I Built His Cage

Announcer: Now for quick hits and commentary on software development topics from around the web, the EIP web-ring brings you the stigmatized spawn of a refactory, MoffDub, and Helltime!

• Jonathan Oliver, self-proclaimed Inversion of Control Freak, asks a question that would make liberal moron Samuel N. Hart’s leathery skin crawl: TDD: Isn’t It About Time?

  First, I thought Oliver was charitable when he says that code without tests is what makes it legacy code. I much rather say that code that is written is legacy code. The code I posted here last week is, as far as my brain is concerned, legacy. Past that, the three reasons listed as to why people are hesitant to write tests is spot on. The first reason, though, is the most problematic for me:

  We get our head down and we start programming away and we don’t even want to think about writing tests and killing the momentum.

  Otherwise known as programmer flow.

• Jovan Stanojlovic nails why coding standards, in general, are a good idea in one sentence:
  

  Remember: programming languages exist for humans to read and understand easier, not for machines.

  Sometimes I get the impression that when I agitate with my fellow co-workers about how a variable or method name or the code itself is unreadable that they look at me like “silly college graduate – performance and development time, these are the things that matter”.

  Poignant is the section of the post on whitespace. Curly-brace style and whitespace in general, surprisingly, I have come to accept as a natural difference between programmers. When I see a brace start on the same line as the block itself, I don’t devolve into a seething rage. however, I can’t stand people who follow the get-set-is Java naming convention even when it makes no sense: isHasAHotDog Why? Why? I’ll tell you why: a lack of effort. Naming is something I can get religious about.

• Charlene and Celine Chan, not even above the age of 10, won a programming contest in Singapore using Squeak Smalltalk. An article in the Straits Times summarizes the results of the XtremeApps contest. This here is all the more reason why I should feel guilty for putting off my own projects.

  Move over, Geico cavemen. I have a new slogan for you:

  Smalltalk – so easy, an eight-year-old can do it.

Announcer: You’re reading the EIP web-ring.