Opinion Posts

People Who Create Tutorials Need to Try Harder

There are too many crappy demos out there. It just takes a little extra time and some empathy to tie your tutorial to a real problem.

The Logical Disaster of Null

I'm in the middle of writing the next volume of The Imposter's Handbook and I found myself down a Rabbit Hole from the very outset: how can we, as programmers, justify the existence of null in our...

The Modern Dev Team

The smallest comment from a good friend can lead to introspecting your life choices. This just happened to me!

Staying Hungry, Staying Foolish

Repositories On Top UnitOfWork Are Not a Good Idea

There is a trend in the .NET space of trying to abstract EF behind a Repository. This is a fundamentally bad idea and hopefully I'll explain why.

Are You Really Doing BDD?

I'm a fan of BDD, but I find that many examples (and codebases and default settings) fall short of the original philosophy. Here's Why.

JavaScript Frameworks Are Amazing and Nobody Is Happy

When I read things like "Callbacks as our Generations Go To Statement" I’m like maybe we need that. Maybe we need some time where we’re walking around with a donkey with old rusty GO TO statements clinking on the sides.

Knowing More Programming Languages Will Make You Smarter

There's a thought in neuroscience/psychological circles that words are much more than sounds that represent things: they are the abstraction of our higher brain function. Words are language, code is language. Restricting yourself to one or two languages is limiting your cognitive abilities

EmberJS Confuses Me

I've been teeth-deep in Client-side JavaScript frameworks over the last 4 months for Tekpub. This month is Angular, last month was Ember's turn and I gave up. It's the first time I've given up - here's why.

Lost at Sea

It was exactly 1:32pm, HST, when the motor died. I stared at the throttle... hoping it was a joke. Land was 50 miles away, and the sea was building, and we were drifting. I thought: "This time dude... this time you really fucked up".

Leaving Your Mark

Don Syme makes a very interesting postulation over on his blog: "Is JavaScript code always so full of bugs?" His post goes on to show what happens when you turn on script errors in IE - which is striking. But is it really that easy?

Someone Save Us From REST

I made the mistake of publicly commenting on someone's idea of a RESTful API. And already - I've probably lost you. I don't know any single term more explosive and zeal-inducing than REST and "what it means to be RESTful". Oh - you say "it's quite simple?" You say "what's so hard?" Pedanticize away my pedantic pedant...

Open ID Is A Nightmare

I've always been a major proponent of Open ID. I love the idea and the intention - it's a great solution to a long-standing problem and solves a lot of issues for developers. Unfortunately it creates a ton more for business owners.