Ted Leung on the air

Ted Leung on the air
Ted Leung on the air: Open Source, Java, Python, and ...

Thu, 28 Aug 2003

Piers Cawley wrote about how he's adopted Kent Beck's code layout rules for Smalltalk when writing OO Perl. While this in itself is interesting, the thing that inspired the title was his name for

} else {

AKA, the "cuddled else". I never heard of a name for this before. I use this style extensively when I'm programming in Java, but it and all the close brackets use up a lot of whitespace.

I remember the first time I saw Python, and saw that indentation was significant. I was really turned off by it, and it kept me away for quite some time. Part of that was because a long time ago I had to implement a compiler for a language that had a similar offside rule, and it was a nasty experience. Having used Python for a while now has made me a believer in the indentation based syntax. As I was browsing the OCaml documentation, I noticed that OCaml code has a similar flavor to Python code. I don't know if OCaml relies on indentation or not, but it's going to be interesting to find out.

[01:39] | [computers/programming] | # | TB | F | G | 0 Comments |

REPL's revisited

Don Box brings up Saber C/C++ as an example of a REPL for a statically typed language. I used this a long time ago (when it was just Saber-C), but I forgot about it, so I guess I have to retract yesterday's'

I have yet to experience an environment for a static language that is as usable in this way as a system designed with a REP loop in mind.

Also, the CAML/OCaml lovers are starting to beat on me ;-). I got a comment about the camlp4 tool for doing macros in OCaml, and someone else pointed out that CAML / PolyML also have REPLs -- at least I can get out of that by saying I haven't used it. I am planning to sit down and have a look at OCaml after I finish my current project.

[01:24] | [computers/programming] | # | TB | F | G | 0 Comments |

Wiki's and good vs bad people.

If you're going to read Clay Shirky's piece Wikis, Grafitti, and Process, be sure that you read Ben Hyde's follow up.

[01:12] | [computers/internet] | # | TB | F | G | 1 Comments |

Software product liability

At one of r0ml's many excellent presentations, he commented on the use of product liabilty lawsuits as a weapon to be used by open source against closed source software, on the premise that the open source community truly believed their products to be more reliable than closed source programs. Additional repetitions of the events of recent weeks may lead us to a world where such lawsuits become a reality, but not as a result of r0ml's proposed strategy.

Declan McCullagh's News.com article tells both sides of the story. Cem Kaner, quoted in McCullagh's story, had own take on this issue.

The software industry as a whole needs to find ways to improve software reliability. If we don't find a way to do it, the legal system is going to find way to do it for us.

[00:42] | [computers] | # | TB | F | G | 0 Comments |

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