In search of practitioner perspectives on ‘good code’

Much of a software developer's job involves working with existing code. The comprehensibility of code therefore has a significant and ongoing effect which can continue long after it was written. Personal experience has shown that some programmers' code is frustrating and time consuming to work with, while others write code that is crystal clear. This paper sets out the basis for a definition of 'good programmer' which emphasises the powerful but invisible productivity consequences for others, rather than the more readily measurable performance of the individual. The conjectured role of personality in shaping such characteristics is also discussed

Heterogeneous photocatalytic oxidation of atmospheric trace contaminants

The following subject areas are covered: (1) design and construction of continuous flow photoreactor for study of oxidation of trace atmospheric contaminants; (2) establishment of kinetics of acetone oxidation including adsorption equilibration, variation of oxidation rate with acetone concentration and water (inhibitor), and variation of rate and apparent quantum yield with light intensity; (3) exploration of kinetics of butanol oxidation, including rate variation with concentration of butanol, and lack of inhibition by water; and (4) exploration of kinetics of catalyst deactivation during oxidation of butanol, including deactivation rate, influence of dark conditions, and establishment of photocatalytic regeneration of activity in alcohol-free air

Kinetics of liquid phase semiconductor photoassisted reactions : supporting observations for a pseudo-steady-state model

The kinetics of liquid phase semiconductor photocatalytic and photoassisted reactions are an area of some debate, reignited recently by an article by Ollis1 in which he proposed a simple pseudo-steady-state model to interpret the Langmuir-Hinshelwood type kinetics, commonly observed in such systems. In the current article, support for this model, over other models, is provided by a reinterpretation of the results of a study, reported initially in 1999,2 of the photoassisted mineralization of 4-chlorophenol, 4-CP, by titania films and dispersions as a function of incident light intensity, I. On the basis of this model, these results indicate that 4-CP is adsorbed more strongly on P25 TiO2 when it is in a dispersed, rather than a film form, due to a higher rate constant for adsorption, k1. In addition, the kinetics of 4-CP removal appear to depend on Iâ, where â ) 1 or 0.6 for when the TiO2 is in a film or a dispersed form, respectively. These findings are discussed both in terms of the pseudo-steady-state model and other popular kinetic models