I code, therefore I am... a software engineer.

Software Engineering

The Art of Writing Beautiful Programming Code

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In the vast landscape of art and design, beauty often dwells in the intersection of form and function. Philosophers and artists alike have long debated the definition of beauty, with many concluding that it’s an amalgamation of unity, proportion, and harmony. But can this classical definition of beauty be applied to the more structured and logical domain of programming? The answer is a resounding ‘yes’.

In programming, “beauty” transcends mere aesthetics. It encompasses the clarity of expression, the simplicity of design, and the elegance of solutions. When code is beautiful, it not only works flawlessly but also communicates its intent clearly to its readers. This duality of purpose—to serve both machines and humans—is what elevates programming to an art. Beautiful code is that which is efficient in execution yet remains accessible and maintainable for fellow developers.

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How to Prevent Data Loss in the Subversion Cleanup Cycle

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Subversion is an open source version control system. It uses local directories and files as metadata in order to keep track of synchronizing your local copy of a project with the copy that is on the Subversion server. Sometimes these local files get “hosed” (that’s a technical term meaning really messed up). This is usually because there was a connection issue that occurred during the time that you were performing an SVN action with the server.

In such cases, the software will inform you that something went wrong and that you need to perform the Cleanup action. And in some cases, this Cleanup action also fails, leaving you with a project that can no longer commit code changes back to the server. What to do?

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How to Delete Old Emails in MS Exchange Using EWS

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Background

I work within a corporate environment that manages its own Microsoft Exchange Server. I am also on a development team and receive thousands of automated email messages per day from various services that run across multiple servers. I started out creating rules for these emails in MS Outlook that sorted them into folders based on the service that generated them. I would go in once a day and clean out the folders. This is a bit tedious. Additionally, I want to keep emails that are within the last day in case something goes wrong with that service and I need to reference an email that was generated. Even more tedious.

Next I thought to myself, “Why don’t I use the built-in Outlook Archive method?” That would be a great option, but my company manages our archive policies, meaning I cannot modify them.

Finally, having all other avenues closed to me, I decided to write my own utility to perform this task. I am, after all, a Software Engineer.

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Free Your Phone With OpenMoko

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Cell phones are for the most part proprietary in their platforms. Sure you can write J2ME applications for them. BlackBerry phones also have an API which you can utilize to write custom applications. It’s the actual operating system though that you really can’t get too. Don’t care? Well, then this review isn’t for you. However, …

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Software Engineering – Can You Have It Good, Fast And Cheap?

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Anyone who has been in software engineering can most likely recognize the old project triangle. The basic premise to this triangle is that in software engineering you may pick only two of the tips of this triangle. You can create software quickly and cheaply but it will suffer quality. You can have high quality quickly …

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