Mario Cervera's Blog

Refactoring long lists of parameters

Feb 10, 20218 min read

There seems to be no agreement in the software engineering community about how many parameters are too many for a function. This should come to no surprise. The ideal number of parameters for a function need not be the same as the ideal number of par...

Are design patterns still relevant?

Dec 29, 202010 min read

Design patterns became popular during the 90s, when the “Gang of Four (GoF)” (Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides) wrote the well-known book: "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" This book is one...

Big O notation and the Bachmann-Landau family

Nov 28, 20208 min read

Most of us, software engineers, are familiar with (or, at least, have heard of) the well-known "Big O" notation (O-notation for short). The reasons are diverse. O-notation is a concept that arises frequently in technical interviews, so it is likely t...

What is the essence of clean code?

Nov 16, 202010 min read

When we hear the term “Clean Code”, we usually think about the well-known book that was written by Robert C. Martin (also known as Uncle Bob): “Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship” (2009) Ever since this book was published, the t...

7 non-obvious benefits of automated testing

Oct 26, 20205 min read

I started exploring the fascinating world of test automation seven years ago. Right from the start, it was clear to me that testing has important benefits. Anywhere I read back then, I found people describing how testing leads to savings in developme...