Author Archives: Extelligent Cocoa

Resource: Defensive Programming

Review of an article about the philosophy of error handling (http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2009-10-09-defensive-programming.html) Continue reading

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Resource: Application Design Chart

Brief review of http://cocoawithlove.com/2010/06/design-of-every-mac-application.html (strongly reccommended) Continue reading

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Platform Independence: a critical view

An encounter with ported software. Continue reading

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Sorry about the hiatus

Redo from start. Well, not quite. Continue reading

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The peril of hidden assumptions

About the problem with hidden assumptions (‘everybody does things in this way’ ‘everybody knows which operating system I’m talking about’) and ways of avoiding them Continue reading

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One aspect in which Cocoa is definitely not welcoming

Cocoa and cultural insensitivity. Continue reading

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Catalogue of resources

I’ve briefly talked about two resources that do not work for me: books that attempt to teach you by showing you how to create an example application (here) and relying on other programmers (very briefly touched upon here.) In this … Continue reading

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A different view on learning to program

While looking around for articles on how to learn programming from a more abstract point of view, I came across the following article: Teach yourself programming in ten years. Go and read it, it’s thought-provoking. It’s nine years old, and … Continue reading

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Programming books as learning resource

With two exceptions – I’ve reviewed PHP Programming Solutions and shall review Cocoa Design Patterns later – the books I’ve seen on Cocoa/Objective C (and a number of other languages/topics) follow the same pattern. Introduction Taster Project Projects of Increasing … Continue reading

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Why accessibility matters

So there’s no easy way to learn how to program. [1] Why should you care? Particularly, why should you care if you’re one of the people for whom the process works? Personally, I feel that fairness and making things accessible … Continue reading

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Review: PHP Programming Solutions

Brief review of Vikram Vaswani: PHP Programming Solutions. New York et.al 2007 (McGraw-Hill) Continue reading

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Should programming be difficult?

When I’ve complained about the difficulties in learning how to program, one of the sentiments I heard repeatedly was ‘Programming is insanely difficult’ or words to that effect. Don’t expect to find it easy. I’m having difficulties accepting that. There … Continue reading

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Code Formatting test

I’m using this post to test code formatting, so the function blow was hastily written and might not work, but it was a good test to see whether I had understood basic functions well enough to make one up on … Continue reading

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Welcome to Extelligent Cocoa!

What you will find on this blog (sticky) Continue reading

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