I've just written up a blog article for the Software Sustainability Institute about research software development in a "post-PC" world. (Also available on my project's own site.) Apart from using the terms "post-PC", "touch tablet", "app store", and "cloud" a disgracefully large number of times, this article sets out a problem that's been puzzling me… Continue reading Can you develop research software on an iPad?
Category: Work
How Much Legacy Code Have You Written This Week?
I recently bought a copy (based on a recommendation) of Michael Feathers’ 2005 book Working Effectively with Legacy Code. This excellent technical book is largely a compendium of refactoring strategies to help software developers insinuate unit tests into existing code. What I found most striking, though, is a position stated right at the start of… Continue reading How Much Legacy Code Have You Written This Week?
Hyvästi, Sibelius
This week saw the sad news that the UK office responsible for development of the music score-writing software Sibelius is to be closed down. Maintenance of the software will be moved elsewhere, at least according to its owners Avid, the former video-editing software company that expanded madly throughout the professional audio and video world during the 2000s and… Continue reading Hyvästi, Sibelius
SoundSoftware 2012 Workshop
Yesterday the SoundSoftware project, which I help to run, hosted the SoundSoftware 2012 Workshop at Queen Mary. This was a one-day workshop about working practices for researchers developing software and experiences they have had in software work, with an eye to subjects of interest to audio and music researchers. You can read about the workshop… Continue reading SoundSoftware 2012 Workshop
Why is “password” such a popular password…
... and why wasn't it popular at LinkedIn? Studies of databases cracked from various sites over the years have consistently shown the word "password" to be prominent among the world's most common passwords, usually in the number 1 spot. Yet in the recently lifted LinkedIn database the most common password appears to have been "link",… Continue reading Why is “password” such a popular password…
“Various nifty functions”
Further to the code-literate judge in Oracle v Google, via Groklaw we now have his ruling that the Java APIs are not copyrightable. It's an exceptionally clear piece of work and a good introduction to the subject. I certainly couldn't have written a better technical summary, although I'm sure there are bits that a non-programmer… Continue reading “Various nifty functions”
The Breakfast Post 