General

Let me make a potentially bold statement:

People who can’t type write worse code than they could be writing

I’m sure that will upset some people (probably those who can’t type or who are two or four finger typists) but it’s a conclusion that I’ve come to over many years. Coding is clearly not the same thing as typing but the reason is simple:

To write good code, you need to be prepared to constantly refactor and rework the code that you write, and if you can’t do that quickly, you’ll be more reluctant to do it.

2018-01-01

Intrusions into computer systems are happening all the time now. We need to address this issue as an industry, but it’s important to understand that the way we design databases plays a big role in the impacts that occur during intrusions.

If you don’t accept that you could have an intrusion, you are living in La La Land. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy _prone_personality)

A bug in any one of the frameworks that you use, the code that you write, the protocols that you use, the operating system or hosting services that you use can potentially expose you to an intrusion.

2017-12-19

If I want accounting advice, it’s unlikely that I’d ask my dentist for that advice.

Many years ago, I created applications for food wholesalers. When the owners of these businesses decided to get a new or better computing system, invariably they’d speak to their accountants. I understand the reasons why that might seem logical to them at first, but what I saw when these clients did this, is that they invariably ended up with the wrong systems.

2017-12-12

Just after I was born, my mother and father called me Gregory. Ever since then, everyone has called me Greg. And that included my parents. To this day, my mother calls me Greg and so did my dad while he was alive (miss you dad).

However, every time I need to fill in an official form, I have to write Gregory. I could change that to Greg if I changed my name legally but I’m not going to do that. People who have had previous names will tell you that can add even more complexity.

2017-12-11

I’ve pointed out in previous blog posts that I’m not a fan of ORMs. What I’m even less of a fan of is code-first design, particularly in combination with an ORM like the Entity Framework.

It might seem cool and shiny and if you are just whipping up a small proof of concept or test app, please feel free to do it, but the minute you think of doing it for enterprise systems, just don’t. And if you have colleagues wanting to do this, please just say no.

2017-12-05

Many years back, I was invited to chair a course accreditation panel for a local TAFE (Technical and Further Education) course. They had started to offer a computing-related 3 year diploma, and the hope was that it wasn’t too far below the 3 year degrees offered at local universities. One part of that accreditation process involved me discussing the course with the staff members who were teaching it.

After talking to almost all the staff, what struck me was how similar they all were. In the requirements for the course, there was a standard that each staff member needed to meet, but there was also a requirement for the group of staff to be diverse enough to have broad knowledge of the industry. There was no individual staff member that you could identify as not being at the appropriate standard, but almost all of them had exactly the same background, career progression, etc.

2017-11-28

I work with data. I understand that for most organizations, that the data they own is the most valuable asset the company owns.

One thing I’ve learned from working with data is that unlike application software, data generally outlives generations of applications, is often used by many different applications, and typically just morphs from shape to shape over time. It almost never gets totally refreshed.

This is a good thing.

2017-11-21

Something I really struggle with in this industry is when newcomers to a system want to change standards within existing systems because they think something else is better. It’s a sign of immaturity yet it often applies to people who should be senior. Many system architects fall into this category.

For example, a vendor system that I’ve been working with has single column primary keys in all tables, and all the primary key columns are named PKey_ID (I’ve changed it a bit to protect the guilty). Now I can’t say I like that naming at all, but that’s not the point. There are a large number of tables that already have that naming scheme.

2017-11-14

Many people know that I have an issue with ORMs (object relational mappers). It’s worth spending a blog post to describe why.

Unfortunately, I spend my life on the back end of trying to deal with the messes involved. The following are the key issues that I see:

Potentially horrid performance

I’ve been on the back end of this all the time. There are several reasons. One is that the frameworks generate horrid code to start with, the second is that they are typically quite resistant to improvement, the third is that they tend to encourage processing with far too much data movement.

2017-11-07

Very proud of my daughters this week. As some of you will know, one of my daughters has Rett syndrome. It’s a rare chromosomal disorder that basically only impacts girls. (Boys can get it but they usually do not survive long after birth). Girls develop fairly normally up to about 12 to 18 months of age, then regress markedly. As it affects only about 1 in 10,000 girls, it’s not the sort of thing that gets much research funding.

2014-11-25