It's Just UI
Maybe I've just imagined this -- created my own straw man to take down -- but I've sometimes sensed some disparagement of user interface programming. "It's just UI," the architect will say. "It's not like it's a hard or interesting part of the system." As I've done more and more UI development …
Self-Referential Segues
If you say "segue" while attempting one, you've already blown it.
User Stories Are Not Narratives
The "story" in agile development's "user story" is not a narrative in the traditional sense of the word. Many are short on verbs, which is a big hint that something non-narrative is going on. "User story" is shorthand for a set of concepts and principles. The danger with taking a …
UI Horror: Birthdays
Last year I wrote about my dislike for cell phones. Despite that, I actually have one now. Maybe I'll write more about that at some point, but I was just recently reminded (irony to be revealed later) of a particularly sloppy user experience associated with adding birthdays to contacts and …
Are .NET Properties a Mistake?
As I mentioned the other day, I'm reading Jeffrey Richter's book CLR via C# right now. I was kind of surprised to read this statement by the author: "If I had been involved in the design of the .NET Framework and compilers, I would not have offered properties at all …
Them Newfangled Cellphone Things
I have to admit to being a bit of a Luddite when it comes to cell phones. In spite of being in the generally gadget-friendly demographic of software engineers, and someone who bought the very first Palm Pilot model within days of its launch, I've not yet owned a cell …
Culture Shock
Over twenty years ago, I moved from Oregon to Utah to start going to school at BYU. As we were driving to Provo from the north, my mom, who had been born in Utah, commented, "This place right here is called the point of the mountain."
"That's stupid, there's nothing …
Naming Private Fields (Addendum)
This is just a quick addition to the previous
posting,
confirming the alleged use of m_ by Microsoft in their own
code.
Lutz Roeder's .NET Reflector is a fascinating tool for various reasons, including its ability to show all the .NET Framework classes that use prefixes on member variables. There …
Naming Private Fields
One of the greatest questions facing theologists is this: What should be
the naming convention for private fields? The most controversial aspect
is the use of m_ as a prefix.
For many programmers, this debate has been resolved for years. My personal history with the issue is goes like this …
DRM I'm Content With
I don't generally buy music or ebooks online, even though I would like to. I just can't bear the restrictive copy protection that comes attached with online purchases. In fact, I get angry as I think about the experiences I've had with DRM, and the ever encroaching control that content …