Maybe it’s a reflection of when I started programming, but I’ve always had problems with frameworks. I prefer having a sharp set of tools to having a do everything framework. For me, the framework breaks down if I need to do something that does not match exactly what the framework designers wanted to do. A… Read More »
One of the dimensions in which you can vary a design is in terms of the amount of flexibility it supports. Trade-offs along this dimension show up in many design decisions for various kinds of software. In some cases, software is made less flexible to improve predictability. In other cases, the adaptability of the software… Read More »
This week, there was an interesting post on Jeff Atwood’s Coding Horror blog. This essay was on Shuffling. Shuffling is an application of random numbers, which is a particular interest of mine. I will write more on that subject in an upcoming essay. One of the comments caught my eye because it echoed a sentiment… Read More »
A couple of years ago, I wrote in The IP Goose about some effects that too strict an IP policy can have on developers. In the intervening two years, I’ve had some other insights that I believe are important. First of all, I stand by my original essay. Companies should be able to protect the… Read More »
Ever since O’Reilly published the new book Beautiful Code, there seem to be references everywhere to what makes code beautiful. While a few people have suggested that beauty should not influence code (see the comments section for the suggestion that there is no beautiful code), I believe that most people have seen code that they… Read More »
Can just anyone learn to program or is that skill limited to a few of us? This question or some variant has been on my mind for most of my career. Early in my career, I thought programming required inherent talent, so only some people were capable of learning to program. As I gained more… Read More »
I ran across an unusual article a couple of months ago, Ethical Software by Alex Bunardzic » Right Tool for the Job is a Myth. My first thought was that the author must be out of his mind. After some reflection, I have a somewhat different view. Now I just think he is mistaken. I… Read More »
Recently, Joel Spolsky wrote about Don Norman’s article Simplicity Is Highly Overrated. Joel used this as a springboard to another talk of how simplicity doesn’t matter in Joel on Software: Simplicity. He referenced and expanded on his views from Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth. As I’ve said before, I often find Joel’s… Read More »
One of the odd things about programming is that you are writing for two different audiences. One is the dumbest device ever invented (it does exactly what you tell it to do) and the other is a (hopefully) intelligent programmer who will need to read this code later. We spend a fair amount of time… Read More »