johnmcfarlane

Any organisation drags behind it some amount of dogma and myth. However, a full understanding of this may not be sufficient to fix it. Indeed, a large amount of time, effort, and mental health can be preserved by conceding certain sacreligious truths to those who gain from their concealment. No amount of evidence of reason will help you once you are considered to pose a threat. Walk away.

Try not to die fighting on the following hills:

• Merge requests are a universally accepted integration practice. (Why Pull Requests Are A BAD IDEA)
• The purpose of Agile is to maximise velocity. (Kevlin Henney - ACCU 2025)

johnmcfarlane

clang-tidy -checks=*,-altera-*,-fuchsia-*,-llvmlibc-*,-zircon-*,-llvm-prefer-static-over-anonymous-namespace

johnmcfarlane

// How to handle C polymorphism in C++: A Working Demonstration
//
// This document introduces C-style polymorphism, explains the main the safety
// issue it raises, and offers a technique to contain it using C++.
//
// Sometimes, we want to write a function that operates on an object without
// knowing its type. This is called polymorphism. A good example is sorting.
// We can sort a sequence of any type of object, so long as we know its order.
//
// The C standard library provides a quick-sort function, `qsort_r` (AKA

johnmcfarlane

The Clonroads of Ennis

• Clonroad More, township in South East Ennis
• Clonroad Beg, township in South Ennis
• Clon Road, road bordering Clonroad Beg and Clonroad More, separates Station Road from Quin Road
• Clonroadbeg, road bordering Clonroad Beg and Clonroad More, continuation of Turnpike Road, West of St Flannans
• Clon Road, road bordering Clonroad Beg and Clonroad More, South West of St Flannans, continuation of Clonroadbeg
• Clonroadmore, house on Clonroad More side of Clonroadbeg
• Clonroadbeg, not in Ennis, road to Ballybeg Woods, ~1km from Clonroadbeg
• Clon, Irish word for Clone

johnmcfarlane

Technical Authorship Essentials

Commonly occuring good advice aimed at improving maintainability of source code and other technical documents.

Simplicity

• Avoid complexity.
• Encourage simplicity.

Resources

johnmcfarlane

#include <algorithm>
#include <cassert>
#include <concepts>
#include <ranges>

[[nodiscard]] constexpr auto factorial(std::integral auto n) {
    assert(n >= 0);
    if (n == 0) {
        return 1;
    }

johnmcfarlane

from time import time

def primes(maximum: int):
    assert(maximum > 0)
    yield 2
    non_primes = 0
    non_prime_bit = 2
    for non_prime_index in range(1, maximum>>1):
        if not non_primes & non_prime_bit:
            number = (non_prime_index << 1) + 1

johnmcfarlane

Project Maintainability

Fail Loud

Errors and bugs should be prominent. If an error can be dealt with by the client code, it's not an error.

grepability

grepability is the quality that:

johnmcfarlane

{
  // Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes.
  // Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
  // For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
      {
          "name": "(gdb) Launch",
          "type": "cppdbg",
          "request": "launch",

johnmcfarlane

---
Language:        Cpp
# BasedOnStyle:  LLVM
AccessModifierOffset: -2
AlignAfterOpenBracket: AlwaysBreak
AlignConsecutiveMacros: false
AlignConsecutiveAssignments: false
AlignConsecutiveDeclarations: false
AlignEscapedNewlines: DontAlign
AlignOperands: false