September 2004 Archives
Dave Astels: Why your code sucks.
Yup, my code sucks. But I try hard everyday to make it suck less in certain areas.
...Language Log.
A Blog covering linguistics (via Hot Needle Of Inquiry).
Needless to say, a required read for yours truly.
Ron Jeffries: ...when I refactor, it is without regard to the "big picture" of the system, or even of the code.
By letting loose of understanding and focussing on rote behaviour, I actually gain some minor understanding of a small part of the system, thus making progress in understanding of the complete system. One small refactoring/step at a time.
A very useful strategy when dealing with a large base of legacy code.
Interesting enough, letting loose of understanding requires a lot of courage and confidence.
Rachel's Place: ...form is unimportant, there is no right way to write a story and writing them is not the important part. What is essential, is that a conversation takes place between customer and developer.
An honest, frequent, ongoing, two-way conversation.
I wonder if the satellite dish on the roof provided broadband internet connectivity, too.
Looks like there are others out there pondering the idea of automatic persistence in desktop applications.
Implementing a UI enabling non-developers deal with versioning will be a real challenge.
Some great thoughts on well, as the title of this post implies, Zero Defect Development (via And Another thing).
Some more material on testers & developers:
Brian Marick points to Bret Pettichord's "Testers and Developers Think Differently".
Bob Congdon mentions Steve Bourne (author of the Bourne Shell) was using a set of C-macros which allowed him to code in an ALGOL-like fashion.
During the mid-/late-80s I was "famous" for using a hand-crafted PASCAL.H header file which made my C-source code look like PASCAL. Of course, this was just ridiculous and made it much harder for us to use any source-code browsers etc. which almost always barfed when trying to "parse" our "pascalized" C-code.
From today's point of view, my only excuse is that I was way too young back then.
Anyway, to close on a more serious and less reminiscent note: Of course, using macros to disguise one language as another is bullshit. If you keep your methods short (because you're refactoring mercilessly, don't you?), a new and potentially unfamiliar syntax shouldn't get in your way.
Syntax doesn't matter. Writing bad code is easy. Writing great code is hard. Doesn't matter what language you're using.
Developers want to see their code to work, testers want to see it fail.
Mr. Ed elaborates on this topic in a great article: Testing and Card Tricks.
...Ned Batchelder provides a link to the Spirit Parser Framework.
EBNF implemented directly in C++ using templates. Which means, EBNF is embedded in your "standard" C++ code and executed. Stupendous. Even better than writing your own recursive-decent parser instead of relying on yacc.
However, I don't think I'm brave enough to look at the code for the parser framework itself.
He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot. (via vowe.dot.net).
..if you're into bit-shifting, here's a great reference post on BASE64 and UUEncode.
Nice collaborative effort to provide photo tours of Silicon Valley.
There's a new blog/e-zine on C++ at artima.com: The C++ Source.
I look forward to some outrageous template usage introduced & explained.
Honestly, the world could certainly use a blog covering C++ topics with a healthy dose of reality-check mixed in.
Bob Congdon points to a site with Free tech books.
