Long != meaningful

Meaningful names for variables, methods, and classes go a long way to making uncommented code possible. However, meaning is not conveyed simply by length.

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Reflections on how I got started in this biz…

I was listening to the audio presentation by Woz at ITConversations.com recently. I was really interested in his stories about how he got interested in hardware hacking, and it made me reflect on my early experiences with computers.
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Don’t propagate exceptions in test fixtures

Been seeing this pattern a lot today. I’m working with integration tests, which have a lot of test fixtures around to do common tasks (such as inserting data into the database). These test fixtures propagate exceptions. In many cases, they simply declare that they throw java.lang.Exception. Ouch.

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Fun facts about time zones

Did you know that there are places in the world with timezone offsets in quarter-hour increments

The timezone for Nepal is UTC+5:45. Chatham Island (a territory of New Zealand) uses UTC+12:45. Interesting…

Programming by difference

I’m currently working my way through Michael Feathers Working Effectively With Legacy Code. Damn good book, BTW. Anyway, this was this section on “programming by difference” that got my thinking while reading it.

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I must be missing something

Bush is proposing a 2.5 trillion dollar budget. Supposedly, this manages the following:

  • it is the “president’s most austere budget to date”
  • it pushes the US federal budget deficit to “a record $427 billion”, and “is the third straight year the Bush administration will have set, in dollar terms, a deficit high.”

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The Dating Game

Working with legacy code can present some, um, interesting challenges. I just hit a wonderful issue to do with dates and timezones, caused by a really piss-poor data model.

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The importance of your user interface metaphor.

Christ Stevenson bitched about the Gnome calculator Apparently, if you enter the equation ‘2*2+2*2’, it gives an answer of 12.
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Empirical vs determinstic methodologies: a cooking analogy

A deterministic methodology is one where you lay out all the steps, then following them religiously. An empirical methodology is one where you layout guidelines, and expect people to adapt as circumstances suit.
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Monday 24th worst day of the year? What a day to start a new job!

Apparently, next Monday will be the worst day of the year. Naturally, that’s the day I start at Wotif

Fortunately, the formula is based on such variables as the weather, and thus it is only the worst day in the Northern hemisphere. *phew*.