As I’m writing this in December of 2014, I’ve been reminded that the classic Design Patterns book came out in 1995, almost twenty years ago. I didn’t see the book until a year or two later. Reactions I remember several reactions from the programmers I was working with at the time. Most of the programmers… Read More »
In a recent blog post, I suggested that the most important result of a developer writing code is the understanding of the problem/solution. Most of the reason for suggesting this change in focus is to help people understand that throwing away code that no longer serves a purpose is a good thing, not a loss.… Read More »
Almost every development manager I have ever met has been looking for senior programmers. Some must set their sights lower for budgetary reasons, but they are all looking for the best they can hire. As you would expect, there are always fewer senior programmers than there are possible positions. This tends to make them relatively… Read More »
I recently heard an interview with Martin Fowler on the Ruby Rogues podcast. He pointed out a few things about the process of refactoring that I haven’t thought of in a while. Based on that interview and what I’ve read and learned elsewhere about refactoring in the past few years, I decided there are a… Read More »
It’s not a big surprise that most programmers feel that the most important result of writing code is the code itself. Other people might argue that while the code is important, other things are more important: Results of the execution of the code Money made by selling the program Business value realized by running the… Read More »
Every bit of code we write is the result of trade-offs. Some seem like no-brainers: what language to use, which paradigm to use. Others are more subtle: how important is speed/maintainability/memory, fail fast or never fail, fix a bug quickly or rewrite to prevent that class of bugs. One of the big trade-offs is between… Read More »
There are a few reasons that Best Practices get specified in a profession. Provide standards for judging proposed solutions. Provide cover for unforeseen circumstances. Provide a starting point for discussions to improve the state of the art even more. Help more junior people make better decisions before they fully understand the field. Applied to software,… Read More »
A few years ago, I first became aware of the concept of Value Objects. Unlike most objects you might use in a design, the identity of a value object is completely unimportant. Instead, the value of the object is all that is important. This leads to a couple of interesting design decisions: Value objects tend… Read More »
This is yet another in the Best Practices Gone Bad series of posts. Around two decades ago, the book Design Patterns (often called the Gang of Four, or GoF, book) was published. This book introduced a large number of programmers to a new approach to thinking about solutions. For those who are not familiar with… Read More »
This is the second entry in the Best Practices Gone Bad series of posts. One principle that a lot of developers have been holding to lately is DRY. In The Pragmatic Programmer, Hunt and Thomas state the DRY principle as: Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system. This… Read More »