I'm a C# software developer living in Epsom which is somewhere near London. Interested in anything that helps get the job done before home time.
Joined November 2008
- Tweets 4,792
- Following 320
- Followers 131
- Likes 5,205
424 Photos and videos
1 Dec 2025
I do like a good incident write-up. The OBR's early publication of it's report is a great example of the risks involved with computer systems.
obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploa…
15
1 Dec 2025
When installing Visual Studio 2026, it is a good idea to run it at least once before uninstalling Visual Studio 2022. It seems it can't import your settings if they have already been uninstalled.
24
23 Nov 2025
This kind of thing is why I prefer wires and plugs.
21 Nov 2025
I just spent the last two hours debugging the Bluetooth stack *in anger* because for the last few weeks I've had to re-pair my mouse with my laptop. Every time. Remove mouse, re-pair.
Turns out I had two identical mice in my backpack and I've been switching between them.
It was me.
47
18 Nov 2025
I get increasingly annoyed by company call centres, whose answer to every question is: "I can't do that, you have to do it through the website."
2
28
15 Nov 2025
Notice in this video how it recommends he select the scale factor that's already selected and he chooses a different one like we won't notice. If you can't get it to work in a rehursed marketing demo it ain't going to work in real life.
1
52
11 Nov 2025
C# is only memory safe if you want it to be. Throw in the unsafe keyword and you get pointers! You don't even need to do that though, because C#'s interop allows you to call the OS's memory allocation commands.
17
6 Nov 2025
No test suite will catch everything. The solution, good engineers and insurance.
6 Nov 2025
The bug only happened in production. Not staging. Not local. Only prod.
We spent 2 weeks comparing environments:
- Same code
- Same configs
- Same infrastructure
- Different behavior
The difference? Production had 10x more data.
Our pagination logic broke after page 1000. Staging only had 400 pages. We never saw it.
We tested the code. We didn't test the scale.
Now our staging environment has production-sized data. Slows down our tests, catches real bugs.
1
13
3 Oct 2025
Can someone on the @Windows team add environment variables to the system/developer section of the settings app, please?
1
25
28 Sep 2025
I'd love to see an in-depth writeup on how a single hack has managed to do enough damage to require this government response. I guess it's a discussion that's too technical for @BBCNews.
bbc.com/news/articles/cgl15y…
24
22 Sep 2025
The trouble with relative terms is you have to know what you're comparing. Compared to the BASIC I used to use on my zx spectrum, python on a modern CPU is very fast indeed, but that's not saying much.
Over the last 10 years, I’ve learned something:
Every single person claiming that “Python is slow” tends to be a newcomer with no experience building software. They are usually dropouts of a bad JavaScript bootcamp.
More importantly, if you think that Python isn’t a “production-capable” language, you are definitely too early in your career.
1
50
24 Nov 2024
Surprisingly, the chap at webuyanycar.com wouldn't give me any extra money when I told him my car had an iPod dock.
17
11 Nov 2024
One man's integration test is another man's unit test. It's time software developers stopped using these terms and just started defining what the scope of the tests are.
15
8 Oct 2024
As a software developer, are there any systems you just wish you could get your hands on and improve?
7 Oct 2024
1
49
17 Sep 2024
Pro tip: If you create a 2FA system that uses emails or text message to send the one time passcode, you do actually have to send the email/text. Otherwise no one can log in.
1
40
17 Sep 2024
For bonus marks, make sure the support chat thing where people would report such an issue doesn't require you to be logged in.
25
Martin G. Brown retweeted
3 Sep 2024
The senior dev seeing your PR knowing they don't have mental energy to explain this to you right now
35
580
7,248
582,806
1 Sep 2024
There is definitely something up with how #Duolingo accounts for things. There is no way I've done 11 quests since the start of September.
ALT Screenshot of Duolingo showing I've completed 11 quests in September but only 1 today.
1
36
1 Jul 2024
Does the UK Government charge VAT on cheese cake with a biscuit base?
39
21 Jun 2024
So which language is best for implementing O(n!) algorithms?
20