Author Archives: G Wade Johnson

OOMP: Legacy Code – The Belief

Most companies with a software development staff have legacy code that they need to maintain because it runs their business. Even companies that don’t do software as their main business may have internal tools and such that they need to maintain. The Belief Many software developers and even product and management would prefer to have… Read More »

Data Structure Identifiers

Any time you have a long-term data structure, it’s important to have some form of unique identifier used to look up or recognize the structure. It doesn’t matter if the long-term data is a database record, a document in some form of storage, an object, or whatever. If the data lives for a while, you’ll… Read More »

Will LLM Replace Programmers?

This deserves a much bigger write-up. But, with ChatGPT taking up so much mind share lately, I have an observation. During my career, I’ve seen several technologies or approaches that would allow non-programmers to write systems, and replace those expensive programmers. The claims that I can think of right off Even Visual Basic was touted… Read More »

The Dark Side of Convention over Configuration

I see a lot of development advice that assumes the developer is working on a green field application. Many of the tools that “make a developer’s life easier” are also designed mostly for use in creating new applications. Most of my experience as a professional developer (or whichever title you prefer) has been improving and… Read More »

Aphorism Driven Development (ADD)

Over the years I have noticed a habit among some developers that I’ve come to call Aphorism Driven Development. Many best practices are taught and remembered through the use pithy statements. Although these statements are easy to remember, they can’t capture the full context and connotations of the practice in question. If someone never learns… Read More »