"There's No Time!"

A man was driving to a meeting and he was very late.

Every few minutes, he looked at his watch, gritted his teeth, then stamped his foot down on the accelerator.

I Can't Believe Some People Still Need Virtual Method Calls Defended

In the 1990's, a lot of people labored until the belief that indirect (virtual) method calls were expensive. After all, you have to read a value out of memory and then use that as the address of a call! How could it ever compete with the one-clock-tick-long conditional jump?

I hear this less today but I still hear it every once in a while and I'm shocked when I do because it was nonsense, even in the late nineties.

In terms of performance, it didn't matter, then, and it doesn't matter, now. I'm only addressing it because a belief that discourages the usage of virtual methods is a dangerous one which must be disabused.

A Brief Examination of Coupling

What is coupling, exactly?

A good working definition of coupling is as follows:

A certain kind of change to X triggers a corresponding change in Y

Don't Try to Balance Code Qualities

There is a popular idea that you strive for balance between code qualities.

This seems misguided, to me. Balance requires opposition yet none of the code qualities opposes any of the others.

The Coder's Code

The Boy Scout Rule states, roughly, as follows:

Always leave the trail better than you found it.

I think we can translate this to a Coder's Code. It can even be relaxed a little and still create the same effect:

Always leave the code as good as you found it or better. 

Opposition in Code Qualities Tends to Be Illusory

Generally, when it seems like two code qualities oppose one another, it means something that you're missing a piece of the puzzle.

Software Development Thinking Applied to the Real World, Part III

Continued from last week.