Thoughts on A Philosophy of Software Design
John Ousterhout's A Philosophy of Software Design sometimes aligned with and other times challenged my opinions about building software. The overall theme could be summarized with a Ray Ozzie quote: "Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces …
Review of "Python Testing with pytest, Second Edition"
Even though I've been using pytest for years, being a testing enthusiast, I thought I'd read Brian Okken's book to see what I might be able to learn from it. I was pleased to discover not only several tidbits of the workings of pytest I hadn't known about, but also …
Review of "Waxing On: The Karate Kid and Me"
Hollywood memoirs aren't things I normally read. I like movies, but usually I prefer the characters to the actors, so I'm fine being ignorant. Waxing On: The Karate Kid and Me by Ralph Macchio ended up in my hands after helping a neighbor with a computer problem. The problem was …
Architecture Patterns with Python Review
Architecture Patterns with Python by Harry Percival and Bob Gregory
I learned about this book by watching Harry Percival's 2020 PyCon talk Stop Using Mocks (for a while). In the past, I was pretty enthusiastic about mocks, especially in Python because they, along with patching, let me test just about …
eero Pro 6 First Impressions
I set up an eero Pro 6 mesh network in my house this past week. These are my first impressions of the system.
Earlier this year, my employer decided that the pandemic-motivated "work from home" policy would continue indefinitely for the engineering department. After moving a few PCs from …
Review of "The Body: A Guide for Occupants"
Douglas Crockford, in JavaScript: The Good Parts said, “Computer programs are the most complex things that humans make.” As someone who builds software, that idea can make you feel pretty good about your intellectual place in the world, because even though I don't know how lots of software works, I …
My Favorite Podcasts 2019
After working at home for a couple of years, it was hard to get back in the car every morning to commute after changing jobs. I'm lucky that it isn't that far, but it still felt like a monumental waste of time to be stuck in traffic. Podcasts have redeemed …
The Impossible World
Sometime when I was a teenager, my step-dad gave me a box full of sci-fi and war novels. I'm not sure where he got them -- maybe in bulk at a garage sale or something. Years later, many of them are still sitting on a shelf, mostly unread. I thought I'd …
Review of "Don't Make Me Think"
Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think is a quick, easy to read introduction to usability, especially as it relates to web design.
Some sections are very web-specific, but you'll also find plenty of things that apply to any kind of user interface. He also doesn't try to be comprehensive, often …
Amazon Glacier and CloudBerry Online Backup
Offsite backup for critical files
This task has been lingering undone on my to-do list for months. I imagined that I'd figure out some way to use Dropbox, Google Drive, Sky Drive, or something to keep my data safe in case something catastrophic happened at the house. All those solutions …