Follow me on Twitter
RSS FeedPosts tagged as 'Best practice'
The I in Interface
I’m often asked why the interfaces in Flint don’t start with a letter I. The simple reason is that I think this practice, while common among Actionscript developers, is so seriously flawed that it’s better not to do it, even if it is common among other developers and may cause some initial confusion for some…
Posted on 6 August 2009 | 14 comments | continue reading
Continuous learning
I’m often asked what is the secret to being a good programmer, and the simple answer is to keep studying and learning throughout your career. If you’re not currently learning something, then you’re holding up your development. This morning, Bruce Eckel wrote a lot more about this. Read it at his blog.
Posted on 2 June 2009 | no comments | continue reading
Law of Demeter
The Law of Demeter sounds grand and perhaps a little difficult, but in fact it’s a very simple, basic principle of good programming style. It’s also a principle that all actionscript developers can apply, whatever their level of skill, to improve the quality and maintainability of their code. Bill Sanders describes it on his blog. Read it, then apply it.
Posted on 24 April 2009 | 1 comment | continue reading
Writing Software is Like … Writing
I was going to comment on this post by Bruce Eckel, but find I have nothing to add. Go read it.
Posted on 22 April 2009 | no comments | continue reading
Technical Debt
It seems particularly relevant during this credit crunch to be talking about Technical Debt – the debt you owe when implementing a solution in a quick and dirty way, which accrues interest every time you need to alter or add to the code, and can be paid off by taking tome to refactor the code…
Posted on 2 March 2009 | 1 comment | continue reading
Hiring developers
A recent post by Jeff Atwood reminds us why you should avoid, at all cost, hiring poor developers. A poor developer will pull the whole team down, often producing negative productivity due to their impact on the rest of the team (and on the codebase)…
Posted on 25 February 2009 | no comments | continue reading
Garbage Collection
I recently received a support query on Flint regarding garbage collection. In discussions on the forum I was reminded that many Actionscript developers don’t know how the Flash Player’s garbage collection works…
Posted on 12 August 2008 | 1 comment | continue reading
PHP Password Security
If you build websites that require users to register it’s your responsibility to keep their passwords safe. And if you’re storing the passwords in plain text then you’re not doing your job properly. What happens if your database is stolen? It’s not just your site that is compromised. Since most users use the same password on multiple sites, all those sites have also been compromised…
Posted on 10 October 2007 | 18 comments | continue reading