About

My name is Christopher Bojarski. I'm a web developer, programmer and blogger. Fan of all things technology related. Avid reader and traveler. Married and living in Philadelphia. Connect with me at cbojar.net.

Popular posts from this blog

Every Case Is Special

Special cases are everywhere. This one little thing has to work this other way. Soon, there is an if/else chain twenty conditions long. Worse, that if/else chain is embedded in another chain of twelve conditions, all in one happy method. The next person making a kind of change has to tack on another condition and hope nothing blows up.

We know it's bad when we see a bird's nest like that. How can we deal with it? Why should we? The problem with code no one understands is that no one understands it. We will have a huge problem the day it stops working. We assume that, if it works now, it will work forever. That is a faulty assumption. The world changes around us. The solid rock beneath that code can erode away. And our hair will be on fire when that day comes.

Special cases are special. Normal cases are also special. Every case is special in some way. There are some classic special cases common to many code bases. There are quirky special cases unique to your own code. We need …
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Trying Out FreeBSD

I've used Linux as my main driver for several years now. I've been quite happy with it, as it does so much to make my life easier. But like so many things in life, sometimes it's best to see if the grass is greener on another side of a fence. Hearing so much about it from Allan Jude on TechSNAP and BSD Now, I decided to give FreeBSD a whirl. I tried it first in a VM, then later installed it to an old laptop to really test out how well it worked.

My goal was to get a full-fledged desktop system up an running, preferably comparable to my Linux system. I knew this was possible given what I had seen and heard. FreeBSD is a UNIX-derived system that looks a lot like Linux. Many of the same programs will run on both, and so it won't "feel" too different. I tried both FreeBSD proper and the desktop spin, PC-BSD, in a VM to get a feel for each. In the past, I had tried to play around with NetBSD, with little success, but I didn't let that experience cloud my opini…
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Exposing Dependencies: Getting Worse Before Getting Better

As software developers, our job is managing dependencies. We have to carefully construct balanced graphs of classes, objects, libraries, services, and more. Code needs to be encapsulated, reusable, and extensible, all while creating end-user value. We use techniques like composition, inheritance, and dependency injection to separate this from that, knowing that this or that could change in unknown ways at any moment.

We don't always get to create the perfect system from the ground up though. Sometimes, we work on software developed long ago that could not anticipate today's needs. It hurts a little more when we see our name on all those commit messages. Regardless, we need to make the necessary adjustments for our system to meet the needs of today and tomorrow. To make code more flexible and adaptable, we often have to break it up into more singular and discrete responsibilities. We have to pull out and encapsulate the pieces that are at different levels of abstraction. We hav…
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