Posts made by Leonardo Pessoa

Leonardo Pessoa

I may be a bit more radical about this but I'd say "who cares about OSI?" Better yet a simple "seal of approval"? I certainly don't. Ever. Whenever I provide code, it is free of moral judgements as to what will be done with it. Whenever such concerns arise, I'd rather not share the code and maybe the app too, or even better I just don't even start coding at all (at least pet projects) because once the cat is out of the box the morals of whoever uses the code cannot be guaranteed.

- Leonardo

Leonardo Pessoa

Just curious where did you manage to get that book. Everywhere I search for it says it is pre-order to be delivered by the end of next month.

- Leonardo

Leonardo Pessoa

I cannot really say for others but I don't really expect or care if anyone will contribute with my projects. Whatever I do as OSS was something useful to me or some concept I made up in my mind that I want out (so I can focus on other things), I maintain it working for my own needs, and I share because I think they might be just as useful to others as they are for me. These are usually so small and quick to be done (things I can get working in a week or two) that I don't care if someone will try and monetise it for themselves thus I just share. That's my opinion. Whenever I get to write something I think is worth charging for, sure I will.

- Leonardo

Leonardo Pessoa

I also used to think like this, but my current job has taught me why one should have and follow a corporate style guide: versioning. If everyone uses linting to format code to their style after changing a single line on a file, version systems will register thousands of changes on a file and hide what has really been altered on the code. I never question this anymore but follow my own standards for my personal projects.

- Leonardo

Leonardo Pessoa

I shall disagree on #3 because I prefer exactly the opposite. Apart from that, pretty much only poorly written code annoys me. I clearly remember the time I've been maintaining someone else's code just to read the following statement (methods and variable names have been changed to preserve the code, although kept the language):

class TReport1 : TReport
private
shouldPrint: boolean;
// ...
end;

// ...

procedure TReport1.Label1Print(var print: boolean);
begin
if shouldPrint = true then
print = true;
else
print = false;
end;

I swear that it was exactly like this. All over the code, repeated a thousand time for each element on the report (yes, the person didn't even reuse the same method). And there was nothing else, nothing to control or change the value of shouldPrint. I was tempted to rewrite it all but time and the rule of not messing with what is working prevented me. I still have nightmares with this code...

- Leonardo

Leonardo Pessoa

I may not be the best person to comment on this but having read some of this thread I'd like to share my 50 cents on the issue. I may say I'm a real software architect for the reason that I am both a software developer (20+ years) and an architect (3 year) and one thing drew my attention from the start of my second undergrad course: how there are, indeed, similarities between both. I'd like to comment on that and why I believe the title of software architect should yes exist. Architecture is not only design, as most suggest, but also about foundation and structure and communication, about finding out what the needs our clients not even know they have and deal with the multiple interests of people in a building. That is what happens when we deal with people: they have their conflicts (not only of interest in the project but in between themselves), they change their minds all the time, from the first sketch to often when the building is already "finished" (whoever said a building is a finished unmodifiable thing has never had to reform/repurpose). Also, my professors often said an architect is more of a shrink than a designer or engineer. Does that sound familiar? However, architecture is a discipline that has a history of more than 4,000 years compared to software development. Sure, there are practices well proven in it but still there are plenty on the open, methods, tools and materials are not static and are being developed and studied everyday. We also work with projects (and PMBOK could also be applied to it but rarely is, as far as I know because architects, at least here in Brazil, have not discovered it yet) but have consolidated means of documenting a project so other workers can "implement" it. Also, at least here in Brazil, an architect is responsible for conducting and overseeing a building construction, although the architect creating the project not always conducts it construction). In my point of view, no one is wrong about what they said: requirements are just invented by someone but they do exist; there is more than one way of doing things and none are wrong, just some work better for some people while not for others; and the biggest problem we face is language, communicating intents, ideas, concepts. And this works both for software and architecture. Projects fail everywhere because of communication, because it is hard for the non-professional person to understand the effort it takes to elaborate a project, develop it and the value it would aggregate. Architects have been working on maki

Leonardo Pessoa

I (mostly) only do desktop apps. Without them, how else would one do web apps?

- Leonardo

Leonardo Pessoa

Same here

- Leonardo

Leonardo Pessoa

I believe there are reasons for either style and I don't mean a simple preference by the developer. The first style allows you to initialise an object with some default values and gradually fill its properties with desired non-default values. Also it allows you to change those values over time to reflect changes in how the class (or another dependent class) should behave. You can see that in any visual component for UWP/WPF/ASP.NET. Meanwhile, the second style creates a kind of immutable object (it can only be read although its properties can still be changed due to internal operations, if any). Changes to this data may not be desired due to e.g. the intended design of the application (or API) or legal reasons. If you must follow the second style with a class with so many constructor arguments (with which I agree it might be a code smell), I'd recommend creating a Builder for the object. MyFooClass in this example seems to be one which might actually hint at why the guy wanted you to change the code style; perhaps he thought you were trying to create in MyFooClass a Builder for FooDto and wanted you to make it so both classes don't repeat themselves. Anyway, I'd recommend approaching the guy with an open mind to try and understand his motivations for requesting the style change; it may either enhance your knowledge of the application or the guy you're working with. [UPDATED] Both Dan's or Marc's answers offer a great alternative to avoiding so many arguments on the constructor. I'd also check if you could go either way.

- Leonardo

Leonardo Pessoa

I do think desk toys are a good stress relief and add a bit of personality to the workplace (a much plain workspace seems so empty of life, maybe that's why some people hate their jobs). So, currently, my desk sports a magic 8 ball, a burned teether giraffe (I told my wife I'd frame it after she burned it while boiling it), a die-cast metal white Power Ranger, a Lego model of my first computer, and a cookie jar in the shape of a question box from Mario.

- Leonardo

Leonardo Pessoa

Technically no. According to the terms, iPhone apps must be written in C, C++ or Objective C. Since DragonFire is C/C++, it should be allowed.