design patterns
The introduction to Head First Design Patterns exhorts us not to reinvent the wheel: You're not alone. At any given moment, somewhere in the world someone struggles with the same software design problems you have. You know you don't want to reinvent the wheel (or worse,
version control
I consider this the golden rule of source control: Check in early, check in often. Developers who work for long periods -- and by long I mean more than a day -- without checking anything into source control are setting themselves up for some serious integration headaches down the line.
tags: software development concepts
If peppering your code with lots of comments is good, then having zillions of comments in your code must be great, right? Not quite. Excess is one way good comments go bad [https://blog.codinghorror.com/when-good-comments-go-bad/]: '************************************************* ' Name: CopyString ' ' Purpose: This routine copies a string from
web development
Pop quiz, hotshot. Which one is the superior Uniform Resource Locator? www.fakeplasticrock.com or fakeplasticrock.com This is one of those intractable problems. Global wars have been fought over so much less. In hacker circles, this is sometimes referred to as a bikeshed discussion. That said, I do have
programming concepts
In Outliving the Great Variable Shortage, Tim Ottinger invokes Curly's Law: A variable should mean one thing, and one thing only. It should not mean one thing in one circumstance, and carry a different value from a different domain some other time. It should not mean two things
programming languages
The last post about programmers and chefs reminded me of a point raised in the classic Pragmatic Progammers' presentation Herding Racehorses, Racing Sheep: vs Instructions that are appropriate for a novice may be totally inappropriate for an expert. This is something I touched on a while back in Level
best practices
James Bach's seminal rant, No Best Practices, is a great reality check for architecture astronaut rhetoric. It's worth revisiting even if you've read it before. Some might say Bach's viewpoint is pessimistic, even cynical: The way to get rich in this world
.net
Vertigo Software's .NET Pet Shop 4.0 article [http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/bdasamppet4.asp] just went live on MSDN. It's Pet Shop! You know... our old pal, Pet Shop [http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/compare/petshop.aspx]: However,
It's easy to fire off an email with barely any effort at all. And that's exactly how much effort goes into most emails: none. Ole Eichhorn's Tyranny of Email [http://www.w-uh.com/articles/030308-tyranny_of_email.html] offers a succinct set of guidelines
software development concepts
I was chatting on the phone with a friend of mine a few days ago, and he described a project he recently inherited. It was the work of a half-dozen different developers, who each built their parts of the project in a completely different way with little to no communication
software development concepts
I’m currently reading Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert Glass. It’s definitely a worthwhile book, although I do have two criticisms: 1. Someone really, really needs to buy Robert Glass a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Or at least get him a