Category Archives: software-engineering

Class clusters, placeholder objects, value-oriented programming, and all that good stuff.

Posted on 2012-05-30 by Graham

Have you ever seen this exception in your crash log? 2012-05-29 17:55:37.240 Untitled 2[5084:707] *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception ‘NSInvalidArgumentException’, reason: ‘*** -length only defined for abstract class. Define -[NSPlaceholderString length]!’ What’s that NSPlaceholderString class? Leaving aside NSMutableString … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, Foundation, software-engineering | Comments Off

Is privacy a security feature?

Posted on 2012-05-27 by Graham

I’ve spoken a lot about privacy recently: mainly because it’s an important problem. Important enough to hit the headlines; important enough for trade associations and independent developers alike to make a priority. Whether it’s talks at conferences, or guiding people … Continue reading →

Posted in Privacy, software-engineering | Leave a comment

Metacognition-driven development

Posted on 2012-05-14 by Graham

To find out what techniques work for you in a field of practice, you often need to think about how you think. To decide what it is that drives your learning processes, and then adapt your practices to suit that. … Continue reading →

Posted in advancement of the self, software-engineering, TDD | Comments Off

Messing about with Clang

Posted on 2012-05-07 by Graham

I’ve been reading the Smalltalk-80 blue book (pdf) recently, and started to wonder what a Smalltalk style object browser for Objective-C would look like. Not just from the perspective of presenting the information that makes up Objective-C classes in novel … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, Mac, software-engineering, tool-support | 5 Comments

Classes are globals, too

Posted on 2012-05-04 by Graham

Software engineers are used to the notion that global variables are a bad idea. Globals are usually accessed by asking, not by telling. They introduce tight coupling between any module that uses the global and the one that declares it, … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, software-engineering, TDD | Comments Off

Comparing Objective-C and Objective-C with Objective-C

Posted on 2012-04-28 by Graham

A while back, I wrote an object-oriented dispatch system for Objective-C. It defines only three things: an object type (the BlockObject), a way to create new objects (the BlockConstructor), and a way to message objects (the dispatch mechanism). That’s all … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, OOP, software-engineering | Comments Off

Test-Driven iOS Development

Posted on 2012-04-12 by Graham

Here it is, after more than a year in the making, the book that they really did want you to read! Test-driven IOS Development (Developer’s Library) (affiliate link) has finally hit the stores[*]. I wrote this book for the simple … Continue reading →

Posted in books, PCAS, software-engineering, TDD, TDiOSD | 6 Comments

On my newer competence

Posted on 2012-04-04 by Graham

This time last year, I evaluated myself against the programmer competency matrix. So where am I one turn around the daystar later? I have to admit that this was mainly because I was jet lagged in a hotel room in … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, software-engineering | Comments Off

UX is snake-oil bullshit

Posted on 2012-04-01 by Graham

There, I said it. I feel better already. There are people in the world who’ll tell you that the most important thing in the world is UX, that if your software isn’t UX-compliant it isn’t worth shit. Here’s why that’s … Continue reading →

Posted in software-engineering, user-error | 6 Comments

Adding components to a GNUstep web / WebObjects app

Posted on 2012-03-28 by Graham

In WebObjects, Components take the role of a view controller in what passes for Cocoa’s version of MVC. Each is responsible for calculating the data that the view objects are bound to: you saw an example of this in the … Continue reading →

Posted in code-level, software-engineering, tool-support, WebObjects | Comments Off