Andrew Binstock

Keeping LOC and Tests in Balance

Andrew Binstock — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 04:25:47 -0500

The Limitations of TDD

Andrew Binstock — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:10:33 -0500

During the last 12-18 months, TDD has broken into the mainstream, it seems. And now, we're starting to see some backlash, as its limitations become better understood. Here is a sample discussion from Artima.com. Cédric Beust, who wrote the commentary, is not some unknown guy with a weird name. He wrote the TestNG unit testing framework, which is second only to JUnit in popularity.

Read more ...

My Interview with Alexander Stepanov and Paul McJones

Andrew Binstock — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:16:27 -0400

InformIT.com has posted my interview with Alexander Stepanov (of STL fame) and his co-author Paul McJones. Their just-released book, Elements of Programming, tries to map algorithm implementations back to symbolic logic and algebraic theorems, thereby--in theory--improving their design and correctness.

Read more ...

Groovy Books

Andrew Binstock — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:12:00 -0400

I have been using Groovy to write functional tests for Platypus, the open-source typesetting project I work on. I am likely to make Groovy the default scripting language for Platypus in the next milestone. In the process, I've had to come up to speed on Groovy and I've been reading through and looking over the various Groovy titles on the market. Here's my take.

Read more ...

The Fan programming language: compile to Java and .NET

Andrew Binstock — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:19:21 -0400

I have recently been playing with Fan, a programming language that reminds me a lot of Groovy, but has additional capabilities, such as actors. Its binaries run either on the JVM or .NET. Below is my recent column in SDTimes about the language.

The Agile Rules in HP's Original Garage

Andrew Binstock — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:09:42 -0500

According to a recent HP poster, these were the rules in Bill Hewett and Dave's Packard famous garage:

Read more ...

Bob Martin's "Clean Code" Reviewed

Andrew Binstock — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:39:43 -0500

I have gone through "Uncle Bob" Martin's new book, Clean Code,

Read more ...

Banishing Return Status Codes

Andrew Binstock — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:34:52 -0400

The most enduringly popular post on this blog is Perfecting OO's Small Classes and Short Methods, which presents a short series of stringent guidelines to help an imperative-trained developer master OO.

Read more ...

A Parameter-Validation Smell and a Solution

Andrew Binstock — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 21:14:25 -0400

Last week, Jeff Fredrick and I did a day-long code review of Platypus. We used a pair-programming approach, with Jeff driving and I helping with the navigation. Eventually, we got into the input parser, which parses input lines into a series of tokens: text, commmands, macros, and comments. Macros can require a second parsing pass, and commands often require additional parsing of parameters.

Read more ...

The Handiest Java Book in Years.

Andrew Binstock — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:25:39 -0400

Is the popularity of unit tests waning?

Andrew Binstock — Fri, 23 May 2008 03:20:19 -0400

Before getting into my concerns about whether unit testing's popularity has peaked, let me state that I think unit testing is the most important benefit wrought by the agile revolution. I agree that you can write perfectly good programs without unit tests (we did put man on the moon in 1969, after all), but for most programs of any size, you're likely to be far better off using unit tests than not.

Read more ...

Knuth Interview Posted

Andrew Binstock — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:08:17 -0400

My interview with Donald Knuth is now posted. It's a long piece, that has some unusually interesting points, including:

- why Knuth doesn't believe in designing code for reuse
- he's most unconvinced of multithreading and multicore on the desktop
- discussion of the tools he uses to program and write (including Ubuntu)
- etc.

A very fun read (and a fun interview to do).

Perfecting OO's Small Classes and Short Methods

Andrew Binstock — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:12:25 -0400

In The ThoughtWorks Anthology a new book from the Pragmatic Programmers, there is a fascinating essay called “Obje

Read more ...

Easy Does It With easyb

Andrew Binstock — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:49:32 -0400

I just got back from the CITcon conference, which is the thrice-yearly confab of agile developers who use continuous integration (the "CIT" in the conference name). This was my second time at CITcon. It's an open-space conference that is--surprise!--free, and chock-a-block full of good information. The principal reason it's so informative is that anyone committed enough to CI to go to a conference has probably spent a lot of time thinking about how to solve problems of build and test at his/her site.

Read more ...

Great Reference For Ruby

Andrew Binstock — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:54:04 -0400