Skillful Software

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We all know that software is hard - and most of us like to pretend that is isn't. Who among us hasn't discovered that a quick change to the code suddenly takes most of a week sort out? (And been embarrassed to explain this to your boss...) I'm trying to learn more about why that is, and what I can do about it. This blog is my way of keeping that information straight, and also sharing it. I hope it will also spark some conversation, so please share anything that comes to mind.

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Archive for the 'Donald Knuth' Category

Code Read 5 - Knuth’s "Structured Programming with Go Tos"

Saturday, February 17th, 2007

Code Reads 5 takes us from Dijkstra to Knuth, and his humorously titled “Structured Programming with Go To Statements“. In it, Knuth addresses how the field seems to have missed the real point of Dijkstra’s structured programming, and instead focused on mindlessly eliminating “go to” statements. Knuth quotes Hoare when saying the most [...]

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About me

From 68000 assembly, dataflow languages, and C/C++, to J2EE and Web 2.0, I've been trying figure out how to write better software, and write software better, since 1988. For the last eight years I've been working on enterprise web applications, as a software architect and lead engineer.

Looking for the skillful techniques which make it easier to build software well