30 Monday Jun 2025
In the previous post I semi-corrected a long-time oversight by revisiting the post The Thing About Constants and turning it into a Coding Rule, Rule #6. (I say “semi-corrected” because it really should have been Rule #3.)
In this post I semi-correct another oversight represented by the post The Synchronization Problem. It’s the other one that has been bugging me for a while because it should have been a rule (probably Rule #4). As they say, “Better late than never.”
23 Monday Jun 2025
Posted in CS101
Tags
code clarity, computer programming, constants, defined values, global constants, literal values, readable code
It has been more than a few minutes since I posted a Coding Rule, so I thought it was high time I did. There are at least two things I’ve previously written about as important but didn’t elevate to Rules. Both have been bugging me; they should be rules. Today (and a week from now) I’m correcting that oversight.
To be honest, this Rule is so important, I’m not sure why I didn’t make it the third one. Rule #1 and Rule #2 are definitely more important, but the ones currently listed as #3 – #5 are not as important as today’s (they are very important, though).
19 Monday Aug 2024
I recently learned about Bloom filters (and was then able to fully understand the joke in this xkcd comic). While I don’t have a good application for them myself, I found them interesting enough to play around with a little.
Python uses them under the hood in a way that has some potential for other applications. In this post I’ll explain Bloom filter basics and go over some simple implementations.
11 Wednesday Oct 2023
Posted in CS101
Tags
Quite some time ago, I posted about this on my main blog, but it has occurred to me that, firstly, it might be time for an update, and secondly, that a post about why computers use 1s and 0s is better suited here on my programming blog. (Especially as this is the 101st post!)
It turns out there is a very good reason computers use 1s and 0s, and while it is possible to use other numbers, the 1s and 0s are all that is needed.
23 Thursday Jun 2022
Posted in CS101
There are many general skills a programmer should have to be effective and valuable. Some are very general — for instance, the ability to learn and to think abstractly — but some are more specific — various tools and tricks of skilled programming.
Among those tools are several non-programming languages all programmers should know. Those include HTML, XML, SQL, and an old one whose name doesn’t end with “L” — Regular Expressions (aka REs, aka RegEx or RegExp).
27 Monday Dec 2021
The first article (long, long ago) about naming things only scratched the surface. Even with company and language guidelines (or other rules) to help, with so many things to name it’s easy to lose control. Even now, after 44 years of writing code, I still sometimes find myself staring at the screen trying to think of what to name some object.
It’s understandable; there are a lot of things to think about when it comes to a name.
29 Monday Nov 2021
Posted in CS101
One of the great battles programmers fight involves synchronization between two different parts of the code. The most common example of this is what the comments say versus what the code really does. Another common example is the structure of data stored somewhere (like a database) and the code that manipulates it.
A lot of the programmer’s effort and technique is devoted to managing, if not preventing, synchronization issues. The rules encouraging encapsulation, or against global objects, have a lot to do with this goal.
15 Monday Nov 2021
Posted in CS101
Computers process numbers using arithmetic and logic (which amount to the same thing). Processing text, however, requires at least two levels of abstraction. Firstly, a definition of a textual atom — informally a character. Secondly, a definition of a textual unit — typically called a string. A string is an ordered list of characters.
Therein lies a whole field of computer science. From a practical point of view, implementing text has become much easier with Unicode. Different character sets was one of the more awful aspects of dealing with text. (Remember CP-1252?)
02 Tuesday Nov 2021
Posted in CS101
Tags
code clarity, computer code, computer languages, computer programming, Java, Python code, readable code, toString, __str__
Although I’m categorizing this one as really good advice, rather than as a rule, I think it should be viewed as basically a rule. I think it should be a rule in any object-oriented language that supports it natively (Java and Python, for example).
The advice (rule of thumb, say) is to always create a useful implementation of toString when you create a class. It makes your development and maintenance life ever so much better.
19 Tuesday Oct 2021
Tags
code clarity, computer code, computer programmers, readable code, space character, tab character, text file
There are many issues that divide programmers: operating systems and editors being two huge ones. I’ve worked on too many platforms to care much about the first one, but I’m a lifelong gvim user.
One of the lesser dividing issues involves the crucial source coding choice: Tabs or Spaces? The issue is both less and more important these days. Less because editors are very capable; more because Python is popular.
The Hard-Core Coder 