Schembri on Software
Jamie Schembri
A freelance software engineer in the Netherlands with a focus on building value. I'm Jamie. Pleased to meet you! I'm an English/Maltese man on the wrong side of thirty, and I live in the Netherlands with my wife and three dogs. My day job is as a freelance software engineer, primarily with Ruby on Rails. I've worked with everything from tiny agencies to multi-national corporations, which has made me rather versatile.
September 2026
October 2026
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All posts (38)
We visit the second SOLID principle: the open–closed principle (OCP). Does it still hold up, or is it bad advice in today's agile world?
🖋️This article is one part of my series on Robert (Bob) C. Martin's SOLID principles. The O in Bob's SOLID principles is in fact the brilliant Bertrand Meyer's open–closed principle, which is one of the five principles Meyer devised to define modularity. Definition The original definition, in Bertrand Meyer's 1988...
🖋️This article is one part of my series on Robert (Bob) C. Martin's SOLID principles. Definition The original and most quoted definition of SRP is this: A class should have only one reason to change. Excuse me, I'm here for "The Single-Responsibility Principle." This is it? Oh, I expected something else... So is it...
The Single Responsibility Principle is harder to grasp than its name implies, with a history of misleading definitions. We're going to be pedantic about the definition right out of the gate, to ensure we come away with the right understanding.
The SOLID principles are often presented as the foundational rules that all good developers should know and employ in writing object-oriented software. With such an elevated status, I decided it to dive into each principle and present my findings here. I was surprised at how often misunderstood some of these...
The SOLID principles are required learning for software engineers dealing with object-oriented code. Think you know them? Let's take each one apart together.
Dependencies are free chunks of functionality, except when they're not. They come with hidden costs which need careful consideration.
At first glance, depending on a library to fill a requirement is just good engineering. DRY, probably the best-known software engineering principle, tells us to avoid duplication like the plague. And what is writing your own code over grabbing an off-the-shelf package, if not duplication? In most programming...
Start writing now with a Ghost blog on PikaPods! This guide takes you through all the steps for a production-ready Ghost install, complete with newsletter support.
Introduction ℹ️I am not affiliated with any of the services mentioned in this post. With more people questioning big tech's role and impact on their lives, now is as good a time as any to reduce our reliance on traditional, force-for-evil social media and carve out our own little corners of the web. If you want to...
I dislike [all] blanket statements, but complexity is never desirable. Managing complexity is the most important technical topic in software development. In my view, it’s so important that Software’s Primary Technical Imperative has to be managing complexity. — Steve McConnell, 2004 It must have been around 2008...
One person's complex is another person's simple. Budget complexity intentionally and embrace simplicity of the whole.
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