Category Archives: Software Engineering

On the Lack of Exceptions

August 9th, 2007

Lately, I’ve been helping develop a reasonably sized application, which detects errors at every operation. Checking the return value of every function call seems awkward when compared to code that is written in rather informal working environments. Writing code that checks each return value is frustrating when a feature that exists in another language is […]

While in Deutschland

June 18th, 2007

I have been at Germany for two weeks out of the last month. I took on a task that I thought was theoretically possible, but one where completion under given time and resource allocation constraints was uncertain. The situation called for code developed in a proprietary environment for many months by many people to be […]

From EFnet #gamedev

April 19th, 2007

[00:16]* ae (steve@liss.loosebytes.com) has joined #gamedev [00:34] <Decept404> anyone know of any decent offline/local network issue/bug tracking solutions? [01:05] <ae> how about bugzilla? [01:11] <Decept404> not offline ;P [01:12] <ae> heh, you can always install a webserver and db server for use on the local host =) [01:12] <ae> … and it has the added […]

Design Pattern: Treating Objects as Descriptors

April 19th, 2007

I think frequently about the design of software while I drive between home and work. I frequently come across the problem of designing user-defined, compound types or classes. Determining a compound type’s member fields and methods requires a lot of effort. The problem’s complexity is increased when an instance of a class consists of fields […]

Million Miles from Home

April 14th, 2007

John Johnson Jr. of the LA Times reports that NASA investigators narrowed down the loss of the Mars Global Surveyor to a bad command sent to the wrong address. Johnson also reports, “The review also said the spacecraft’s onboard fault protection system failed to respond to the errors.” Surely, NASA could afford to run through […]