Simon Allardice

Big news! I've joined Pluralsight

Thu, 23 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I’m delighted to announce that I have joined the Pluralsight team, and I’ll be creating content there from now on.

While I’m immensely proud of the body of work I’ve created over many years at lynda.com, it’s time for the next chapter. It’s a superb team, and we have fantastic plans for the next generation of professional learning.

I’m already cranking on my first couple of courses, and I’ll post more as soon as we have an ETA.

Here’s Pluralsight.

Ask Me Anything on CareerDean.com

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I recently did a AMA (Ask Me Anything) on CareerDean.com, where I answer a bunch of questions on self-directed learning, teaching, dream jobs, book recommendations, upcoming courses…

Check it out here.

Why programming manuals aren't on audiobook

Thu, 15 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Ever wondered why we don’t get a lot of programming reference manuals on audiobook? Here’s the reason, illustrated with a reading from “The Swift Programming Language” document from Apple, section on “Metatype Types”.

Getting Started, circa 1983

Mon, 17 Mar 2014 18:00:00 +0000

Like most folks who started programming in the 70’s and 80’s, I began on mainframes. It was years before I programmed a desktop computer.

And while I strive to avoid damn-kids-get-off-my-lawn graybeard ramblings, I’ll sometimes get this question from a brash young whippersnapper trying to understand what pre-PC era programming was like:

Back in your first programming job, what kind of computer was on your desk?

In my first programming job, I didn’t have a computer on my desk.

My desk - like those of my co-workers - was device free. The nearest we had to a personal computing device was an LCD calculator.

Not only didn’t I have a computer on my desk, there wasn’t one in the entire office, or even in the same building. We were programming a mainframe that was about five miles along the road.

Instead, imagine a stack of these on my desk:

This is an IBM coding sheet, for COBOL. We had them for other languages, too: Pascal, Assembly language, Fortran.

You’d use these to hand-write your computer programs. In pencil.

Because this was the dizzying heights of “undo” technology:

And when you were finished handwriting a section of code - perhaps a full program, perhaps a subroutine - you’d gather these sheets together (carefully numbered in sequence, of course) and send them along to the folks in the data entry department.

They’d type it in.

And the next day you’d get a report to find out if it compiled or not.

Let me say that again: the next day you could find out if your code compiled or not.

If you’d made even a simple typo - say, a missing period, or something that looked more like a colon than a semicolon - it’d take at least another 24 hours to get a fix in and turn it around.

This method, as you might imagine, requires a somewhat higher level of attentiveness to writing code than the way most of us work now.

I wouldn’t want to work like this again, but I’m glad I have worked like this.

And though it may seem primitive now, several of the programmers I worked with at the time viewed that state of affairs as programmer-friendly, if indeed not simplistic.

They’d been used to working with punch cards, something I only ever did a handful of times.

I’ll admit that even at the time (early 80’s) this was a little - though not much - behind the times. I was working for the British Government, not some new-fangled highly-funded tech company. You use what you can get.

A year or two into this, we were finally upgraded. Amidst much rejoicing, we were provided a handful of IBM 3270 dumb terminals - monochrome devices, with the classic IBM Model M clicky keyboard.

Imagine the sensation - type your own code in? Compile a program yourself? How marvelous! What an age we lived in!

Do I need to know C to write Objective-C?

Sun, 02 Mar 2014 18:00:00 +0000

Another common question:

Should I learn C and/or C++ to be an Objective-C developer?

If you’re asking, and therefore have any amount of resistance to the idea, then: no.

Probably.

But this is a long-winded “it depends” answer. There are some developers that very publicly proclaim no-one should touch Objective-C without being a C expert first, but that is simply and demonstrably untrue: I know many successful, knowledgable iOS devs with multiple apps in the store who couldn’t write a basic C malloc statement if their lives depended on it.

However, some of this is personality-driven - some folks enjoy learning the underlying tech, and it’s true that if you’re good with C, you’ll enjoy lightbulb-going-off understanding of why-things-are-the-way-they-are in the Apple frameworks.

So - is knowledge of C useful? Sure.

Is it necessary? No, I don’t believe so.

There’s enough already to learn in the world of iOS dev, so I suggest that most people, most of the time, be as ruthless as they can in dumping anything that’s not absolutely necessary.

If your primary goal is “Write an iOS app and get it in the store”, then C is a nice-to-have-but-not-essential skill.

If you know C already, great - but if you don’t know it, spending weeks (or months) wrapping your head around C concepts and techniques that you will never (or at least, very, very rarely) use in Objective-C isn’t the best use of your time.

