Holger's Blog

To achieve high quality in your team’s code, you should use tools like a static analyzer. These analyzers give you lots of metrics. One is the cyclomatic complexity. A very reduced definition is, that the more complex your methods are, the higher the cyclomatic complexity. A high complexity results from many different paths the program can take while running your code. Many conditionals (if/else) or branches in your code lead to higher complexity.

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If you paint a fence, you need to make sure to prepare the wood. Take coarse-grained sandpaper and sand the old paint. You have to take it off the wood completely. Once you are done with it, you should use a primer and put it onto the wood. Let it dry for a few hours. After the primer has dried, you take your color and apply it thinly. Let it dry for another 6 hours. The next step is to apply the color again and let it dry again. Afterward, you can decide whether you need protective paint/lacquer, to guard against weather conditions. That depends on your location.

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Do you know the term technical debt? Wikipedia describes it as “a concept in software development that reflects the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt) This is certainly a correct definition, but there’s more to it. We’ll get to that shortly.

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If you read these letters for a few issues, you might have already noticed that I like quality in software engineering. I try to optimize for quality and enhancing the quality of a project leads to more successful projects and more satisfied clients. If you care for the quality it can lead to situations where you have to stand your ground to achieve the goal of increasing the quality (or your processes or your products). Because doing high-quality work also increases the costs of a project. And it’s rare that managers don’t care for the cost of a project.

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The latest Chrome beta (version 70) introduces changes to the Shape Detection API and the Web Authentication API.

The Shape Detection API consists of three APIs: A Face Detection API, a Barcode Detection API and a Text Detection API. Given an image bitmap or a blob, the Face Detection API returns the location of faces and the locations of eyes, noses, and mouths within those faces. To give you rudimentary control of performance, you can limit the number of returned faces and prioritize speed over performance.

They cannot (yet) compare faces and recognize known faces in the browser. Give it a year. Soon browser plugin creators are able to scan the photos you upload to Facebook and identify the people you had fun with last night. If you think I am exaggerating, please wait for the next paragraph.

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The latest Chrome beta (version 70) introduces changes to the Shape Detection API and the Web Authentication API.

The Shape Detection API consists of three APIs: A Face Detection API, a Barcode Detection API and a Text Detection API. Given an image bitmap or a blob, the Face Detection API returns the location of faces and the locations of eyes, noses, and mouths within those faces. To give you rudimentary control of performance, you can limit the number of returned faces and prioritize speed over performance.

They cannot (yet) compare faces and recognize known faces in the browser. Give it a year. Soon browser plugin creators are able to scan the photos you upload to Facebook and identify the people you had fun with last night. If you think I am exaggerating, please wait for the next paragraph.

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Imagine you have a team member that always criticises your work. You make commit after commit and put your best effort forth, you try to find the best names for variables and methods. You check your code using tools like RuboCop and Linters. Yet in every pull request, he asks you whether you considered refactoring objects. Things like extracting some logic out of a class, introducing view models and repository objects and sometimes even crazy stuff like domain driven design ideas. Why can’t he leave you alone?

I tell you why: Because the fundamentals matter. They make the difference between software projects where things go smoothly and projects that just fail.

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Imagine you have a team member that always criticises your work. You make commit after commit and put your best effort forth, you try to find the best names for variables and methods. You check your code using tools like RuboCop and Linters. Yet in every pull request, he asks you whether you considered refactoring objects. Things like extracting some logic out of a class, introducing view models and repository objects and sometimes even crazy stuff like domain driven design ideas. Why can’t he leave you alone?

I tell you why: Because the fundamentals matter. They make the difference between software projects where things go smoothly and projects that just fail.

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The other week I went on vacation with my family. We flew to Switzerland and had a really great time. I took the big camera to make gorgeous shots of my wife, my baby daughter and the Alps. The iPhone camera is great but pales in comparison to a professional camera. As I am no great photographer you can see this in every shot. But still, the pictures I made with the DSLR are just better. When using a big camera I always try to take more time for the composition of the shot. I use the lens, different focus spots and depth of field way more than when shooting with my phone.

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Imagine you are about to go on a trip. Perhaps with your partner or some friends. You want to take the car into the woods, to a place you have never been. The vacation spot has a nice house with a pool and a barbecue. The woman you rent it from stocked the fridge with cold drinks. And they have water beds. And WIFI! IN THE WOODS!

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