Niche Software

Welcome to Niche Software, a MicroISV based in Wellington, New Zealand.

The primary goal of the site is as a host to my writing - mostly entries in my blog, but also including more detailed articles and the occasional highly opinionated editorial. A secondary, but still important, goal is to be a place to post some tools, utilities and toys that I have written. As I tend to develop applications that "scratch my own itch," most of these are fairly technical in nature. Please check out the license on any item you download - while many are free, some are not.

A Developer's Blog

Don't assume shared understanding

25 Jan 2026 smart-code

Over a decade ago, a project manager at my work approached me with a proposal. You see, we had a minor quality problem, and he wanted us to do better.

Old blog posts, restored

26 Oct 2025 admin

Digging through some backups, I found some additional old blog posts worth restoring.

Better Table Tests in Go

21 Oct 2025 go

Table-driven tests are a cornerstone of good unit testing in any language, Go included. They allow us to group related test cases, making it simple to cover numerous inputs, outputs, and edge cases in a concise and readable way. When you have functionality that needs to be exercised in a variety of ways, a table test is often the right tool for the job.

Error assertions 26 Apr 2025
Browsers and WSL 31 Mar 2024
Factory methods and functions 05 Mar 2023
Using Constructors 27 Feb 2023
An Inconvenient API 18 Feb 2023
Method Archetypes 11 Sep 2022
More blog posts »

Software

Mandelbrot Screensaver

Mandelbrot Screensaver is a screensaver that automatically generates images from Mandelbrot fractal, generating a never ending display of fractal images on your screen.

WordTutor

WordTutor, a tool for running interactive spelling drills: the easy way to improve your spelling.

OOS Alarm

OOS Alarm is a repeating alarm clock which pops up regularly to remind you to appropriate breaks during your work each day.

Becoming a Better Developer

In this talk I pass on some of the things I've learnt about being a better developer.

Static Analysis for the Win

We all know that the earlier we find a bug, the cheaper it is to fix. Shouldn't we therefore be doing everything we can to identify bugs as early as possible?

The Pragmatic Programmer

Unusually for a technical book published in 1999, The Pragmatic Programmer remains thoroughly relevant to the modern developer. I present a review of this book, looking at how it is relevant to the modern developer.

Writing Maintainable Code

One core skill that every developer should cultivate is the ability to write Maintainable Code - code that can be easily understood.

Geek Communication

In June 2014, presenting to the first cohort of the Enspiral Devacademy talking about the nature of "geeks" and how to communicate effectively with them.

Unit Testing 101

A beginners introduction to unit testing, based on Roy Oscherove's book Art of Unit Testing. Presented to both Software Quality New Zealand and to Statistics New Zealand.