Category Archives: code-level

Code longevity

Posted on 2014-04-23 by Graham

I recently wrote about the impending centenary of applied computing; a time when we could reflect on the first hundred years to make it easier for people to progress beyond our position into the second hundred years. This necessitates looking … Continue reading →

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How much programming language is enough?

Posted on 2014-04-07 by Graham

Many programmers have opinions on programming languages. Maybe, if I present an opinion on programming languages, I can pass off as a programmer. An old debate in psychology and anthropology is that of nature vs nurture, the discussion over which … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, nearly linguistics, tool-support | Leave a comment

Replacing the language

Posted on 2014-02-13 by Graham

Over the last few years, people have used the ObjC frameworks from TCL, Python, Perl and WebScript, Perl again, Perl, more Python, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Java, Java, AppleScript, Smalltalk, C++, Pascal, Object Pascal, CLIPS, Common LISP, Nu, Eero, Modula-2, … Continue reading →

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ClassBrowser: warts and all

Posted on 2014-01-02 by Graham

I previously gave a sneak peak of ClassBrowser, a dynamic execution environment for Objective-C. It’s not anything like ready for general use (in fact it can’t really do ObjC very well at all), but it’s at the point where you … Continue reading →

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A sneaky preview of ClassBrowser

Posted on 2013-12-18 by Graham

Let me start with a few admissions. Firstly, I have been computering for a good long time now, and I still don’t really understand compilers. Secondly, work on my GNUstep Web side-project has tailed off for a while, because I … Continue reading →

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By your _cmd

Posted on 2013-12-17 by Graham

This post is a write-up of a talk I gave at Alt Tech Talks: London on the Objective-C runtime. Seriously though, you should’ve been there. The Objective-C runtime? That’s the name of the library of C functions that implement the … Continue reading →

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The code you wrote six months ago

Posted on 2013-06-18 by Graham

We have this trope in programming that you should hate the code you wrote six months ago. This is a figurative way of saying that you should be constantly learning and assimilating new ideas, so that you can look at … Continue reading →

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Separating user interface from work

Posted on 2013-06-17 by Graham

Here’s a design I’ve had knocking around my head for a while, and between a discussion we had a few weeks ago at work and Saul Mora’s excellent design patterns talk at QCon I’ve built it. A quick heads-up: currently … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, OOP, performance, Talk | Comments Off

On protocols that aren’t

Posted on 2013-05-29 by Graham

There’s a common assumption when dealing with Objective-C protocols or Java interfaces (or abstract classes, I suppose): that you’re abstracting away the implementation of an object leaving just its interface. “Oh, don’t mind how I quack, all you need to … Continue reading →

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Shell scripts and Xcode

Posted on 2013-05-21 by Graham

Back in 2009 at the first NSConf, Scotty asked some of the speakers for an Xcode Quick Tip. I’m still using mine today. When your target needs a “Run Shell Script” build phase, don’t write the script into the box … Continue reading →

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