Dawid's Blog

Linear Models

The linear software processes come from manufacturing goods. In the past, software was expensive. Virtually all linear software development models suffer from several key disadvantages: limited (or none) client interaction limited (or none) client feedback limited (or none) adaptability to changing requirements In this article, I will explore the 3 fundamental processes: Waterfall V-Model Sawtooth

Little Introduction To Software Testing

Software testing used to be one of the most underrated area in software development process. Indeed, it is not even covered at the undergraduate level at university (thanks BCS). This article provides an introduction into software testing. It covers: what software testing is, types of testing as well as what and when you should test?

WordPress 500 Error

Today, I was testing new themes for this blog. Unfortunately, something went wrong and I was greeted by 'Error 500' and no further details. The error occurred on every page and made the website completely unusable. This article will summarise the steps I took to fix this error. Make a back-up Once you connect to

Software Estimation - Never Underestimate

I had a chance to get my hands on the Software Estimation - Demystifying the Black Art by Steve McConnell. It is a fantastic and well-written book. I thought I would share some of the key things I learnt. This article is the 1st part of a series of relatively short articles summing up the

Factory

The factory is one of the most popular design patterns out there. It is used to simply the creation of the objects of different classes that inherit from a common super-class (or interface X) depending on some condition. The Recipe In order to create a factory for a class X: Create an XFactory class Add

About Cohesion

Cohesion is a measure of the degree to which the elements of a module belong together. Yourdon & Constantine in Structured Design, 1979 In essence, cohesion is a measure of ensuring that one element (one class) has a single responsibility. Measuring cohesion is tricky (as pretty much everything else in SE). The metrics tend to

How to assess complexity of your software

No Silver Bullet — Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering Fred Brooks This is one of the famous quotes by Turing Award-winning Fred Brooks. The complexity of software is tough to define. It is a measure of your program which is partially about the size and partially about understandability (clarity) of the code. A complex

Singleton

Singleton is also a very popular design pattern, although when not used appropriately it does become an anti- pattern. It is used when we need an object to be unique and easily accessible from all parts of the application e.g. database handler or loggers are frequently used. It is often considered an anti-pattern because is

Callback

Callback design pattern allows us to avoid "freezing" the rest of the application if a method takes too long to return. It is very useful if running computationally-expensive or time unpredictable methods. It does generally involve running in a separate thread/task. The solution involves creating IXCallback interface which contains method called whn the slow operation

Command Stack

Command stack is a design pattern if we need to support for undo/redo operations. There are two aspects to this design pattern ICommand interface where we can define the behaviour of the execution and undo operation and a CommandStack which is a generic. Create an ICommand interface with methods execute() and undo() All undoable/redoable actions

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