APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Category Archives: software-engineering
Joe Armstrong thinks we don’t need modules in software. Instead, all functions should have unique names and be published in a global database.
The reasonable effectiveness of developer tools
In goals upon goals upon goals, I suggested that a fixation on developer tools is misplaced. This is not to say that developer tools are unhelpful, nor that they can’t have a significant impact on our work. Consider the following, … Continue reading
Posted in software-engineering, tool-support
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Code longevity
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
Posted in code-level, economics, software-engineering
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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
Software, Science?
Is there any science in software making? Does it make sense to think of software making as scientific? Would it help if we could? Hold on, just what is science anyway? Good question. The medieval French philosopher-monk Buridan said that … Continue reading
Posted in advancement of the self, learning, social-science, software-engineering
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Inside-Out Apps
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
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ClassBrowser’s public face
I made a couple of things: ClassBrowser discussion list The project website‘s source is now visible and MIT licensed I should’ve done both of these things at the beginning of the project. I believe that the fact I opened the … Continue reading
Posted in Responsibility, software-engineering
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ClassBrowser: warts and all
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
Posted in C++, code-level, Mac, OOP, software-engineering, TDD, tool-support
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A sneaky preview of ClassBrowser
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
Posted in advancement of the self, C++, code-level, learning, OOP, software-engineering, tool-support
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