Inertia and Large Code Bases

Or: Long live the king.
What is “Code Inertia”?
I’ve been interested in “code inertia” for a few years now. It should sound familiar to anyone with a basic understanding of physics: code with a lot of inertia is very resistant to change. You’d either have to be crazy, uninformed, or very well paid to try to [...]

Posted Under: Computer Science
This post was written by admin on November 17, 2008 Comments (0)

Taking Advantage of (Read: Working Around) Syntax

Syntax Smells
“Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.”
~Abelson and Sussman, SICP
If 8 years of programming has taught me anything, it’s that programmers need to give themselves every advantage imaginable. I’m not disparaging other programmers.  I say this as someone who has been humbled on the altar of [...]

Posted Under: Computer Science
This post was written by admin on November 3, 2008 Comments (0)