APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
FSF
Tag Archives: History of Software Engineering
On null
I’ve had an interesting conversation on the topic of null over the last few days, spurred by the logical disaster of null. I disagreed with the statement in the post that: Logically-speaking, there is no such thing as Null This … Continue reading
Why inheritance never made any sense
There are three different types of inheritance going on. Ontological inheritance is about specialisation: this thing is a specific variety of that thing (a football is a sphere and it has this radius) Abstract data type inheritance is about substitution: … Continue reading
How retrospectives ban shoes
At the end of each sprint, we hold a retrospective. The book “Agile Coaching” by Rachel Davies and Liz Sedley says: An iteration retrospective should help the team explore the following: What insights do they have from the last iteration? … Continue reading
No True Humpty-Dumpty
Words change meaning. Technical words change meaning. Sometimes, you need to check out a specific commit of a word’s meaning from the version control, to add context to a statement. “I’m talking about Open Source in its early meaning of … Continue reading
Posted in advancement of the self, edjercashun
Tagged History of Software Engineering
Leave a comment
It’s about the thinking
At some point in the past, programmers used to recommend drawing flowcharts before you start coding. Then they recommended creating CRC cards, or acting through how the turtle will behave, or writing failing tests, or getting the types to match … Continue reading
MUI
In my last post I talked about investigating AROS, the modern, open source[*] implementation of the Amiga Operating System. Today I’ve spent some more time on that study, and found some things: my strategy last time was to read the … Continue reading
Computing’s fundamental Principle of No Learning
I haven’t used Taligent’s frameworks or operating systems directly; what I know of it comes from their documentation and the book Inside Taligent Technology. I put some small effort into finding out whether it’s possible to use the Taligent system … Continue reading
Reasoning about reasoning about software
Functional programmers like to claim that you can’t reason about mutable state programs. Some thoughts: the first half of the book A Discipline of Programming by Edsger W. Dijkstra tells you how to do it. That half of the book … Continue reading
