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Programming

Good read - not only for software architects

·36 words·1 min
The 97 things that every software architect should know: http://97-things.near-time.net/wiki Actually, it's 87 but new are still coming. You may add your piece if it is not yet there ... Milos - thanks for the link.

Objective C: I really miss namespaces

·113 words·1 min
One feature that I strongly miss from Objective C are namespaces. Inability to avoid name clash between your classes sometimes really stands in your way. I am reading S. Kochan's book "Programming in Objective C" and in one of the examples he creates the class Point. Unfortunately, there already is struct Point defined in mactypes.h. The solution is easy - rename the darn Point to something like TKPoint ... at least that is what Cocoa naming guide recommends. It is probably matter of getting used to it - but I still find the solution suggested by Kevin Hoffman much more elegant - too bad it is only theoretical. Much nicer than NSHack ;-)

XCode annoyances

·310 words·2 mins
I have started to seriously play with Objective C and XCode about week ago. So far it was very pleasant experience. I really like the language - feels like Ruby (or Smalltalk if you want) with rocket launcher: very powerful, blastingly fast and dangerous like hell. No array boundary checks as in Java :-). The XCode was not bad experience either. Here my very long Eclipse and Visual Studio history is going a bit in the way, as the things often works quite different. Not necessarily worse, but different. It would be too early to judge it - not before I get more proficient in both Objective-C and XCode and learn more Cocoa goodness.

Easy access to log files

·248 words·2 mins
Here is the scoop: I need to provide access to multiple log files spread across multiple directories of multiple machines. For example - the JBoss log files and nohup.out, ATG log files, and so on - so that the testers can see what happened on server side when something looks fishy on front end. One option would be to write a document that contails IP’s of the machines, create user accounts, make sure that they have just enough access rights to see the files but not disturb anything else …

iTunes AppStore update chaos

·162 words·1 min
I just noticed strange thing: it is most likely unrelated, but it happened right after installing 2.0.2 firmware. The count of updates for AppStore applications is pretty chaotic. You can see different number of updates when looking into different parts of iTunes. I have noticed this cycle repeating for 9 updates, then 8 and so on - here is how it looked when I got down to 3 un-updated apps after few rounds.

iMovie 08 and mystery of disappearing Project Library

·434 words·3 mins
As if the yesterday's Firmware update issue was not enough, I had very strange experience with iMovie 08. Suddenly, for no obvious particular reason the user interface became very unresponsive, I was not able to select project in project library. Switching Event library and Project windows on or off stopped working. Windows were not redrawn properly. Creating new project had no visible effect. I could not click on project to select it (well, technically I *could* click, but nothing happened). The time sliders in Events and Projects were either disabled or invisible ...

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, Third Edition is out

·113 words·1 min
as long as you are Safari Books online subscriber - see it here. Completely updated with XCode 3.x and Objective C 2.0. The screenshots even show the iPhone project templates, indicating the XCode 3.1 in some places. So far the only difference against reality I have found is not covering the XIB resource format (which is generated by default) and sticking with NIB. This blog entry has good explanation of the difference.

Quick online diagramming tool

·164 words·1 min
I am using OmniGraffle for most of my diagrams. OmniGraffle is an OS-X platform replacement for Visio - only easier to use and better looking (in my opinion). On rare occasions I do not work on my notebook, it is quite useful to have free alternative that allows to create a diagram that does not look too awful, without going through the hoops of downloading and installing software. The bubl.us is exactly that tool.

A false "hang" of Finder

·154 words·1 min
Yesterday, I have noticed interesting thing related to Finder and "beach ball of the death". Suddenly, for no obvious reason, the top menu became unavailable and cursor changed to beachball every time I moved it there. The Bluetooth mouse stopped responding. Finder stopped responding. All symptoms as if Finder would hanging ... The cause of the issue was crash of unrelated application (iShowU, if you are curious), which brought up the crash report window. For some reason - maybe because it happened while changing spaces - the window was not visible. After closing the window, everything came back to life and even mouse reconnected (after disabling and re-enabling Bluetooth).

Agile development team member mantra

·171 words·1 min
Introducing code review and pair programming has often an impact on relationships in the team - especially when a critique needs to be delivered. It takes great degree of experience on both sides to communicate defects in the code for both the reviewer as well as for the code author to get something useful out of it. I found this at http://www.finetix.com/blogs/finetixblogs.html which can be helpful (page is 404-ing now, but I luckily saved it in Google Docs way back) :