One of the odd things about programming is that you are writing for two different audiences. One is the dumbest device ever invented (it does exactly what you tell it to do) and the other is a (hopefully) intelligent programmer who will need to read this code later. We spend a fair amount of time… Read More »
As I said in Joel on Wrong-Looking Code, I find Joel on Software to be a good source of information on programming. However, I don’t always agree with him. In Joel on Software – Making Wrong Code Look Wrong, Joel states that he does not like exceptions. He also refers to a previous article Joel… Read More »
Like any natural language, most programming languages support idioms. According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, an idiom is A speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements, as in keep tabs on. A… Read More »
I just recently read Valueless Software, written by Chad Fowler from about a year ago. In this article, he describes an approach to practicing music by ignoring the result and focusing on the process. He contends that software people might benefit from a similar approach. I have actually seen this approach used before in C… Read More »
perl.com: Maintaining Regular Expressions [Jan. 16, 2004] Aaron Mackey does a wonderful job of suggesting more maintainable regular expression idioms. His use of (?{}) to assign the results of capturing parenthesis inline was particularly interesting to me. I may have seen it before, but this is the first time it made sense. The article goes… Read More »
In a natural language, an idiom is a phrase that conveys more information than the individual words combined. In order to understand an idiom, you must have knowledge of the culture of the person using the idiom, as well as a good grasp of the language. Programming idioms are similar. They involve uses of particular… Read More »