Steve Horsfield

Science, Mathematics and Unit Testing

I have always considered testing to be an important part of quality software development, however I find the focus on unit testing in commercial environments is worrying, particularly when combined with junior developers. What has this to do with science and mathematics? Read on… Ultimate testing objectives The final aim of any test is to prove (beyond [...]

Philosophy and Science

Political and social dialogue about science abounds, especially concerning the nature of truth. It may come as a surprise to realise that the study of truth is not in the domain of science but rather of faith and philosophy. In this post I hope to introduce some of the elementary considerations of philosophy and science [...]

Coupling issues in SOA development with .NET

Recently, I have been working on an SOA project using WCF. As development moved toward integration of multiple services I found the coupling of services to be a real pain point. Although services operated in a loosely coupled fashion, the actual implementation of the services was less ideal. Problem context The system encompassed a set of services [...]

A Prayer for Fruitfulness

A prayer for today for all who long for greater fruitfulness in the whole measure of Christian life. Oh, Father God! You who sent Your only Son to die for me (1), will You not also graciously give me everything I need? (2) So, in confidence I ask: Oh, Father God! You whose words never fail to [...]

Walking in Wilderness

I recently added my comments to a discussion on LinkedIn about advice for those Christians currently in a place of wilderness (I’ll talk more about what I mean by “wilderness” in a bit). I’ve been asked to elaborate on what I originally posted and I have chosen to do so here. My original comment is below: If [...]

.NET XmlSerializer and JAXB attribute/annotation mappings

This is a technical post. I’ve recently been looking at how XML serialization is performed in JAXB 2.0 and immediately realised that I’d find it useful to have a cross-reference of .NET XmlSerializer attributes and JAXB annotations. I hope you find it useful too. The following table shows attributes and annotations that refer to the binding of [...]

Marriage: A Private or Social Matter? Open Discussion

What do you think? Is marriage purely a private matter or does is there a wider social responsibility and concern? I’d like to hear what you think. It has become fashionable to think (in the West at least) that marriage and relationships in general are a purely private matter. This was not always the case, with [...]

Hype or Horizon: Total Automatic Translation and Interpretation

In the last few years there have been massive improvements in machine-translation software. The promise of replacing interpreters and translators with machines is held out as a real possibility in businesses and institutions. Is it just hype or is it on the horizon? Machine translation works on either or both of the following key principles: Rules engine, [...]

Scalability and Architecture Issues of SME Web Content Management Systems

Many low-end and middle-end web CMS providers profess (indeed stress) scalability and extensibility but in my experience the architectures of those systems are fundamentally flawed in achieving these aims. What are your thoughts? The design of most of the systems is centered on the website, i.e. web-centric, which is fair enough as they are not intending [...]

Automate XSD code generation in Visual Studio

This is a technical post and requires knowledge of software development. If you are like me, then you quickly get tired of creating classes that just represent a DTO when the XML schema would be easier to use. Here’s a trick to help you if you don’t have add-ins to do the job for you. Outcome The result [...]