Pat Kayongo

A .Net Developer’s Initial Thoughts on the Django Framework

Python has been my ‘I need to learn this sometime soon’ language for the past two years. I’m not sure why. A few weeks ago, I started playing around with it to learn the basic syntax using code katas. That was fun. But while code katas help one figure out ways to solve common problems, many of them are really language agnostic, and one can’t really build something useful using knowledge gained only from code katas. This week, I had some spare time and decided to play around more with the Django framework for python.

Objective C: Posting Foundation Objects with AFNetworking

The scenario was this. I had Objective C objects which I needed to parse as JSON, and send a POST request to a web server. At first, I used RestKit because that’s the framework that’s being used in the project, but that was giving issues, so I decided to strip it down a level, and use AFNetworking. I searched the internet for hours on how to do it, and good reading was hard to find. Here’s how I did it to anyone who may be in this position in future:

Making Changes to Code

for each desired change, make the change easy (warning: this may be hard), then make the easy change

— Kent Beck (@KentBeck) September 25, 2012

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Learning Python and Testing with Code Katas

For the past 4 years, and the four years of university, my main development languages have been the Microsoft languages, i.e. C# and Visual Basic, as well as Objective C recently. They’re very good languages. But for the longest time, I’ve always seen the need to learn new ‘kinds of’ languages. And for some reason, I’ve always had a fascination with Python.

2015 Career Goals

It’s a brand new year, and everyone is recovering from overspending in December and making resolutions for the year that they may not keep. I took some time out at the end of last year to look back on the highs and lows of 2014, and make goals for 2015 that I will really really really try keep.

No Such Thing As A Christian Culture

This is a rant. And I’m writing it at midnight. Which is not the best time to rant. But I’m awake. So I’m going to rant. Why are people talking about creating a Christian culture, or a Jesus culture*? What does that even mean?

Commenting Code

I have never had a ‘standard’ in mind on commenting code. There are principles that one should think of, such as method names should be descriptive enough that comments don’t necessarily have to repeat what method names communicate.

I found this great post by Eric Lippert. There are a few things I like about what he did:

One knows the reason for a method. It doesn’t exist arbitrarily. It links to functionality that should exist as defined by the spec.
Promotes single responsibility principle, because a method should only do one thing, and exist for the purpose of doing that thing.
It just makes someone’s code more understandable for when a new person gets on board. Better communication. This is good.

African Bank and Good Business

African Bank has been the focus of recent business news in South Africa for the past few weeks. Everyone has suddenly become an ‘expert analyst’ on the woes of African Bank, and what they should have done differently. Should they have bought Ellerines? Should they have closed down their savings account offering and allowed for a diverse portfolio of profits? It’s easy to judge when looking back, but a lot more difficult to give guiding principles when looking forward.

Review: The Founders by Andre Odendaal

For the past four years, I have really enjoyed reading history books, especially South African and East African history books. About a year and a half ago, I walked into a new bookshop in Rondebosch, Cape Town to see if they had any other books of interest. I came across this book about the origins of the ANC.

Early Thoughts on iOS Development

Recently, I started developing iOS applications for work. It’s an interesting experience, especially because I once vowed never to do iOS development due to my love-hate relationship with Apple. But the opportunity came up, and the diversity of experience can only be good experience. So here are my thoughts on the past few weeks: