Six Lambda

I have found that, for better or worse, those companies that are not headed by technical people themselves tend to think of programmers as cogs - maybe some are better than others, maybe some are more expensive, but at the end of the day, a programmer is a programmer is a programmer. Even inside the technical […]

Okay, here’s the scenario - your boss has a new project for you: A Web 2.0 Social Media Ajax Web Application for Managing Baby Pictures. So, as everyone starts writing out requirements and figuring out advertising deals with Gerber, it’s your job to decide what technologies you are going to be using.
Ruby? […]

Today I’ll highlight one of my favorite anti-patterns - “Forgot my keys” (aka “Storyteller” or “Grandpa Simpson code”)
in Pseudo-code:
load variables;
start loop
    did I remember to load my variables? I better load them again.
    oh yeah, I need to reset the counter first
    output string
    output other string
    load more variables
    output another string
    check […]

At some point, every programmer has to dive into another programmer’s code, and ends up wondering what the hell the previous guy was thinking. “Why did he do this? It could’ve been so much simpler, if he wasn’t an idiot…”
Idiocy aside, there are often good reasons why small, simple ideas become 4000 lines […]