Mike Higginbottom

Category: coding

  • Nand2Tetris

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    I’m currently part way through a fantastic course on hardware design. It’s called Nand2Tetris and walks through building a simulated computer from the very simplest components (individual transistors) right through to a fully functioning computer. There’s a subreddit available if you want to chat with some fellow learners and a TED talk covering the course…

  • The Latest Way To Get Email Notifications From Backintime

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    A lot of articles about this (there aren’t many to begin with) are out of date since the arguments passed to user-callback by backintime have changed recently. Here’s an updated explanation of how to do it.

  • Naming Files, Or Things More Generally

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    Another old article, short but sweet, that talks about how to name files. More broadly though it’s about putting things in their rightful place, being tidy and taking the time to think about things just that little bit more carefully. Naming Files

  • You Are The Corner Case

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    This was ostensibly an article about designing code for the correct audience but in hindsight, looking back at it, I think it’s more of a way of thinking about interactions in general. You are in posession of context that others are not. That’s important. Corner Cases

  • Logging Diagnostics

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    Once upon a time there was some code. But now it’s gone. Wandered off all alone into the woods without a single breadcrumb for trail leaving purposes. Still, it left some nice ideas behind about how to get diagnostics out of code to a log file. A legacy for us all to enjoy. Logging Diagnostics

  • Some Thoughts On Error Messages

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    Along similar lines to my article on the evilness of comments here’s an old article which is also about simplicity and elegance in code. My contention is that the user should never see an error message that they understand. Error Messages

  • Comments Are Evil

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    Another old post from my days as a coder. Pretty sure a lot of people will disagree with a lot of this. And they might be right. That’s just the nature of the topic. So leave comments and I’ll edit to reflect incoming wisdom. Comments Are Evil

  • Added Some Notes About Referential Semantics

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    Many moons ago I used to do quite a lot of C and C++ coding (getting a weird eye twitch as I type this) and a big part of the learning curve when I was getting into that was the idea of referential vs copy semantics. I’ve dug up a load of old articles I…