Archive for the ‘Programming’ Category

Now you can write PHP code… without writing any code

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Yes, you heard that right! You can now code in PHP without having to write a single line of code - amazing, right? The application that makes this possible is called Lemon ADE, and it runs on the iPad. In this post I'll go over how Lemon ADE works, and I ...

Exceptions and abstraction

Saturday, August 14th, 2010

So you already know how to handle your errors properly. Even if you're already using exceptions, there are some nuances to the use of exceptions that are important to know and understand in order to write code that is easier to reuse and more decoupled. Let's talk about exceptions and how ...

The “do X or die()” pattern must die

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

What's the most common pattern for error handling you see in beginner's PHP code? - That's right, do_X() or die('do_X failed);. That's nice and all, as at least you have some sort of error handling, but I think this way of handling errors must go. There is no place for ...

Wicket from the point of view of a PHP developer

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Not long ago, I had to learn some Wicket. What is that? In this case it has nothing to do with cricket - The Wicket I'm talking about is a Java web application framework. I've mostly used PHP and Python to do server-side web application sort of programming. Compared to what ...

How to learn from Stack Overflow without asking questions

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Stack Overflow is great for finding answers to programming questions. But did you know it's good for learning even if you don't ask any questions - just answer them?

Refactoring explained to an absolute beginner

Saturday, June 26th, 2010

Recently while on a drive with a non-programmer friend, I talked with him about code complexity and manageability, how very complicated code is detrimental to productivity and stuff like that. Later on, I decided to explain it to him with actual code examples, although the most he has ever done ...

Drawing diagrams with JavaScript

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Opera was holding another widget competition, this time for more desktop application type of widgets. I was working on a widget as well, but sadly did not have enough time to complete it. Part of this was due to problems that I ran into in development. The widget was going to be ...

Building a lightweight application framework around custom Dojo MVC

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Continuing from last week, where I introduced a simple but powerful Dojo MVC solution, let's look at how to put it together into a simple but useful application "framework".

Using Dojo’s dijit widgets for simple controller/view layers

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

More complex JavaScript applications benefit from the MVC pattern just like other sorts of applications. Just like for other sorts of applications, there are dedicated MVC libraries for JavaScript, such as JavaScriptMVC. Dojo, in my opinion one of the most powerful and flexible JS libraries, can be easily adapted to ...

Should a failed function return a value or throw an exception?

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

You have created a nice, well written function, but you realize you forgot something: The failure case. What should a function do when it fails? There are two schools for this - the "throw an exception" school and the "return an error value" school. But which of these is the correct ...