagrams can be OK as high level descriptions of database schemata, but are not appropriate for designing a database. Enough information is missing that they are not able to model the problem. Could the … Continue reading →

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The trouble with layers

Posted on 2014-10-13 by Graham

In describing Inside-Out Apps I expressed my distrust of the “everything is MVC” school of design. […]when you get overly attached to MVC, then you look at every class you create and ask the question “is this a model, a … Continue reading →

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Contractually-obligated testing

Posted on 2014-08-11 by Graham

About a billion years ago, Bertrand Meyer (he of Open-Closed Principle fame) introduced a programming language called Eiffel. It had a feature called Design by Contract, that let you define constraints that your program had to adhere to in execution. … Continue reading →

Posted in architecture of sorts, code-level, OOP, TDD | 1 Comment

Things I believe

Posted on 2014-06-21 by Graham

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 →

Posted in advancement of the self, architecture of sorts | Leave a comment

On too much and too little

Posted on 2014-04-04 by Graham

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 →

Posted in advancement of the self, architecture of sorts, OOP, software-engineering, tool-support | Leave a comment

Inside-Out Apps

Posted on 2014-03-18 by Graham

This article is based on a talk I gave at mdevcon 2014. The talk also included a specific example to demonstrate the approach, but was otherwise a presentation of the following argument. You probably read this blog because you write … Continue reading →

Posted in architecture of sorts, MVC, OOP, ruby, software-engineering | Comments Off on Inside-Out Apps

Garbage-collected Objective-C

Posted on 2013-07-15 by Graham

When was a garbage collector added to Objective-C? If you follow Apple’s work with the language, you might be inclined to believe that it was in 2008 when AutoZone was added as part of Objective-C 2.0 (the AutoZone collector has … Continue reading →

Posted in academia, architecture of sorts, gnustep, iPad, iPhone, Mac, OOP | Leave a comment

At the old/new interface: jQuery in WebObjects

Posted on 2013-07-01 by Graham

It turns out to be really easy to incorporate jQuery into an Objective-C WebObjects app (targeting GNUstep Web). In fact, it doesn’t really touch the Objective-C source at all. I defined a WOJavascript object that loads jQuery itself from the … Continue reading →

Posted in architecture of sorts, javascript, software-engineering, tool-support, WebObjects | Comments Off on At the old/new interface: jQuery in WebObjects

HATEOAS app structure explained through some flimsy analogy

Posted on 2013-06-27 by Graham

You are in a tall, narrow view. A vibrant, neon sign overhead tells you that this is the entrance to “Stocks” – below it is one of those scrolling news tickers you might see on Times Square. In front of … Continue reading →

Posted in architecture of sorts, UI | Comments Off on HATEOAS app structure explained through some flimsy analogy