software development concepts
It’s because I’m so humble, obviously. Allow me to illustrate with an excerpt from the personal character chapter of McConnell’s Code Complete 2.0: The intense inwardness of programming makes personal character especially important. You know how difficult it is to put in eight concentrated hours in
software development concepts
I found these editorials buried on Steve McConnell’s website, from his stint as editor of IEEE software magazine. It’s a great series of articles; they’re all good, but I particularly recommend “Cargo Cult Engineering.” Here are direct links to each, in chronological order, October 1998 through February
object-oriented programming
Have you ever noticed that new .NET developers have a tendency to use inheritance for... well, everything? On some level, this is understandable, since inheritance is used throughout the framework; everything in .NET inherits from a root object. There’s one big difference, though: we’re writing crappy business logic
programming languages
There’s an interesting interview with Miguel de Icaza. Miguel is the primary developer behind the open-source port of the .NET runtime known as the Mono Project. This project was recently purchased by Novell, ostensibly to bolster the development tools available on Linux. Miguel seems refreshingly free of the dogma
vb.net
If I see one more blog entry complaining about VB’s verbosity, or the elitism of C# developers, I think I’m gonna puke. Why can’t we all just get along? Part of what makes the .NET Runtime unique is that it offers you a choice of syntax; we
software development concepts
There’s been a lot of discussion recently about the Object to Relational mapping problem, which is a serious one. This Clemens Vasters blog entry summarizes it best: Maybe I am too much of a data (read: XML, Messages, SQL) guy by now, but I just lost faith that objects
software development concepts
On Rory’s effusive recommendation, I purchased a copy of the book, Coding Slave, by Bob Reselman. I have mixed feelings about Coding Slave. It’s got a great title, it definitely kept my interest, and it’s a quick read. I can also pretty much guarantee you’ve never
programming languages
The term “computer science” is a borderline oxymoron. Very little of what we do in software development is science: Many historians suggest that modern science began around 1600 in the time and with the efforts of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), and Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Their era punctuated the
software development concepts
As I was driving home, I found myself thinking about a favorite section of the book Accidental Empires, by longtime computer journalist Robert X. Cringely. Originally published in 1993, it’s getting a little long in the tooth, but it still contains a lot of great insights about the personalities
programming languages
I’ve found a number of blog posts about the pros and cons of Simonyi’s Hungarian Notation, most notably, this blog post commenting on the extreme polarity of the reprinted MSDN article rating: This single image really cuts to the heart of the debate, pointedly illustrating what a religious
software development concepts
Reading through this blog, I was just reminded that Code Complete 2* was released. Since this book is the first entry on my prioritized list of Recommended Reading for Developers, and Steve is the patron saint of this web site, you better believe I just placed an order for it!
programming languages
I don’t understand it. I’ve seen this phenomenon over and over in VB.NET, in code from experienced programmers: If dt.DayOfWeek = DayOfWeek.Sunday Then Return dt ElseIf dt.DayOfWeek = DayOfWeek.Monday Then Return dt.AddDays(6) ElseIf dt.DayOfWeek = DayOfWeek.Tuesday Then Return dt.AddDays(5) ElseIf