From the monthly archives:

November 2004

Encoding Source Code

November 29, 2004

To encode, or not to encode: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer, The zips and rars of hacked distributions. Or to take arms against a sea of pirates, And by opposing upset customers?
Bad lampooning aside, there is a real question here: To encode our source code and possibly upset customers or to continue [...]

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Support Ticket Prayer

November 26, 2004

Oh Lord, give me the strength to get through this ticket.Give the will to complete the reply,Without getting the urge to curl up and die.No matter how ridiculous this request, I must be strong,Even though it’s "him" again and he’s never wrong.It’s not his fault he doesn’t know what he’s doing,Even though he ends up [...]

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Why 12 months is too long and procedural code is just wrong

November 22, 2004

Writing internet software is always a roller coaster ride. I often look at ‘desktop’ application developers with envy. They have the luxury of a relatively stable operating system which can go many years without any major developments which could make their code redundant. They also can write for a specific operating system, whether it’s Windows, [...]

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The ten year bug hunt

November 19, 2004

Now, I’ve often been accused of taking my time to fix the odd bug. Sometimes it’s hard to reproduce something and relies on certain circumstances for the gremlin to show itself. These reports often get shunted to the back of the queue in favour of the ones that can be fixed with a minutes of [...]

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Using the right tool for the job

November 12, 2004

I sometimes come across the odd post or blog entry from a programmer who proudly declares that they use nothing more than NotePad (or a basic equivalent) for all their coding. This apparently promotes them to "super programmer" status. A true hero amongst code hackers. A real man who has no need for syntax highlighting [...]

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