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Thursday, November 19, 2009 8:43 AM

Design Patterns Are Not Outdated

A comment left on my answer to a question over on Stack Overflow has me a little worked up. I've seen this meme come out of programmers more and more and it just doesn't seem accurate. The statement goes something like this, "Design Patterns were only
Posted by SteveRowe | 0 Comments
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Thursday, October 22, 2009 12:38 AM

StackOverflow DevDays

I spent the day at Benaroya Hall for the 1st (annual?) StackOverflow DevDays conference. Overall eight speakers took the stage on topics from .Net MVC to Python to the Google App Engine. The room appears to hold just over 500 people and it was filled
Posted by SteveRowe | 2 Comments
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Wednesday, May 27, 2009 5:03 PM

Five Books To Read If You Want My Job

This came out of a conversation I had today with a few other test leads.  the question was, “What are the top 5 books you should read if you want my job?”  My job in this case being that of a test development lead.  At Microsoft that means
Posted by SteveRowe | 4 Comments
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 8:21 AM

Some Programming Languages to Consider Learning

Learning a new programming language can affect the way you think. While most modern languages are Turing Complete and can theoretically all accomplish the same things, that’s not practically true. Each language has its own strengths of expressiveness.
Posted by SteveRowe | 3 Comments
Saturday, February 28, 2009 8:42 PM

10 Papers Every Programmer Should Read

I’m always on the lookout for good reading material.  Michael Feathers over at ObjectMentor has served up a great post entitled 10 Papers Every Programmer Should Read .  I intend to.
Posted by SteveRowe | 2 Comments
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Monday, February 16, 2009 6:16 AM

Check Out Stack Overflow

I’ve recently become quite addicted to the website stackoverflow.com .  It is a joint venture between Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky .  There is an accompanying podcast if you want to hear about the creation process.  The site itself is a
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Friday, December 05, 2008 2:05 PM

Improving Task Estimation Accuracy

In my opinion estimating how long it will take to write a piece of software is difficult if you haven’t done it before and with software we never have.  The more experience you have, the more you’ll have done similar things and thus the more accurate
Posted by SteveRowe | 2 Comments
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Wednesday, November 26, 2008 12:24 PM

Using Perl for Mass In Place Editing

Have you ever wanted to update some text in a bunch of files all at once without a hassle? I had reason to do this recently and turned to Perl for my solution. Once I found the implementation quirks, it turned out to be quite easy. This functionality
Posted by SteveRowe | 6 Comments
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Monday, June 02, 2008 7:40 AM

Refactor To Make Immediate Change Easier

Jeremy Miller gives his reasons for refactoring . He gives two over-arching reasons. The first is "To remedy a deficiency in code, design, or architectural quality" and the second, "To make a forthcoming change to the code easier." I'm very much in agreement
Posted by SteveRowe | 3 Comments
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Thursday, May 15, 2008 7:27 AM

Design Principle: Don't Repeat Yourself

There's a design principle I neglected to mention in my initial list but which certainly merits attention. That principle is this: whenever possible, don't repeat yourself (DRY). Put another way, do things one time, in one place rather than having the
Posted by SteveRowe | 5 Comments
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Monday, April 28, 2008 9:52 AM

Prefer Composition Over Inheritance

It's probably about time to bring my "Design Principles To Live By" series to a close. This is the last scheduled topic although I have one or two more I may post. Let's begin with some definitions: Composition - Functionality of an object is made up
Posted by SteveRowe | 2 Comments
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Thursday, March 27, 2008 8:17 AM

Don't Blame the Compiler

It's been a busy week without much time to blog. In the mean time, here's a good reminder. It's Always Your Fault . Jeff Atwood explains why it's always the wrong idea to blame your tools. New programmers especially see something they don't understand
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Wednesday, March 19, 2008 11:08 AM

Which Language To Learn Next?

Once you have mastered one programming language, it is a good idea to branch out and learn some others. Each language is optimized for different things. Knowing multiple will give you a larger set of tools one of which which may solve the problem at hand
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Monday, February 25, 2008 9:19 AM

Classes Should Exhibit High Cohesion

This is part 4 of my ongoing Design Principles series. When designing the classes in your model, it is important that they each have a specific role to play. Cohesion means joining together to form a united whole. Classes and methods should be highly
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Tuesday, February 19, 2008 6:20 AM

Is There Value In Code Uniformity?

There seem to be two opposing views of coding standards. Some think that they should enforce uniformity in code. Everyone should use K&R braces, leave two lines between functions, and have a space after the if and before the opening parenthesis. Others
Posted by SteveRowe | 11 Comments
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