In programming, we are constantly told to ensure we write comments, and this is very good advice. One of the things that is often overlooked in this advice, however, is what kind of comments we shouldn’t make. Having written code for some 30+ years at this point, I have run into 3 specific situations where a comment is not a benefit, and is often simply noise and a negative to everyone involved. (read more)

For the longest time, I stopped making homemade pasta. I’m not really sure why that was to be honest, but it just stopped some time before I moved to Seattle in 2014. Earlier this year, I decided to pick it back up, and pulled out my trusty pasta machine, only to find that it had broken at some point in the preceding near-decade of disuse. Finally, a few weeks ago, I broke down and bought a new pasta machine same as the old pasta machine: a Marcato Atlas 150. (read more)

One of the things that can be most challenging when starting to learn a new technology is beginning to wrap your head around the terminology that is used. While the concepts are often somewhat uniform across all the different technologies, each has chosen to use a different term for those things. At least for me, that has been one of the biggest friction points in learning F# and .NET, so I thought I’d dig into a few things, and what surprised me about them. (read more)

This is based on sketchy information, limited releases, and just general experience in the business for the last 20+ years. It is subject to change, although I’ll try to update the thoughts in the future as more information comes around. Much of this is derived from multiple internal conversations, although none of it is based on non-public information. There are a lot of articles about the recent hack involving Solar Winds that has impacted a huge number of organizations around the world from Microsoft to major government agencies. (read more)

As someone who has written Python for almost 25 years, spent years writing various Lisps and Smalltalk, and spent a few years in the Clojure community, it might be interesting to talk about what appeals to me with F#. Appeals enough to get me to restart my blog after an 11 year hiatus (2000-2009 being the original dates). There are a few things that appeal: Practicality while still having an opinion, which seems to be derived from its OCaml roots. (read more)

A bit about this new blog, the whys, and the hows.