Category: Articles (Page 71 of 258)

Personal opinions and how-to’s that I’ve written both here and as contributions to other blogs.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays (From 2017 To 2018)

December 22, 2017 / Tom

As with most in the United States (and elsewhere), I try to take some time off of work during the week from Christmas to New Years’. I’ve not always taken a break from social media, blogging, and all that stuff, but I think I’m going to give it a go this year.

Christmas 2017

That is, I’m planning to be off the grid as much as possible starting this evening.

To be clear, this isn’t prescriptive. This isn’t based on any dramatic anything. This isn’t even blogworthy, I suppose, but it’s worth having something here at the end of the year, right? 🙂

Further, I don’t do retrospective posts, but I thought it might be worth highlighting some of the stuff over the past year and perhaps what I’m looking to do in the coming year (not new years resolutions, per se, but just a few things I’d like to do).

Two Pillars of Object-Oriented Programming: Part 2 of 2

December 20, 2017 / Tom

As I mentioned in the first post of this series, you’re often going to hear about The Three Pillars of Object-Oriented Programming. You may also hear about The Four Pillars of Object-Oriented Programming.

And it’s not that there’s a total of seven or anything like that. Instead, it’s more about what people consider to be foundational to OOP: Are there three or four major concepts?

You can surmise from the previous article (let alone the title), I believe there are four.

Two Pillars of Object-Oriented Programming: Inheritance and Polymorphism

And in this post, I’m going to cover the final two:

Inheritance,
and Polymorphism

If you’ve done any type of object-oriented programming prior to reading this article, you’ve likely heard of at least one of these.

Regardless, let’s take a look at each of them in more detail.

We’re Not Gonna Need It (Or Maybe We Will)

December 19, 2017 / Tom

When it comes to writing software, two of the most popular schools of thought are:

YAGNI (or “you aren’t gonna need it”),
and Generalization (or maybe “premature generalization”).

They aren’t necessarily exact opposites, but for where I’m going with this, it’s worth treating them as such.

In my experience, projects boil down to projects for customers or products that you’re building to sell. This isn’t to say we don’t build products for customers, so maybe it’s just easier to say:

“Hey, I’m building this for someone else,”
or, “Yeah, I’m building this for me [for profit].”

Here’s the thing: I often find that when it comes to building things for other people, it’s easier to want to go about Generalization for their code and YAGNI for our code.

So which one is right? Or is there even a right one?

Jetpack Alternatives Worth the Price

December 18, 2017 / Tom

I joke with friends that Jetpack has become like the operating system of WordPress.

This isn’t to knock the good work the people at Jetpack are doing (because they are doing good work, are actively engaged in the community, and continue to iterate on the product).

But there are times where people don’t want to install Jetpack. Instead, they prefer to use third-party tools for whatever reasons. To each their own, right?

And there are quality Jetpack alternatives.

Changes in Productivity Tools in 2017

December 15, 2017 / Tom

Periodically, I’m asked via email or Twitter what I’m using regarding the tools I use to get things done.

And though I don’t necessarily think that the things I’m using are always the best suggestions for other people (because I think we all have ways that work better for us to get things done), it seems like something worth covering at the end of the year.

To that end, I thought I’d use this post to share some of what I’ve been using both for development and for general productivity just in case you’re looking for something for the holidays or just looking for something in general.