A technique which I use over and over again in C++ and Heron, which also can be used in Java, is inheriting from a template parameter. I am searching for a name for this pattern. One of the trouble spots for this pattern is lack of constructor inheritance in C++ and Java, but this can be worked around.

Not your father's Design Patterns book, Head First Design Patterns provides a unique learning guide to Design Patterns and OO design.

The December 2004 issue of the C/C++ Users Journal has just come out and contains an article I wrote "Constrained Value Types using Policies" which discusses how to use policies to define special cases of value type which must conform to specific ranges or sets of values.

A minor annoyance with Java generics is that you often end up repeating type parameters in a variable declaration and in the constructor invocation that initializes that variable. Defining a trivial static method allows you to avoid this.

Many people in our industry have wanted to prove programs correct for years, but is that a correct goal?

The example of a bank account class is a canonical one in the object oriented programming (OOP) literature. Here are my thoughts on how the bank account problem should be approached.

Some reflections, not on the current election, but on the process of voting (and the electronic tallies thereof) on this, the eve of our doing it again...

Reposting a proposal for interfaces in C++.

The Ruby on Rails way is starting to influence thinkers in Java. Matt Raible apologizes on behalf of J2EE on how silly it looks to do CRUD in AppFuse and Trails has been announced as an approximation of Rails with Java frameworks.

Sounds a bit extreme? Some companies seem to live and breathe benchmarks, responses to studies, and responses to responses. Isn’t it time we realised what benchmarks are really about and stopped it all getting out of hand.

Possibly my favourite feature of Heron, and what sets it apart from C++/Java/C# style languages is that primitives are defined in a library, not by the language. Why other languages don't do this is beyond me.

I designed the Heron programming language because, like many other programmers, I was dissatisfied with other languages. In this entry I list some the features that what I was looking for in a programming langauge.

The catch-22 of developing a programming language is that the onus is on the designer to promote the language unless they have some kind of corporate backing. This means that often you have to implement most of the functionality before people see the value in helping you create an implementation.

Yes, that's the question we should all be asking ourselves.

Programming with Contracts is a sofware development technique rapidly gaining in popularity but still somewhat misunderstood. I have been spending a lot of time lately writing about contracts and using them in the Heron standard library.