19 Sunday Apr 2020
Tags
code clarity, computer programming, operator precedence, order of operations, parentheses, readable code, software design
Enough stories, time for a new rule. Which is to always use parentheses in all except the simplest of math expressions. Languages have a precedence protocol, so the compiler can figure it out, but human readers may be confused.
As always, the underlying motivation involves code clarity for other humans reading the source code — the most important rule of all.
16 Thursday Apr 2020
Tags
computer programmer, computer programming, data, Java, software, software design, software development
Last time I introduced the DataCollector application, but didn’t have room to get into the use of factory classes. There isn’t often a need for a factory class, but they can be useful when you need to create objects at run-time without knowing their class until then.
The general approach involves a function that returns instances of a class based on run-time information. In some cases the instances are limited to a predetermined set of classes, in other cases it can any class the known to the code.
29 Saturday Feb 2020
Posted in Stories
Tags
computer programmer, computer programming, data, Java, software, software design, software development
When I first posted about my DataBridge utility I mentioned the DataCollector, which was a Java-based framework for quickly building apps that interacted via web services with a third-party CRM services provider.
In this post I’ll introduce the DataCollector framework. For obvious proprietary reasons, this will be fairly generic, but I think the basic architecture is worth sharing. It’s a nice example of using factory classes.
07 Friday Feb 2020
Tags
computer programmer, computer programming, data, Java, software, software design, software development
Last time I started the story of my DataBridge application — a Java-based tool for transferring and transforming tabular data, such as TAB, CSV, and XML files. It could also read from and write to ODBC tables.
The app itself was just a framework that implemented a basic IPO model to transfer data. The details were up to the Input, Process (in this case, Mapping), and Output, drivers loaded at run time.
06 Monday Jan 2020
Tags
computer programmer, computer programming, data, Java, software, software design, software development
The last story was about PF.EXE, a file-processing utility I wrote for my own use way back when. That one was a combination of C code and 8086 assembler and written for MS-DOS (worked fine in Windows). It read and wrote disc files and had a toolkit of things it could do to them, depending on command line switches.
Many years later, using Java, I created more capable versions, the culmination of which was a suite called DataBridge. It turned out to be some of the most valuable work I ever did for The Company.
10 Sunday Nov 2019
Posted in Stories
Programmers, like carpenters, are builders — we make things. The work can be for pay, but carpenters, for example, can build their own bookshelves and doghouses. Programmers also make software for themselves, sometimes to amuse, sometimes to provide a useful function.
A few of the apps I created for myself over the years turned out to be major workhorses for me — tools I used frequently. One of the earliest was PF.EXE, my Process File utility.
25 Tuesday Jun 2019
Tags
computer code, computer language, computer languages, computer programming, computer science, imperative programming language, language design, Object-Oriented Programming, OOP, programming language
This is another note for a friend: a followup to a discussion about how some programmers really hate Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) languages.
Most of those who hate OOP hold up Imperative Programming (IP) as the One True Way to write code. The key difference is the IP is function (or verb) oriented whereas OOP is object (or noun) oriented.
I’ve never really understood that active dislike. It’s just another way to organize the same code you’d write anyway.
14 Friday Sep 2018
Posted in Opinion
Tags
computer code, computer programmer, computer programming, real programmers, software design, software development, software industry
There’s a general ethic these days — that anyone can code — and like a lot of things, there’s some truth to it, but also some silliness. As usual, it really depends on what we mean by “anyone can code.”
If we mean it in the same way we might say, “anyone can drive,” I think it’s silly. But if we mean in the same way we might say, “anyone can doctor (or lawyer),” well, then I still think it’s silly.
11 Saturday Aug 2018
Tags
computer programming, computer science, program, software, software design, software development, software industry, xkcd
I cracked up when I saw this recent xkcd cartoon. Randall Munroe rarely fails to deliver, but this one especially caught my eye. It’s painfully on-point and quite dismaying on at least two points:
Firstly, that it should still be this bad given all the time, money, and attention, it has received is reason alone for dismay. Part of the problem here may be that we haven’t admitted how hard software is to get right.
But, secondly, software is central to our lives now — far more than airplanes, and even more likely than elevator rides. You might ride an elevator, at most, a dozen times a day, but software enters your life more times than that.
Especially if you use a mobile computing device!
02 Wednesday Aug 2017
Sometimes ya gotta laugh. I just spent nearly an hour chasing one of those bugs that “can’t be happening” because “the code looks absolutely correct (as far as I can tell).” Of course, the bug, once you find it, was always hiding in plain view.
This time the fix involved adding just two characters and incidentally improving the program semantics, and very much reminded me of the old joke about the huge cargo ship that breaks down at sea…
The Hard-Core Coder 
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