However, if your goal is not just the pragmatic “write and sell an app”, but also “have a deep understanding of what’s going on under the hood”, then sure, C is a stunningly useful language to know.

(Well, I pause while I’d make an argument for Assembly Language as being the true hardcore language to give you a real appreciation of what’s actually going on on the chip… but try C first and see how you like it.)

What about C++?

Okay - there’s value in knowing C even if you’re not going to write plain C programs, but C++ is a language you should learn if you want to actually write C++ programs. If you don’t want to write C++ code, don’t learn it.

Full disclosure - I’ll admit C++ is not my favorite language - I spent a long time writing it, and about 10 years ago had a consulting gig where I was brought in to spend 6 months purely on fixing other people’s incompetently-written C++ and that was like aversion therapy; I shudder to look at it now. so I don’t mind if you like it, but I’d be a happy man if I never wrote a line of it ever again.

Occasionally-Asked Questions No.27

Sat, 28 Dec 2013 18:00:00 +0000

Hey Simon, what’s your favorite programming language?

I don’t have one.

No, really - what is it?

Seriously. You may ask well as what my favorite brand of gasoline is. I understand that many people have a strong preference - I’m not one of them.

But you do a lot of iOS stuff, so your favorite language must be Objective-C, right?

God, no. Objective-C certainly has its quirky charms, but it’s not even in my top five list.

If I had a top five list. Which I don’t.

Ah! But that suggests you have preferences, at least?

Yes, you’ve cunningly caught me in my foul web of lies. There are some languages I prefer: I’ll gravitate to C-based languages when given the choice. But that’s due to long familiarity and personal speed, not any pretense of objective analysis and/or artistic judgement.

If you’re a pragmatic, in-the-trenches software developer (as opposed to, say, a research-focused computer scientist, who has different goals) the programming language is - and should always be - a secondary decision.

First question: what are you trying to do?

You want to build iOS apps? Learn Objective-C. End of story.

Or build interesting client-side web behavior? Learn JavaScript. Sorry.

A strong passion for either language is unnecessary - moreover, there’s a significant benefit to eyes-wide-open awareness of the pain points and quirks of the language you’re currently working in.

Sure, you don’t want to hate the language, but you don’t need to love it.

I disagree! Objective-C is a fantastic, totally coherent language! You just don’t understand it properly!

Uh-huh. Come back with an explanation for why this fantastic, totally coherent language needs three different terms for the concept of null without sounding like you have a case of Programmer Stockholm Syndrome. (“But my kidnapper loves me! You just don’t understand him the way I do!”)

Make no mistake: I enjoy writing Objective-C. And Apple have made some incredible improvements to it over the years. ARC is the most admirable method of memory management I’ve ever encountered, and I continue to be impressed by how well it works. But let’s face it: Objective-C is a language that makes everyone learning it say “Wait… what?” a dozen times in the first three months.

And as far as JavaScript goes: let’s face it, most languages need third-party libraries to add extra cool features. JavaScript needs them to make it barely tolerable.

So neither of these languages are “favorites”, but they’re the languages I’ve used most in recent years, simply because they’re the right ones to build what I’ve wanted to build.

What about other languages?

I like writing Python, though I’m still in a lovey-dovey, rose-tinted-spectacles honeymoon period with it, because I only use it for recreational code. I haven’t had to write enough battle-tested production code to experience its foibles and issues, which I’m positive it has.

The same goes for functional languages: I’d had fun in Haskell and Erlang, but I’ve yet to ship mission-critical software in either language, and without that I’m not going to make a personal judgement on their real-world pros and cons.

And I’m very fond of C#, which I used heavily since its early days. Though the shine did wear off as more and more “features” were added to the language and surrounding frameworks.

When I first used it, C# and .NET development had a good amount of simplicity and clarity. Now, multiple competing paradigms make it harder, particularly for beginners. (Should I use MVC? Or MVVM? Or MVP? Webforms? Single-page? etc., etc.)

Choice is not always a benefit. I like constraints. They make it easier to just get to work.

On that front, I’ll certainly tip my hat to how Apple have worked Objective-C. If you look at what’s been added to that world over recent years, it’s all tended toward making it simpler. ARC, literals, even the default code provided in a new Xcode project or class template - they’ve all gotten more straightforward and simpler over the years, without muddying the waters with ten competing design paradigms to choose from.

Any others?

I suppose I’ll always have a soft spot for both Assembly Language and COBOL (yes, really) as they were the focus of my first years of professional programming. I’m sure even when I’m in my dotage and unable to remember my own name, I’ll be able to write an ENVIRONMENT DIVISION block or MOV instruction without batting a wrinkly eyelid.

