This is very much a work in progress. This was originally posted to DeLorean Fanatics Facebook group. Introduction I’ve been asked by a few people recently how to sell a DeLorean. …

Back in 1995 (or thereabouts, perhaps it was a little earlier), Java hit the scene, and it was the hottest thing in programming. This was a time when Pascal was still seriously taught in College (or at least, it was in mine). …

Note: I am not a doctor or nutritionist, just someone who does a lot of research. You should do your own. All cholesterol in food comes from animals — and by all accounts, way too much of it. …

Never underestimate the role of luck in correct software operation Yes, I made that up, and yes you can quote me. There’s a dirty secret in software development — much of it’s made with shortcuts, assumptions, incomplete testing and bad design. With time and effort, all that can be polished…

“Perfection is the enemy of good” “Optimize later” “It’ll be OK” / “It’s good enough” “It’ll never happen in the field” Every hear any of these phrases? I’m sure you have. Every hear of them in reference to software? Perhaps. …

You’ve seen version numbers in software. 1.0, 2.1, 1.1.0 and sometimes much more complex schemes. Sometimes they get confusing — is 1.1.10 newer than 1.1.2? Yes. Is 4.1a newer than 4.1? It depends. Usually though, schemes make sense within the context of the software itself, with approximately increasing versions. Back to the 1990s Most…

Computer systems sometimes need to be upgraded in part or in whole. To fix bugs, plug security holes or add features. You’ve all seen this. On embedded systems, the approach is to often upgrade the entire system — all the software running at once. There are countless ways this can…

Every developer who starts with threading soon learns about the necessity of locking structures. The reason is pretty simple — if your program has two threads of execution, and there’s any chance at all one of them will alter the structure, then you need to lock between them. The exact…

“It doesn’t work”, and other ineffective bug reporting techniques in an age of agile development. When I started my software career in the late 1990s, the ideas of bug reporting weren’t new, but in the 20 years since, much has changed with agile development, newer software systems and ideas about…