Languages Posts

  • 12.20.08 Lazyweb: Is there a Ruby template engine like Genshi or Kid? (Web, Languages, Computers)

    Ruby has a wide variety of HTML/XML templating engines, but none of the ones I’ve found work the way I’d like. It’s quite possible I’ve overlooked some, though. If you’ve got a good suggestion, I’ve got a gold star ready to stick on your forehead!… MORE

  • 12.06.08 James Bennett: “Let’s talk about Python 3.0” (Languages)

    James Bennett has posted a very informative defense of Python 3, in reaction to my more negative article.

    I learned things from it, as from many of the comments on my post. I even agree with most of what he says, but it hasn’t really changed my opinion, because it seems like we’re not talking about the same things.… MORE

  • 12.04.08 Python 3.0: What’s The Point? (Languages)

    Python 3.0 is finally out. I like Python (though it and Ruby are always competing for my affections), and I’m always a sucker for new features in any language, but I’m having trouble getting excited about this. Despite the longtime code-name “Python 3000”, it doesn’t seem very futuristic; and it introduces a lot of compatibility problems. In fact, after reading the docs, I can’t come up with any good reasons to install or use the new version. Am I missing something?… MORE

  • 08.30.08 Blocks/Closures For C! (Languages, Computers)

    Chris Lattner writes :

    Until there is more real documentation, this is a basic idea of Blocks: it is closures for C. It lets you pass around units of computation that can be executed later. For example […]
    … MORE

  • 06.17.08 JavaScript 2.0, aka ECMAScript 4 (Web, Languages, Computers)

    I just discovered that there is an ECMAScript 4—better known as JavaScript 2.0—in development. As a shameless language slut, I immediately dove into the language overview, and it’s pretty neat.

    This turns JavaScript into a much more useable language, that I could see doing serious development in. I’m well aware that today’s JS isn’t a “toy”, that it’s got an interesting prototype-based object model under the hood; but I’ve found the language so loose as to be difficult to use. This new version adds a full class model, much better support for iteration, a form of generators/coroutines, and more.… MORE

  • 04.30.08 Coroutines in Objective-C (Languages, Computers)

    I’ve started using NSOperation in a few places in Cloudy, which means I’m backsliding into using threads and locking and so forth. It definitely makes writing network code easier than Cocoa’s asynchronous API, but I really don’t want to get into a morass of threads.

    What I’d really like to use are Actors. In a nutshell, an Actor is an object that has its own [cooperative] thread and message queue. Actors interact by message-passing instead of shared state. The idea is to eliminate the need for standard synchronization primitives like semaphors and locks, and get rid of the race conditions and deadlocks that plague multi-threaded programs.… MORE

  • 03.01.08 MacRuby (Languages, Computers)

    MacRuby “is a version of Ruby that runs on top of Objective-C. More precisely, MacRuby is currently a port of the Ruby 1.9 implementation for the Objective-C runtime and garbage collector. The rationale behind this effort is to solve in a very efficient way all the bridging problems RubyCocoa, the Ruby bridge to the Objective-C runtime, has to work around.” (It’s still in development, and not ready for prime-time use yet.)

    This is exciting news. Now, … MORE

  • 02.06.08 Network Barbie Says “Asynchrony Is Hard!” (Ideas, Languages, Computers)

    …Just like many times before, I’m wishing there were a third way between threads and callback-based asynchrony. I’d like to be able to keep each operation’s flow of control simple, as with threads, but at the same time limit the interactions between operations to keep the overall flow of control from turning into race-condition spaghetti.… MORE

  • 01.30.08 96 Characters Ought To Be Enough For Anyone (Web, Languages, Computers)

    Paul Graham: “Arc only supports Ascii. … But the kind of people who would be offended by that wouldn’t like Arc anyway.” That last bit [emphasis mine] sort of flummoxed me. Is he saying that LISP only appeals to native English speakers?… MORE

  • 05.01.06 your sword is glowing with a faint blue glow (Games, Languages)

    I dabbled in Interactive Fiction, aka Text Adventures, long ago—- I played Adventure on my Apple ][ and Dungeon/Zork on a VAX; I wrote a primitive game in BASIC and later in college partially implemented a language for building games in yacc; and then after graduating, my first serious Mac program was a souped-up and nearly finished version of that language. After that I was too busy with “real” jobs, but others kept the … MORE

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