Monthly Archives: March 2012

Usability is not Independent of Programming

The discussion came up of how to improve usability of the system.  One position was to hire a usability expert to draw us a specification of a highly user friendly system, and then deliver that to the development team to implement it. … Continue reading

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Splash Screen Trouble

Whoever invented “Splash Screens” should be strung up and publicly humiliated.  The whole idea wreaks of “linear thinking” and misses the whole point about what a windowing system is all about.

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The Error Message IS Documentation for Code

Another example of content free documentation below: documentation that is a waste of screen space even to display it on the screen.  Here the issue is a development team so enamored with Documentation (with a capital D) that they really … Continue reading

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XML Schema Validation, or not?

The question is: should a program that reads a standard XML file format use XML Schema Validation when reading the file to make sure that the file being read is properly formatted?  The answer depends upon a lot of things.  … Continue reading

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#27 A Proper Module does NOT need a Config File

It is common for a system or a program to have a config file: that is a file that holds a bunch of settings that can be adjusted by the administrator or user to get desired effect.  A code module, … Continue reading

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#26 Never Suppress Warnings

There are often ways to specify within the code that you want to suppress some or all of the warnings that the compiler might produce.

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The Perfect Development Center

This came from a brainstorm meeting around “What would be in the perfect development server?”   Each member of a team of people developing a software product would have their own desktop (or laptop) computers, and there would be a server … Continue reading

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