Reliable software hasn’t got to be complicated!

In my blog I will write about methods and principles that help create reliable software in a way that can be applied by any developer. And that’s to the benefit of everyone. Users will have a better experience if “stuff just works”, developers will spend less time hunting spooky bugs and businesses will have happier, more loyal customers.

  • Observability is More Important Than You Think
    By the Wikipedia definition, observability (in control theory) is a measure of how well internal states of a system can be inferred from knowledge of its external outputs. This idea translates very well to software and has thus been borrowed for this context as well. So, as a helpful definition, let us consider observability to… Read more: Observability is More Important Than You Think
  • Software Quality in Academia
    Most people, that studied or worked in an academic setting, have come across pieces of software, that are hard to understand and hard to maintain. I just handed in my master thesis, and came across many instances of low quality code during my studies. The most obvious shortcoming, was an almost complete absence of tests.… Read more: Software Quality in Academia
  • History Comments
    Comments are a useful tool to give contextual information directly in the source code. They are most typically used as a clarification comments and documentation comments (top Google result for code comments). However, there is a third use which I found comments to be useful for, documenting history!
  • Is shorter Code always better?
    As developers, we are always searching for ways to make our code more concise, structured and understandable. Therefore, short code is preferred over longer code. This post explains why generally we find shorter code better and what some exceptions are.
  • Communicating Code
    A big part of being a programmer is describing code to peers. However, describing the abstract and formalized code constructs in natural language is not always an easy task. This article highlights some techniques that help communicating code to peer programmers. The focus is on communicating the code “itself” instead of through its behavior, which… Read more: Communicating Code

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