Introduction I stopped studying biology at school when I was 16. So when people tell me about what they’re studying in A level biology it’s advanced enough to be interesting but not too advanced to understand. After a recent conversation about it I wondered why it was resonating with me so much. Not only is … Continue reading How biology is like computing
Category: Articles
Language can teach us about usability
I think that the way people use language can give some insights into the usability of the software we design and build. By definition, if you're reading this then you use language, and also use some kind of computer, and in this post I'll try to show how what we have already observed about language … Continue reading Language can teach us about usability
Screen grabbers as debugging tools
Nothing big or clever this time. (Is it ever big or clever here?) Just a little trick that I find useful occasionally, that might be of use to you too. Picture the scene - you're debugging some code in your IDE and you realise that you want to take a snapshot of lots of state … Continue reading Screen grabbers as debugging tools
Simple pictures to explain DRY and SRP
The Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) and Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) are two common principles of good software engineering. This article is probably a statement of the bleeding obvious, but I was struck by how the two principles could be illustrated by simple variations on one simple diagram. I couldn’t remember seeing such diagrams before and … Continue reading Simple pictures to explain DRY and SRP
The user, not your user interface, is the star of the show
As programmers and designers, it's easy to get really invested in our work. This is great if it helps us do a good job, but the temptation is to think that we and our work are the most important things. That's not true - it's the user. When I was at school and college, I … Continue reading The user, not your user interface, is the star of the show
Authentication, authorisation and the chain of trust
I recently walked by my old college. There was a sign outside: Closed to visitors. I realised that two cards in my wallet would get me in, which made me think of some security concepts: the difference between authentication and authorisation, and the chain of trust. I’ll go into those a bit in this article, … Continue reading Authentication, authorisation and the chain of trust
People: an end or just a means?
This post is inspired by an episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, with the psychologist Svend Brinkmann. I guess a good way to introduce it is to give you an example from the podcast. Imagine you go to a shop to buy some milk. You go to the checkout with your milk, and the … Continue reading People: an end or just a means?
Turn the information up to 11
Much of the job of communication is to pass on information to someone. When we design a user interface, it communicates on our behalf. When we write code, including test code, we communicate our purpose for the code to someone else (which could be a future version of ourselves). Sometimes we communicate more obviously and … Continue reading Turn the information up to 11
Explaining virtual methods in C# with words and pictures
In this post I will try to explain virtual methods in C#. There are similar concepts in other languages, like C++ and Java, but I can’t vouch that all the details I go into here will apply exactly to any other language. The whole post is quite long, but I want to get to a … Continue reading Explaining virtual methods in C# with words and pictures
Don’t make your code do the Hokey Cokey
Awkward words and perverse DIY projects have enough in common with some software design problems to teach us things. Instead of always adding stuff on to change something to be the way we want, sometimes we should take things away. These are all instances of a forwards and backwards problem that reminds me of the … Continue reading Don’t make your code do the Hokey Cokey
