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.
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 )