Donnacha Forde

Software engineering, cybersecurity architecture and distributed systems — blogs, lectures and open-source projects.

Articles on software engineering, management, leadership, design, cybersecurity, and Java performance tuning.

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition - Lessons from Sports Management that cross over to software engineering.
I think you’ll find it’s more complicated than that - Knowledge Transfer opportunities in Agile ceremonies.
Becoming a Coach - Considerations on becoming a volunteer Sports Coach.
Think on Paper - Clarifying your thought process and helping your decision making.
7 Simple Habits That Made My Engineering Teams Thrive - Practical habits that helped my engineering teams increase productivity and deliver at extraordinary speed without burning out.

A Short History on the Evolution of Antimalware - A brief outline of how malware and antimalware have co-evolved over the decades and an outline of the various technology components that make up a modern-day endpoint protection and detection solutions.
Platform Challenges facing AV Vendors - An examination of the challenges faced by AV vendors in meeting modern day platform needs.

Be considerate in your API design, but not overly so - An example of when being overly helpful can be to the detriment of your API design.
Antipattern - STL Inheritance - An explanation as to why you probably don’t want to inherit from that STL container.
Template Extension in C++ - A note on how templates are extended in the STL to ‘borrow’ behaviour compared to how OO inheritance achieves it.

Eliminating Heap Memory Allocations in Queues - A pattern for managing event queues efficiently in Java (i.e. ToggleQueue).

Design Considerations & Influences - Thoughts and influences on the design of the espresso library.
Object Creation Patterns - Discussion on constructors and factory classes, as applied to the espresso library.
Utilizing Manager Objects - Discussion on the advantages of deploying a manager object and the separation of function.

Hard Won Lessons - Lessons learned from ignoring Compiler Warnings.
Visual Studio Build Output Tips - Some practical tips for handling verbose build output in Visual Studio.

In-depth guides and notes on Java JVM performance, memory and diagnostics.

Part I — JVM Concepts - Basic principles of JVM garbage collection and memory management.
Part II — The Java Memory Model - How the JVM organizes memory into generations.
Part III — Garbage Collectors - Overview of the various GC policies available.
Part IV — Heap Configuration and JIT - Configuring heap sizing and the just-in-time compiler.
Part V — JVM Diagnostics - Using GC diagnostics to validate and tune.