What does it mean for an object to die? In C++, there are several distinct and well-defined stages in the death of an object. Other languages do this a little differently, but the general concepts remain the same. This is the basic chain of events for an item on the stack. Object becomes inaccessible Object… Read More »
Questioning Extreme Programming Pete McBreen Addison-Wesley, 2003 This book starts off with the premise that XP is really not appropriate for many projects. However, far from being a bash XP session, it turns into a very hard-nosed look at many methodologies. He compares many of the strengths and weaknesses of the major development methodologies in… Read More »
When talking about Object Oriented Programming, there are several principles that are normally associated with the paradigm: polymorphism, inheritance, encapsulation, etc. I feel that people tend to forget the first, most important principle of OOP: object lifetime. One of the first things that struck me when I was learning OOP in the C++ programming language… Read More »
I had an interesting thought during an email conversation with a friend yesterday. One problem many people have when using XML for data is a misunderstanding of what the XML is. (If you don’t believe in the data in XML approach, feel free to ignore me.<grin/>) It’s easy to make the mistake of treating the… Read More »
Java Cookbook Ian F. Darwin O’Reilly, 2001 In spite of the fact that it is supposedly written in the style of the Perl Cookbook, this book was a real disappointment. The cookbook format is intended for showing solutions to common problems. However, the author of this book appeared to be trying to force a tutorial… Read More »
In my weblog entry from a couple of days ago More Thoughts About Debugging, I forgot to add the information that prompted me to write in the first place. I was looking around a few weeks ago and found a series of links providing various pieces of debugging and troubleshooting information.
Although the debate continues to rage between the XML as documents camp and the XML as data camp, it seems reasonable to believe that both styles are here to stay. I have noticed one trend in XML data that strikes me as déjà vu all over again. There seem to be a large number of… Read More »
Although it’s not a book and not directly related to programming, I am going to review one of the best reading tools I’ve ever seen, Book Darts. If you read or deal with a lot of reference books, you need to look at these little wonders.
SVG Essentials J. David Eisenberg O’Reilly, 2002 A little over a year ago I bought and read SVG Essentials by J. David Eisenberg. At the time, I was moving from dabbling in SVG to beginning a contract which required the use of SVG. This book provides a good working overview of SVG. I have seen… Read More »
Earlier in this weblog, I listed some of my basic troubleshooting rules. I thought it was probably time to come back and spend a little more time on this topic. I plan to expand on the points I made earlier and add a few more thoughts along the way.