Archives for Brad Baker

If you use Exceptions for path control, dont fill in the stack trace

This post contains general assertions about code performance and readability. Every such assertion every made in these areas can be easily disproved by a thought experiment, contrived test case or hyperbolic arguments. That said I think I am mostly right ;) Exceptions Are Slow Throwing exceptions is bad right. Its slow and makes the code unreadable. Well... kinda...maybe.. Webwork 1 has a flat configuration mechanism to look up names to values. Its like a chained hash map of configuration

Continue reading »

Tags:
Comments (6)

Well may we say "God save the Queen!" because nothing will save our cultural imperialism

Spoton Bevan, Correspondent for the y'Arts February 6, 2009 - 12:59PM Australia's cultural imperialism took another step backwards today with the inclusion of a a US language pack for JIRA. Created by JIRAs product manager, Brian Lane, it now contains a number of changes to text keys that will make JIRA more familiar to its US audience. "It will really help people organize their favorite issues and colors." said Lane. "It occurred to me it really should have been done." "I whipped it up over the

Continue reading »

Comments (2)

Sharpening Our Functional Test Axe

In the book Dreaming in Code , the author mentions Axe Sharpening, specifically how development teams can spend too much time sharpening their axe and not enough time cutting down trees. "Give a person six hours to cut down a tree, the saying goes, and she will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe. In other words, most of us would rather spend time improving the tools that make a job easier than getting on with the job itself". However what if you axe becomes completely blunt? The problem

Continue reading »

Comments (7)