What about Java?

Java is a perfectly acceptable language. It’s white bread; it stirs no strong emotion in me one way or the other.

Any languages you don’t like?

That’s easier. C++.

Okay: technically, I don’t dislike the language itself - I just get an immediate sinking feeling from merely looking at any large amount of it. But understand I once took a six month contract just fixing a bunch of bug-ridden C++ written by a dozen developers who’d been sent on one C++ course and had no idea what they were doing - it was like aversion therapy for that language.

Well-written C++, a joy.

Badly written C++, a complete soul-sucking nightmare, in a way that bad code in any other language never quite seems able to match.

So which language should I learn?

Now you’re just yanking my chain.

Stay Classy.

Sat, 20 Jul 2013 07:50:04 +0000

Saw this tweet from a Microsoft dev account making fun of the recent Apple Developer Center downtime:

You’d think a company that, just the previous day, had to write off $900M of unwanted Surface RTs might think about toning down the snark a little.

Underestimation

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Folks sometimes underestimate getting into iOS development. Here’s my thoughts on the matter.

Planned Obsolescence

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I try to be good; I try to make multiple backups. What I hate most is that knawing feeling that you hope that at the end of the day, what you just did was completely pointless. You don’t want to use them. You want to look at your backup media in 10 years and think “Huh. Oh yeah. I guess I can toss that now.”

But we’re in that weird phase of technology where it’s more of a pain in the ass than it used to be. Documents are easy. You can have duplicates all over God and creation: a key drive (or two or three of four), on CD, Mozy, Amazon S3, whatever. Music and video are another matter. Currently, I have nearly 100 GB of fairly well-organized music. A little too large to store easily in a cloud, whether something like Amazon S3 or whatever the hell Windows Live Mesh will turn out to be. External drive? Sure, they’re already there. But still, that’s storage, not backup. And I don’t want a freakin’ RAID array in the house, because it strikes me as yet another soon-to-be-archaic technological solution, like having my own butter churner. Even a standalone external hard drive strikes me as something that five years from now, will seem just… stupid… “so, grandpa, when you were younger you actually had spinning discs of crash prone magnetic media in a powered box on your desk? Wow. “

I know, the cloud’s coming. But okay, we’re not there yet. The pipes aren’t fat enough, the storage isn’t quite cheap enough just yet. So I occasionally have a day where I’m mentally too toasted for creative stuff and just go on autopilot through some low-priority to-do items like “create backups of music” but even just burning the DVDs and labeling them, I’m thinking ewww, how archaic. I know I’m going to look at this disc in seven years, the way right now I look at a disc marked “5/1/2001 various documents, emails etc” and wish I could have gotten that part of my life back.

First Person

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I suck at Starcraft.

This would no doubt win me no friends in South Korea, but it has to be said. I just don’t click with management games, or building games, or God games: anything along the lines of Starcraft, SimCity, Civilization.

It’s not that I dislike them. I can quite understand why people play. But their game-lego and my game-player-lego simply doesn’t click. And trust me, I’ve tried. This goes back to SimCity on the C64 twenty-something years ago. I’ve given them a fair shot. It’s just not working out for us.

For a few years, I was on the organizing committee for the SIGGRAPH conference. Almost to a man, my colleagues on the committee all loved Starcraft. They excelled in managing resources, organizing virtual armies, they’d get together in the evenings to have laptop gatherings and organize each other into the ground.

In retrospect, that should have been a clue as to why they enjoyed the whole big-conference resource-organization thing and why it was like pulling teeth for me. I just wanted to retreat to my BFGs and berserker leaps into a whirling morass of bullets. That I am almost certain to be slaughtered, I care not a jot. If there was ever an apt image for my gameplaying it would be a character tearing down a hill towards a sea of enemies and certain doom, screaming in apoplectic rage, wearing nothing save blue warpaint and a chain gun.

Ah, Unreal Tournament, how well ye knew me.

This is not solely a computer-game-only characteristic of mine. When I play pool, I am a distinctly average and unremarkable player, but only if I am able to restrain myself from my natural “hit it as hard as possible just to see if the rebound effect does something interesting” tendency.

I’ve never clicked with MMORPG games, either. I haven’t spent a single second on World of Warcraft. Once spent a good few hours trying out Lord of the Rings Online: carefully chose and built my character, killed a metric buttload of boar, completed a whole slew of quests. Even squelched my loner characteristics enough to team up with a bunch of other players to complete Team Quests. Other players were helpful and charitable to the n00b that I was.

And I tried not to keep thinking what this game really needs is more rocket launchers.