Overview

Here are links to all of my posts so far, loosely categorized.

Note that there are a few bonus links to my Code Project articles - marked with [CP]


Software Design

Design Principles

Handling Software Design Complexity - what software design all boils down to
DIRE - an obvious thing we often forget
Developer Quality Attributes - or why fixing bugs is not important
Verifiability - software is useless unless you can verify its correctness
Why Good Programs Go Bad - risk avoidance causes software to "rust"
Book Review: 97 Things Every Architect Should Know

Design Practices

Fundamentals of Software Design - 8 ways to create a good design
Agile Design - how emergent design almost always works better than BDUF
Inversion of Control - IOC is a technique for better decoupling using DIRE
Dependency Injection - an example of IOC

Anti-Patterns

Gas Factory Anti-Pattern - a mistake even (or especially) good designers make
Reusability Futility - "Simplicity before Generality, Use before Reuse"
Shotgun Initialization - an example of the dangers of defensive programming
Layer Anti-Pattern - the problems of a common, obvious approach


Agile

Principles

Agile's Fifth Element - favor simple design over re-usability and generality
JIT (Just In Time) - an example of DIRE that is core to much of Agile
DIRE (Don't Isolate Related Entities) - how you divide and conquer is the key
Agile Design - evolving software one small step at a time
Agile and Code Reuse - all about YAGNI (you ain't gonna need it)
Software Quality Assurance & Agile - how Agile evolved from, but is different to, SQA
Lean is not Agile - applying "eliminate waste" to software design leads to BDUF
Software Development Methodologies [CP] - Agile and other methodologies by analogy

Team

Scrum Team Size - teams should be small to avoid social loafing and other phenomena
Scrum Team Composition - "feature" teams are the key
Collaboration - traditional development discourages collaboration + why Scrum works

Making Agile Work

Scrum Standup - it's more about visibility than communication
Developer Quality Attributes - what benefits developers eventually helps users
Agile Version Control - Agile requires the right version control practices & software (Git)
Scrum Problems - management "buy-in" & other things that help Scrum work properly
Why Scrum Fails - intransigence, non-collaboration, etc
Written vs Verbal - when, who, why, and how of Agile documentation
JIT Testing - testing as you go (continuous testing) is an example of JIT (Just In Time)

Unit Tests

Change - how Unit Tests help you to embrace change
What's so great about Unit Tests - Unit Tests are not about finding bugs
White Box Testing - the best Unit Tests use "good" white box testing
Personal Experiences with Unit Testing - it took me 20 years to truly appreciate them
Challenges - why getting started with Unit Tests seems, but is not, insurmountable
Unit Tests Best Practice - a few things to avoid
Arguments Against Unit Tests - common arguments and why most are invalid
Summary - Unit Tests concisely summarized


Coding

Essentials

Zero - bugs are less likely if you don't treat zero as a special case
Asymmetric Bounds - in code and GUI design this is an important way to avoid bugs
Book Review: Clean Code - a great book on creating the best code

C Coding

Best Practice in C for Modules - strong-coupling and other things to avoid
Defensive Programming - how it works and how it can hide bugs
Shotgun Initialization - a defensive programming practice to avoid
Alignment and #pragma pack - make structs "alignment agnostic" to avoid surprises
Making Code Testable - coding for testability improves correctness, reliability, etc
Ten Fallacies of Good C Code [CP] - 10 more things to avoid

C++ Coding

STL's Dark Secret - vectors are slower than they should be
Iterators Through the Looking Glass - subtleties of the STL reverse iterators
C++11 and Lambda Functions - lambda functions make STL so much better
Nested Functions using Lambdas - you can finally have nested functions in C++11

C# Coding

Overflow Checking using checked/unchecked [CP] - C# has some cool features
Nested Functions using Lambdas - includes an example of using C# lambdas

Maintainability

Long Identifiers make Code Unreadable - don't try to put too much info. into a name
Self Describing Code - why it's a bad idea and why you should comment your code

Other

The Phillips Scale of Code Quality - how good is your code?
Version Control - Personal Experiences - hands on version control