Category Archives: Programming languages

Stop the Madness!

Posted on November 25, 2015 by jeffkotula

I just watched an interesting talk about using data values as natural program boundaries. Some valuable ideas, but the main thing that it made me think about was unrelated to the talk itself. I learned about this talk when I was at … Continue reading →

Posted in design, Programming languages, software engineering, Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Can we just say “Advice” instead of “Best Practices”?

Posted on August 11, 2015 by jeffkotula

Yeah, yeah, I know — what difference do the words make? A lot actually. “Best Practices” implies many things, including: There was some evaluation of multiple practices, and only these were deemed to be “best” by some unspecified but no … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming languages, Rant, software engineering | Tagged | Leave a comment

Counting Code

Posted on October 21, 2013 by jeffkotula

The notion of counting lines of code is often dismissed as unhelpful in telling us anything substantive about the code. I think there are a whole bunch of reasons behind this attitude (fodder for other posts), but one of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Programming languages, Software | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Good Naming != Self-documenting Code

Posted on January 3, 2013 by jeffkotula

People confuse the notion of naming code artifacts appropriately with documentation. While both enhance and enable the readability and comprehension of code, they serve different purposes. At least when done properly… Pretty much every place I’ve worked has had a … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Programming languages, Software | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Weakness of Interfaces

Posted on October 4, 2012 by jeffkotula

I love the idea of interfaces as a programming construct. My first real introduction to them was in the guise of base classes in OO design. The idea is simple and elegant: specify the API and leave the implementation details … Continue reading →

Posted in design, Programming languages | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Brevity vs Maintainability

Posted on September 12, 2012 by jeffkotula

Programming languages have come a long way in terms of the expressiveness of their syntax and semantics. Early on, just being able to give memory locations human-readable names was a huge step and boosted productivity. (If you’ve never programmed assembly … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Programming languages, Software | Tagged , , | Leave a comment