Category Archives: Software development

The Bedroom Programmer: Cycle over?

“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.”Don Marquis It seems only reasonable that the first (and possibly only, I’m really not doing well with this blog lark recently) post of 2014 consists of some editorial that leads to … Continue reading

Posted in Armchair general, My iPhone game, Rants, Software development | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

Book Club episode II: Wool and the art of software documentation

“Software and cathedrals are much the same – first we build them, then we pray.”Sam Redwine, 4th International Software Process Workshop, 1988 Occasionally, but just occasionally, you end up reading a book that is so good that you can’t stop … Continue reading

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I know what I did last summer

You, like most people on this planet, probably have a dishwasher. Even if you don’t, you almost certainly know how to use one. I, on the other hand, had neither owned nor used a dishwasher until last summer when thanks … Continue reading

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Overcomplicated shark is overcomplicated

“This is my 22nd year doing this, and every single console transition we’ve seen an increase in development costs. Over long periods of time it gets smoothed out, but I would say this is not a transition where that’s going … Continue reading

Posted in Armchair general, Software development | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The Incredible Adventures of Rattles McCoil

Imagine this scenario. You are sitting in front of the TV watching the Spongebob Squarepants movie1 and you’re a little peckish. In fact, what you could really, really do with for that authentic movie experience is some popcorn. No problem! … Continue reading

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Bees: the miracle powering modern computing

Computers. How do they work? Magic? Bees? Magnets? Who knows. All those components, wires and other bits and bobs, it’s pretty much a mystery that we’ll never really understand. Well, no, actually. Almost nothing (I say almost because, well, you … Continue reading

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These are the wires used to make my intergalactic spaceship

Ihave been becoming increasingly disheartened in recent years by how little the new generation of programmers know about how computers work. Their understanding of the relationship between what they tap into a computer and what the microprocessor actually ends up … Continue reading

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From little acorns

Juuso, one of the chaps whose blog I really enjoy reading, says that he likes to describe emergent behaviour as “1 + 1 = 3”. I would describe that as a syntax error. Emergent behaviour isn’t about taking an obviously … Continue reading

Posted in Cool stuff, Software development | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Imbuing a certain niceness on one’s formatting

Oh my, std::locale(“”) is gorgeous when slapped on a std::stringstream. So long as you’re not writing super-duper-performance-sensitive code, you can do wonderful things like this: #include <string> #include <sstream> #include <locale> #include <iostream> #include <iomanip> int main() { std::stringstream ss; … Continue reading

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Scheduling the baby out with the bathwater

When it comes to true innovation, try you must or do you will not. Whilst the larger companies have whole R&D departments dedicated to experimentation with new techniques and technologies, the smaller outfits or individuals have to innovate as they … Continue reading

Posted in Software development | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments