July 2003
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In the future, there will be robots!
The code generation crowd are at it again. So, “writing code” is stupid is it? Well what will we call writing the requirements in a form that the code generators can understand and why will it be easier to get the requirements … -
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Untestable
It’s easy to write untestable code. It’s natural. Most code that we write will be hard to test unless we explicitly think about testing when we write it… This code is really simple, yet it’s untestable. Why? … -
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The style sheet made me do it
If I don’t write enough blog entries then the way I have my CSS set up means that the front page starts to look ugly as the number of entries on the left side of the page shrinks and the columns on the right go all squigly… Is … -
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Busy weekend
We tried the new Carluccios on Upper Street on Friday night. Great food and excellent service. Back to watch the final Buffy (season 6) on DVD (so sad); glass or two of Glenfiddich, bug hunting and to bed. Up early to bug hunt and then … -
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My Name is Len Holgate, and I'm a workaholic
Given that the work I do goes on in my head and can be done anywhere I find that it’s often done everywhere. Anyone got any hints on how to switch off? Skiing and skating are good for me as I can’t think about other things when … -
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Three bugs went into a program
Three bugs went into a program; a memory leak, a misunderstood interface and a deadlock… The memory leak was easy to track down as it was in the code that was covered by the test harness. So we just instrument the code with Bounds … -
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Waltzing with Bears
Finally finished reading Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects and it was well worth the read. Waltzing with Bears is a book about managing project risk. It’s a slim volume, but packed with useful information. As … -
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Untestable 2
A couple of days ago I posted some untestable code. I’ve had a couple of emails saying that people couldn’t see why the code was untestable. Here’s why, and here’s how to fix it. The code shown manages a list of … -
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Big ball of mud
Brian Foote and Joseph Yoder writing about software architecture (or the lack of it). Thanks to Bryan Boreham for the link. -
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Twenty Eight
So there are 10 guys on a stag weekend in Amsterdam. Much drinking. Lots of foolish games with very fluid rules and fines for people who did not comply. Many fines were collected. At some point during the drinking games on the first … -
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Unsound FX
We’ve been moving pretty quickly on the refactoring project. We had got to the point where we were doing at least two releases a week. Generally we would include user requested fixes in the first release and refactored code in the … -
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Big blind, little blind
The online game approaches completion but recently the requirements were lacking and we couldn’t see the way forward. We’re finishing the game play and getting to the complicated special cases - I’m hoping that they … -
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Free software integration code drop
The free source code integration project has its first code drop and then its second code drop… Almost complete. The integration has gone pretty well. The server code now has a neat little facade that allows it to impersonate the MFC … -
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Keeping all the balls in the air
A while back Carson asked me how I managed to keep track of all the projects that I was working on; I said that I had practiced being productive over short time periods, tried to stay focused on one thing at a time and not to switch … -
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Currently reading
Agile Software Development - Principles, Patterns, and Practices by Robert C. Martin This book is physically heavier than most of the books I’ve been reading lately but I’m still carrying it to work even though I only get around … -
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The onset of infection
I’ve spent the morning doing test driven development, properly; writing tests first and everything. It works, it’s faster and it’s addictive. The current work item for the online game is to take the existing game play and … -
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Site update
I want someone to quote for converting my company web site, www.jetbyte.com, to use Movable Type as its content management system. Anyone interested in the work? -
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Uncle Bob talks lots of sense
So, I read my own blog and follow the links I put in the entries, does that make me a bad person? After writing the post on Bob Martin’s book I went off to read his blog, good stuff, read it! I especially like the “We will not … -
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Tull
When we were in Amsterdam doing the stag thing I saw a Jethro Tull video on the local music station. I wasn’t actually aware that such a thing existed; but it sure brought back memories. It was a live version of “Living In The … -
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Polishing
Hit a deadline early this afternoon and hadn’t chased up some requirements so I ran out of things to implement. Faced with a couple of hours spare I whipped out Gimpel Lint and started to polish… I’ve been a fan of … -
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Learning by imitation vs learning by understanding
As I mentioned a while back, the refactoring project’s FX functionality was developed by guess work. We’re fixing that now by spending some time gaining an understanding of the problem domain as we refactor. I’ve always … -
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The good thing about this web log lark is...
Writing stuff down makes you think about things. Take the “balls in the air” piece. I had a problem, I didn’t realise what the problem was until I wrote about it and now, a week later I see the problem coming up again and …