What is it about programmers that cause them to latch onto one approach and try to apply it to every problem? Maybe it’s a characteristic of people in general. Each new paradigm, methodology, or even language seems to grab hold of many programmers and make them forget anything they ever knew. They seem to develop… Read More »
XML Bible Elliotte Rusty Harold IDG Books, 1999 As computer books go, this book is old. However, it does a spectacular job of handling all of the nitty-gritty details of XML. I first stumbled across this book when it was new. The only really definitive information you could find on XML was the W3C recommendation… Read More »
XML in a Nutshell Elliotte Rusty Harold and W. Scott Means O’Reilly, 2001 This is a good overview of XML-based technologies as of 2001. If you are looking for a deep understanding of the uses of XML and related technologies, this is not the right book for you. However, if you are looking for a… Read More »
Recently, I stumbled across Mental State Called Flow and was reminded of an idea I had about flow and Miller’s Magic Number. When in the state of flow, I’ve sometimes had the experience that the problem I was working on was much easier to understand than it seemed to be when I was not in… Read More »
In Programmer Musings: More Thoughts on Mastering Programming I referenced the four levels of competence without being able to remember the original source. According to Four Levels Of Competence, the source is the Kirkpatrick Model by Donald L. Kirkpatrick.
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 saw the article Refactoring reminiscent of high school algebra on Artima yesterday and it made me remember a new connection of my own. In the article, David Goodger is working on a refactoring problem that is turning out to be worse than expected. After a little reflection, he manages to solve the problem. But… 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 »
ACM Queue often has very insightful articles, and this one is no exception. The article ACM Queue – Death by UML Fever – Are you (or your developers) sick? covers a major problem in software development in a somewhat humorous fashion. I’ve seen several variations of this problem, but I never thought of it as… Read More »
Reading Dave Thomas’s blog on Code Kata pointed to PragDave: MoreKata. I also stumbled across How To Practice on Chad Fowler’s blog. Both of these entries discuss exercises that we can use to master the art of programming. Perhaps surprisingly, they use metaphors and concepts from martial arts and Zen. Those of us who have… Read More »