Over the years I’ve been a programmer, there seem to be two distinct areas of knowledge for any project. The first relates to programming. The second relates to the domain of the project. Over the almost two decades I’ve been programming professionally, I have worked in many domains. Interestingly, I have never started working on… Read More »
Many years ago, I spent a lot of time training entry-level programmers. One of the problems that the more junior programmers had was duplicating code and information in the code. Some of our senior programmers at the time began talking about the concept of the one, right place. Later, I read the book The Programmatic… Read More »
In The Architecture of Participation vesus(sic) Hacking, Carlos Perez argues against points he sees in the essay Great Hackers by Paul Graham. Having read the two essays, I find Perez’s comments enlightening, but maybe not in the way he intended. I found things in both essays that I agree with, and things in both that… Read More »
Contrary to expectations, many programmers do not solve problems through logic. This should not be surprising, as the same is true of humans in general. But many programmers I’ve known whole-heartedly disagree with that comment. I’ve noticed that many really good programmers are extremely good at pattern recognition and solve many problems through a creative… Read More »
In The Semantics of Garbage Collection, I explained why I don’t like the term garbage collection. I also introduced the term resource recovery, and suggested that this change in naming could generate a useful change in viewpoint. In the next article, More Thoughts on Resource Recovery, I traced some of the history and side effects… Read More »
In The Semantics of Garbage Collection, I explained why I don’t like the term garbage collection. I also introduced the term resource recovery, and suggested that this change in naming could generate a useful change in viewpoint. Many programmers have been indoctrinated with the belief that garbage collection is the solution to all memory problems,… Read More »
I have a confession to make. I’ve never really been comfortable with garbage collection. Now, before you dismiss me as a Luddite who has obviously never worked with an advanced programming language, let me explain. I’m familiar with many different forms of garbage collection. I have worked in languages with and without garbage collection. I’ve… Read More »
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 »
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.