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Normalization is not a process

Database normalization is often explained as a step-by step process to improve a database design. This is a very unfortunate misunderstanding which causes a lot of confusion for students. Instead, the normal forms should be thought of as a checklist which can be used to analyze a database design for

What does First Normal Form actually mean?

Despite being a fundamental concept in relational databases, First Normal Form (or 1NF) is often explained confusingly or downright incorrect. This post explains what 1NF really means and is useful for and debunk a number of the misunderstandings. E. F. Codd, the inventor of the relational model, explained 1NF as:

What is the “Unit” in Unit Test? Or - Mocking Considered Harmful

Unfortunately, "unit test" is often understood as a test which only test a single “unit of code” like a class or component. This is a very unfortunate misunderstanding, leading to fragile tests and an overuse of mocking. Originally “unit” refers not to a unit of code but to

Single Responsibility Principle Explained

I propose a better name for this design principle: The Single Requirement Principle. The Single Responsibility Principle is the most misunderstood design guideline ever, because it has a misleading name. The name have caused many to believe a class or module should only be responsible for one single thing. This

Solving the Regex of Madness - and a few thought about snarky answers on StackOverflow

This infamous answer [https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/7488] on StackOverflow have reached meme status. The question is about finding opening tags in XHTML using a regular expression, and the answer makes it abundantly clear that this is not possible - and you will surely go mad if you try.

C# - The Boring Parts: Casts and Type Conversions

Casts are confusing in C#. The syntax itself is simple: (Bar)foo casts the value foo to the type Bar. But this means two very different things for reference types and for value types. For numeric value types, a cast performs a data conversion which may lead to data loss.