This page lists the articles I have written over the years. Like many developers, I love to write a tutorial to help people learn a new technology. I also enjoy a good essay about the philosophy of software development, and to muse about our industry in general. Unfortunately, we live in interesting times. We have much to discuss.
October 2026
In Part One of the series, we used React Native’s Turbo Modules to wire a basic function on the JSI. We were able to define a native function that could be called from JavaScript. In Part Two, I will show you how to call methods on Objective-C and Java classes.
( React Native Android iOS Java )
October 2026
In the previous entry, I showed you how to use the bare JSI to write a native iOS module for React Native. In this article, I will show you the same for Android. Once completed, you will know the basics of writing bare-metal React Native libraries using JSI…
( React Native iOS )
July 2026
About a year ago, I begged my boss to move me into the mobile development team. At work, we produce and maintain several React Native apps. Having been bored of backend development, I felt it was time to upskill. In the time since, I have learnt a lot…
June 2025
I’m burned out. It took me a long time to realise. And a shorter time to finally admit it. On a public blog too. You might see I have two sections on this blog: culture and programming. Burnout belongs to both. But I need to choose one, and so I chose the programming section. But burnout belongs to both.
March 2022
I recently read a paper called Notes on Postmodern Programming by James Noble and Robert Biddle. This is a striking title. Postmodern makes you think of English literature students clicking their fingers to slam poetry at smoky jazz clubs. Not dorky software developers. But the paper is in fact a real gem to read. It was written 20 years ago but its ideas still ring true today. So I thought it would be worth reflecting on postmodern programming with a, well, modern lens!
December 2020
A few years ago I was introduced to an interesting ebook called Designing Event Driven Systems. In it the author Ben Stopford outlines how to build business systems using Apache Kafka. I was a young impressionable developer and the book turned my understanding of system design on its head.
April 2018
You know how the Smurfs substitute almost every word for smurf? This is known as Smurf speak in the comics and TV show. We software developers also Smurf-speak. What we tend to do is put our company or product in the names of modules, classes, and functions. Classes like McDonaldsPendingOrder and GoogleDocsMainMenu have redundant prefixes. Yet PendingOrder and MainMenu are perfectly good names and give you the same information. I am going to outline why you don’t need to Smurf speak, and give a few tips to help you avoid it.
( Programming Language )