I was gratified by the response to my first "detail" article. But I did note that many persons praised my article for its commitment to the long game. Framing the commitment, for a geek, to detail, as a long game, seems right, sounds right, cuz after all, we only ever care about quality in the […]
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Detail: The thing that strikes me over and over again, in my own work style, in my Friday group’s analytics, in Ron’s long-running Kotlin and short-running Gilded Rose series, is how much attention high-skill geeks pay to some of the smallest details in the code. An example. I was doing Gilded Rose the other day,
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TDD Pro-Tip: I advocate against automated macro-tests — those whose base is entire running programs –, as their cost is high and their benefit is doubtful. I very rarely write them. There is a bewildering variety of terminology out there around what I’m calling macro-tests, so let’s poke around a little. The central idea of
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Let’s talk for a minute about "over-coding". Over-coding, when you’re a TDD’ist, is writing more code than you (intended to) have test to cover. But I will offer a few thoughts on this to non TDD’ers and TDD’ers alike. Many people, pro-TDD and con- both, seem to think of TDD as the name for a
When I was a wee lad, 28, 29, 30, I knew the C Windows API by heart. I had, in my bathroom, both the technical docs and a copy of Petzold, and I knew it cold, stone cold. Every one of the ~500 calls, all of the arguments, and for most of them, the order
On the cover of Hofstadter’s famous Godel, Escher, and Bach, there’s a photo of an artifact he made, called a "trip-let". The trip-let, when lit from three different angles, produces shadows that spell out "G", "E", and "B". Let’s talk about software design. Before we dig in: I love to think & talk about geekery,
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True story: Eighteen or so years ago, I had a gig rolling code at an engineering company. We were writing a windows app using Microsoft Foundation Classes to drive a TTY interface to a box of various radio hardware junk. I was gigged in by a guy I’d taught a c;ass (in MFC) to, because
Real Programming S01E10: Some Model->View Mechanics We got ourselves a making app last time. This time, we’ll use it to try out some visual mechanisms. If you want to follow along in the code, the project is at github. Transcript and captions coming soon . . .
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Real Programming S01E09: Making A Start, Starting A Make? This time, we’re going to start our making app. What’s a making app? Come and see! If you want to follow along in the code, the project is at github. Hey. Welcome to Real Programming. The show where even after taking many months of break time,
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Earlier, we sketched out MMMSS, Many More Much Smaller Steps, laying out the bare bones. Cool, cool, but now we need to thicken our sense of the idea. Today, let’s close in a little more on what "step" means to us. Many Much More Smaller Steps – First Sketch | GeePawHill.Org The first plank of
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