APPropriate Behaviour, the book on things programmers do that aren’t programming, is now complete! The final chapter – a philosophy of software making – has been added, concluding the book. Just because it’s complete, doesn’t mean it’s finished: as my understanding of what we do develops I’ll probably want to correct things, or add new [...]
There’s an old trope used in discussions of Mac and iOS developers, that says they’re too inward-looking. They only think about software in ways that have been “blessed” by Apple, their platform vendor. I’m pretty sure that I’ve used this meme myself though couldn’t find an example in a short Bing for the topic. It’s [...]
Executive summary: it’s called APPropriate Behaviour, head over to the LeanPub site to check it out. For quite a while, I’ve noticed that posts here are moving away from nuts and bolts code towards questions about evaluating my own performance, working with other developers and the industry in general. I decided to spend some time [...]
I made a mistake. Not a typo or a bug in some pasted code (actually I’ve made some of those, too). I perpetuated what seems (now, since I analyse it) to be a big myth in software engineering. I uncritically quoted some work without checking its authority, and now find it lacking. As an author, [...]
After a discussion on the twitters with Kellabyte and Iris Classon about software architects, I thought I’d summarise my position. Feel welcome to disagree. What does a software architect do? A software architect is there to identify risks that affect the technical implementation of the software product, and address those risks. Preferably before they stop [...]
This is a post that had been boiling for a while; I talked a little about the topic when I was in Appsterdam earlier this year, and had a few more thoughts which were completely supplanted and rearranged by watching
Plenty of you have seen—and indeed signed— the App Makers’ Privacy Pledge on GitHub. If you haven’t, but after reading it are interested, see the instructions in the project README. It’s great to see so many app makers taking an interest in this issue, and the main goal of the pledge is to raise awareness [...]
I’ve talked before about not being a dick when it comes to dealing with private data and personally-identifying information. It seems events have conspired to make it worth diving into some more detail. Only collect data you need to collect (and have asked for) There’s plenty of information on the iPhone ripe for the taking, [...]
Well, that was fun. For nearly a year I’ve been running Fuzzy Aliens, a consultancy for app developers to help get security and privacy requirements correct, reducing the burden on the users. This came after a year of doing the same as a contractor, and a longer period of helping out via conference talks, a [...]
I was asked by attendees at my VTM talk on test-driven development a small collection of questions on a similar theme, which I’ll summarise here. How do I do TDD when my boss doesn’t want me to? What do I do when my boss wants me to ship untested prototype code? Can you give me [...]
