Idempotence is an essential tool in programming. It has many uses, from improving fault tolerance, clarifying code, to writing declarative deployment scripts. It’s important to understand what idempotent means. There are a […]
The false abstraction antipattern
Useless interfaces, factories, and other abstractions are everywhere. They are the result of trying to prematurely generalize code. In a recent article I wrote about how I removed one from Leaf. It […]
Strings and Text are not the same
Thinking of text and strings as the same type is wrong. It leads to all kinds of errors and results in confusing or incomplete APIs. I wrote before that the string type […]
Too big too care: How Twitter inadvertently revoked my developer access
If a company has enough users they don’t have to care about any of them. Plus or minus one developer account, even with thousands of users, will make no difference. It may […]
The dangers of OAuth/Social Login
OAuth authentication is not safe. This is the baseline from which all applications should be working. There is a place for social login, but it should be a very restricted domain. It […]
Is exception safe code truly possible?
It is important to write exception-safe code. A truly exception-safe function produces no side-effects when an error occurs. It returns to the caller with the exact state of the system as prior […]
We don’t need a string type
Should string be a distinct type or merely an alias for an array of characters? I’m considering the options for Leaf and can’t convince myself that a specialized type is needed. Looking […]
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