Eventual consistency and client applications

By Jim, on January 31st, 2012%

This is another one of those “I can’t believe I have to address this” posts.

Eventual consistency is sometimes used as an optimization in middle tier and back end processing to help balance the load on busy servers and provide a scalable architectures. In client-centered applications like large Web sites, the idea is to respond . . . → Read More: Eventual consistency and client applications

Comments are closed   Programming

A billion dollars that nobody wants

By Jim, on January 25th, 2012%

If you’re looking for examples of Congressional idiocy, it’s hard to beat the story of $1 Billion That Nobody Wants. In short, there are about 1.5 billion one-dollar coins piled in bags in Federal Reserve vaults. Why? Because nobody wants them. Why is the U.S. Mint still making them? Because Congress said so.

Congress has . . . → Read More: A billion dollars that nobody wants

Comments are closed   Idiocy

There is one source of Truth

By Jim, on January 18th, 2012%

In religion, politics, and other endeavors, Truth is an elusive goal. Depending on your beliefs, Truth might be found in the Bible, the Torah, Koran, the Democratic Party platform, or the lessons you learned while traipsing through the woods. Truth, in most endeavors, is highly subjective.

Truth is subjective in programming, too. If you have . . . → Read More: There is one source of Truth

Comments are closed   Programming

Why you shouldn’t use the .NET sort

By Jim, on January 12th, 2012%

My friend and business partner David Stafford recently posted a blog entry, .Net’s Sort Is Not Secure. Don’t Use It. Here’s a Better One, in which he shows that the .NET sort implementation (used by Array.Sort and List.Sort, and possibly others) can easily be made to exhibit pathological behavior.

How bad is it? You can . . . → Read More: Why you shouldn’t use the .NET sort

Comments are closed   Programming

In Praise of Technical Debt

By Jim, on January 7th, 2012%

The term “technical debt“, as commonly used, refers to the eventual consequences of poor software design or development practices. The Wikipedia article and most other references consider technical debt to be a Very Bad Thing. The literature is filled with examples of development projects whose combined technical debt eventually killed or seriously hampered the company.

. . . → Read More: In Praise of Technical Debt

2 comments - (Comments are closed)   Programming

Half of forever is still forever

By Jim, on January 3rd, 2012%

You’re probably wondering if this is really necessary. Believe me, I’m a bit surprised by it myself. But every day I see evidence that supposedly competent programmers don’t understand this fundamental point.

What am I talking about?

Let’s say you have two lists. One is a list of accounts and the other is a list . . . → Read More: Half of forever is still forever

Comments are closed   Programming