I believe every developer has been in a situation where the software behaves in a way that just cannot be.  Every developer has applied fixes that do not make sense and he had no idea how they worked. Recently I came across the most brutal version of "cannot be" I had ever encountered while working on software...

   Before I unveil the atrocities of the String class in Java we are going to do a simple test. In order to get the most accurate results from the test you should try to do it as if it was a normal task at work. By the very fact that you know this is a test you will probably not do it like it is a normal task at work but at least try not to read the source code of the Java methods you are going to call. So here is the task – Write a method that given a string replaces all the occurrences of the substring "…" with the string ",,,". For example given the input " a.,...b...c." the method should return "a.,,,,b,,,c."...

   Recently I run into another case of developers who are confused by all the static vs. dynamic and weak vs. strong type system classification. And you know what?  This is actually OK. Usually one can be a good developer in one type of language and understand how it works without knowing all the kinds of type systems and the terminology of the subject. However I still find it useful to try to explain it even though there are other and probably better resources out there. It is especially useful since most of my readers use C# and C# developers can benefit the most from this knowledge because C# combines several typing approaches...

   For years I have thought that software development is very similar in feeling to archaeology.  As a software developer you get to work on that legacy project that is ancient. The ancient developers are gone and you are on your own...

   It is the 256th day of the year again which means that everyone whose job is to create bytes that move other bytes around can celebrate.

   I remember several years ago the Wikipedia article for Programmers' Day was created and deleted and then created and deleted again. There was a heated discussion if the holiday really exists. Some people said that their companies observe it and have some related activities therefore the holiday is real. However others pointed out that someone can invent a holiday like this one and put it on Wikipedia to give it credibility so the article should not be allowed. Luckily the holiday was accepted as official professional holiday in Russia which gives it enough physical world credibility so the article is now up again.

   Let the celebrations begin!