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Comments in Code: Just Don't Do It

How we use comments in code has come up a couple of times for me this week and when I looked, I realised we hadn't captured anything in the my teams's coding guide lines, so I added something:   Uncle Bob Says : "It is well known that I prefer code that has few comments. I code by the principle that good code does not require many comments. Indeed, I have often suggested that every comment represents a failure to make the code self explanatory. I have advised programmers to consider comments as a last resort." Comments should always be 'why', never 'what' and only when absolutely necessary. If you feel the need to write a 'what' comment, put the code in a well named (read descriptive) function instead.   There will be those of you who will be adamantly attached to your comments, but you don't need them. And at some point, in the past, now or in the future, you or someone else will update your code, making the comment wrong and forget to upd...
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Booker prize winner, Orbital - Great idea, poorly realised

Orbital: Winner of the Booker Prize 2024 Samantha Harvey ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1529922936 This book wasn’t for me. It’s a great idea, but it’s poorly realised. This is not a novel and not a textbook. I don’t think it knows what it is. It’s a bit all over the place, almost as uncomfortable to read as The Silmarillion . The characters do not distil in your mind, there’s no character building and no story. It’s over indulgent. The few serious messages it tries to get across, like climate change and world peace, have all been done by sci-fi authors for decades and done better. I don’t usually pay much attention to the Booker prize, but as Orbital sounded like a great idea and hinted at science fiction based in science fact, I thought it might be ok. It wasn’t and I am pleased it wasn’t any longer.

A review: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships by Marshall Rosenberg ISBN: 978-1-892005-28-1 I was sitting in an Amazon Web Services workshop and, as an after lunch ice breaker, the workshop leader asked us to all name our latest purchase from Amazon. I had no idea what mine was and when I looked it turned out to be Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. I grinned and announced that I had bought after a recommendation from my boss. While true, it still got the laughter I was looking for. It wasn’t, well at least I hope it wasn’t, recommended to me as I am angry or violent in my communication, but I was certainly struggling with some of the people related parts of my role as a Team Lead of a software engineering team. However, reading the book made me realise that I was struggling with: Observations Feelings Needs Requests Not just with respect to other people, but for myself as well. The book helped me use these, along with a deeper...

So you think you can lead a team?

What: So you think you can lead a team? When: 27th & 28th February 2025 Where: nor(DEV):con, The Kings Centre, 63-75 King St, Norwich, NR1 1PH More Info: https://nordevcon.com/ Get tickets: https://ti.to/norfolkdevelopers/nordevcon-25 Software engineering is hard. Leading a team, as an engineer, can be even harder. Many of us are better at developing software than we are with people and feel our value lies in actually writing code. When you step into team leading, there are more people than code and your value increases. Over the last 25 years I’ve been unexpectedly dropped into team leading a number of times, but three and a half years ago I chose to do it. It took at least twelve months for me to realise I was only starting to understand what leading a software team is and what it means. Join me for some of the highs and lows of team leading and an insight into some of the things I learnt to help me be a better team lead. I can’t promise a panacea as I  still have much t...

Winterfylleth live at The Dome

As I’ve said before, I completely fell in love with Winterfylleth at Bloodstock one year. They played again, on the main stage, a few years later and released that performance as a live album and it’s one of my favourites. We went to Manchester to see them with ARD in 2022,  despite having already seen them at Incineration Fest the same year. This year we went to London to spend just ten minutes with them at their album launch . Only three of the band were there, so Mark Deeks kindly got the rest of the band’s signatures on my copy of the album at a band practice - what a legend! I couldn’t make the Ipswich date of the tour, so we went to see them in London. So you might say I’m a little obsessed or just a bit of a fan! We’ve been to The Dome   before to see Threshold and it’s a nice enough venue, but the accessibility wasn’t great, they only had tall stools to sit on, which my wife couldn’t manage to climb on to. So she ended up sitting on the floor. This time though, we ...

Infected Rain at The Underworld

Infected Rain are one of those bands I thought I really ought to be into. A modern, European metalcore band with female vocals, what’s not to like? But I just couldn’t get on with the Ecdysis album. I persevered and when the band released a few tracks from the Time album in advance of its release, I listened, but they didn’t really work for me and I almost gave up. Then a few weeks later Time came out, I tried again and was just blown away. Not just daily listens, but multiple dailey listens. Then it was announced they would be playing at the Underworld at the end of August and a quick check revealed almost everything they’re currently playing live is from Time with a couple of older songs thrown in. It should be perfect, but, as I’ve blogged before , the sound at the Underworld can be hit and miss. Then my wife said she wanted to go and that was that! We went and it was amazing! The band hit the stage, and while the sound wasn’t perfect, still not enough guitar in the mix, it sounded ...

A Review: Cibola Burn

by James S. A. Corey ISBN: 78-0356504193 In some ways Cibola Burn is a lot like Abaddon’s Gate , it’s slow to get going. It takes about half the book, however the second half of the book is really good. One way in which it is different from the stories which precede it, is the Space Opera scope. The vast majority of the story is based on or in orbit around a single planet. For me, this means it doesn’t qualify as Space Opera. That sort of thing may not be important to you though. The new characters in the book are outstanding. Of course James Holden and his crew are central and key to the story. Chrisjen Avasarala is mostly absent again. The members of the opposing factions on New Terra are complicated and feel real. The natural order of who is right and who is wrong is constantly changing and being reevaluated. Star Wars this isn’t! I didn’t really get my head around what I think was meant to be the thought processes of the Protomolecule within the planet or how Miller interacts with...