The Life of a Programmer

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How Polymorphism Works: Part 1

Polymorphism: the core of object oriented programming. Most modern languages have some concept of interfaces, virtual functions, and classes. Though each language differs in details,

What is an atomic operation?

We all know that operations in a computer happen one after the other. Having multiple CPUs and instruction reordering tends to obfuscate the issue. Technically

The Ideal Language cannot leak resources

The ideal programming language should not leak resources. Resources include not just memory, but also files, network connections, device locks, sound buffers, and anything needing

CPU Memory – Why do I need a mutex?

Multi-threaded programming calls for semaphores, synchronized blocks, mutexes, or whatever your language happens to call them. Most of us basically understand why we need them:

The Cost – A Function Call

In the grand scheme of execution costs function calls come very close to the bottom of the list. They don’t cost very much at all

The Evil and Joy of Overloading

Is overloading a bad thing? Despite a wide variety of new languages supporting some form of it I continue to find articles that say overloading

Curiously protective C++

Working with a bit of code last week I stumbled into something unusual. I was working on something quite basic so kind of surprised when

Rules for Framework Development

Each time I start a new project I find myself looking at the latest batch of frameworks. Lately those are web frameworks, such as CakePHP,

The 2 Most Important Equivalence Classes for Application Testing

One of the most common testing tools is equivalence classes. Most testers generally understand what they are and how to use them. They allow us to do full coverage of an application without needing to test every possible permutation of input. Yet, despite their popularity I find that the two most important, the two most vital classes, get overlooked. Here I’ll cover these two classes and their implications on testing.

The 5 Ways to Test a Web Application – How They Work and How They Fail

Despite a huge push for more testing of applications, online or off, there is actually not a lot of standardized systems for doing it. This is not to say there aren’t a lot of standard techniques, there simply lacks unifying by-the-book approaches which yield solid results. A lack of standards should however be no reason not to test your web application. Yet without clear guidance most providers kind of just try things thereby wasting a lot of effort and still ending up with a poor quality product. Here is a general overview of the five basic approaches to testing.

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