MVC is a mistake, more math questions, and colours
MVC is very popular, but since it draws module boundaries along technical concerns it is a bad way to do modularisation.
You have arrived at the mid-week hump. Have a $container of $beverage and enjoy some reading before you speed along with the rest of your life.
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The MVC Mistake
Good modularisation is difficult. Most popular implementations of MVC draw module boundaries based on technical concerns rather than logical concerns. That's bad because we don't want changes to spill outside modules, and they tend to in MVC-based code.
Full article (7–15 minute read): The MVC Mistake
Getting to know you
I have some questions I would like to ask you over the coming weeks. Some of the results may end up in aggregated form as illustrative examples in future articles. Others might inform my writing.
How much maths do you know well enough to teach someone else, without looking anything up? (Calculators allowed!)
- Counting, recognising numbers (IIIIII, 6)
- Addition/subtraction (3+9, 9-3)
- Negative numbers (-3, 4-12)
- Multiplication (6×5)
- Fractions, division (3/4, 50/8)
- Percentages (3 % of 8, 154 increased by 14 %)
- Variables and functions (x, f(x), y=3x)
- Integer powers (3^8, x^2)
- Integer roots (square roots, cube roots)
- Fractional powers and roots (x^1.2, x^(1/12))
- Finding solutions to linear equations (3x-4=5)
- Finding solutions to quadratic equations (x² + 3x - 3 = 15)
- Finding solutions that require logarithms (3^a = 5)
- Basic trigonometry (sin 180°, cos π/2, finding the size of the hypotenuse)
- Basic differentiation (d/dx 3x + x², f'(x)/f(x) when f is known)
- Basic integration (∫ t^3 dt)
- Complex numbers (3+5i, 8e^(iπ/12))
- Differential equations (dy/dx = 5y)
This is the final maths question for now. The answer may again be different from the previous questions.
Flashcard of the week
Ever since I started using Darktable, I've been a fan of the LAB colour space – both the CIE version and the simpler Oklab variant. (Darktable is relevant here because its curves module supports LAB curves.)
The LAB colour spaces are so convenient to work in once one's used to them. I find it very annoying that most software to work with images do not support it.
However, there's one thing I used to have some confusion around:
In the LAB colour space, which axis is a and which is b?
Readers of the latest premium newsletter may, if they're lucky, remember the answer to this.
The LAB colour space is perceptually uniform, and there are three dimensions. The L stands for lightness, then a and b are colour axes that go between two complementary colours each. But which ones?
a is green-to-red, b is blue-to-yellow
I don't have a clever rule for remembering this, but it helps that I have recently worked quite a bit with colours and trying to automatically derive colour themes based on indications of desired colours, while maintaining sufficient text contrast, etc.
Premium newsletters
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