March 2009 Blog Posts
I just had a moment of deeper understanding in how real life guidelines apply to software development as well (as far as software development isn't real life of course).When I was taking driving lessons for my license a while ago, my driving instructor gave me a few tips, which with a little creative reasoning apply to software development as well:Be decisive. Don't hesitate, do what you have to do. When you make a decision, follow through! Don't wait when you don't need to, just do it!In sofware development: When in a situation that seems difficult, find a way to solve...
So, for my current job I (together with two peers) write-slash-maintain a moderately big stack of PHP code. It’s written in a typical PHP fashion: (almost) no object-oriented principles, a bad attempt of separating presentation and business logic, code duplication all over the place, and, currently my biggest nemesis, zealous usage of the ‘global’ keyword. What is the global keyword you ask? By declaring $a and $b global within the function, all references to either variable will refer to the global version. There is no limit to the number of global variables that can be...
I’m coining a new programming discipline, called Jenga Programming, or Jenga Driven Design (JDD). It’s something I see happening all the time, and it’s driving me crazy now and then. For those of you who don’t know what Jenga is: Jenga is a game of physical and mental skill, marketed by Hasbro, in which players remove blocks from a tower and put them on top. The word jenga is derived from kujenga, the Swahili verb "to build"; jenga! is the imperative form. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenga) Basically what you do is you start with a solid...