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The Hard-Core Coder

~ I can't stop writing code!

The Hard-Core Coder

Author Archives: Wyrd Smythe

LPL-1

23 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Stories

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Tags

computer language, language design, little programming language, LPL, programming language, syntax

Here’s the last of the oddball Little Programming Languages (for now). This one is a little like LPL-2 in using a three-part syntax (which turns out to be non-ideal). Unlike LPL-3, neither of these are particularly usable languages — more along the lines of being something a language designer amused himself with on a rainy afternoon.

A key goal in LPL-1 was to minimize the use of punctuation characters. No brackets or parenthesis to create syntax blocks. (Square brackets for array indexing and parentheses for expressions, but that’s it.)

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LPL-2

19 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Stories

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Tags

computer language, language design, little programming language, LPL, orthogonality, programming language, syntax

The language I showed you last time, in LPL-3, was a fairly reasonable one. This time I’m showing you a preposterous one no one would actually use. Worse, it turns out to be something of a failure due to weird holes left by the design goal of orthogonal single-syntax construction.

But that oddness helps us focus on what a programming language actually is, so it’s worth a peek. And maybe it’ll give you a laugh.

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LPL-3

12 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Stories

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Tags

computer language, language design, Lisp, little programming language, LPL, programming language, syntax

I’ll pick up with the language I began describing last time in a future post. Right now I want to pick up the thread of Little Programming Languages (LPLs) and use several examples to illustrate what underlies a programming language. (And as it turns out, these are “little” only in a certain sense.)

This first example, LPL-3, is Lisp-like and, because of that, is fairly orthogonal. Even better, it’s probably actually usable, although — like Lisp — it doesn’t have the cleanest syntax (languages like Python have really spoiled me).

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Little Programming Languages

06 Tuesday Oct 2015

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Python, Stories

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Tags

computer language, language design, Lisp, little programming language, LPL, programming language, syntax

One characteristic of the hard-core coder is a love of computer languages, programming languages in particular. Programmers of that ilk — of my ilk — collect new languages like merit badges. (I get a kick out of saying that I’ve programmed “from Ada to the Z-80!”)

The especially far gone of us also enjoy creating new languages (or in some cases, new dialects of XML). Lately I’ve been playing with a language design that follows a favorite theme: the single-syntax construction language.

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Rule #4: Comment As You Go!

05 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in CS101

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

computer code, computer programmers, computer programming, programming language, real programmers, software development

There is a common tendency, as we crank out code, to think that we’ll come back later and write some really good comments — comments that future reviewers will view with admiration for their clarity, completeness, and humor. But if we’re honest we have to admit: Later never comes. We never go back and write those great comments. Often, we don’t write any comments at all other than some placeholder we might dash off at the time.

Which is why Rule #4: Comment as You Go!

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Bits, Bytes, & Chuncs

22 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun

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Tags

1990, 24th century, chunc, dchunc, Exabyte, future computers, Gigabyte, Megabyte, Petabyte, qchunc, Star Trek, Terabyte, USENET

What follows is the text of a piece I wrote back May of 1990 in a Star Trek USENET group. There is some minor editing for clarity. Given that 64 bits seems common now, the projections may need some adjustment!

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My Ideal System v.1

27 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun, Opinion

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Tags

F/S, file system, O/S, operating system, XML

I got into software in the late 1970s, so my first couple of decades involved lots of low-level systems and designs. My world had a lot of assembly code, interrupt handlers, and driver routines. I can’t say I miss living in that realm, but it’s still fun to revisit sometimes.

A rare place that still happens is when I get to thinking about how I might design an operating system should I ever chose to (these days a dubious and foolish choice, at best).

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Search & Replace Trick

16 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in CS101

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Tags

input string, output string, search-replace, thoughts

I just thought of a way to avoid recursion or unintended replacement when doing a search & replace routine over a set of strings (or even one big string).

I thought I’d write it down here in case I ever want to come back to it. (Also as a potential point of conversation.)

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HTML is not a programming language!

22 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in CS101

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

computer code, computer language, computer languages, CSS, data, data type, HTML, Java, JavaScript, programming language, variables

A webpage is a text document written in HTML. This document may also contain CSS and/or JavaScript, but it’s basically an HTML text document. You could write one — including the CSS and JavaScript — using just a pencil and paper.

Despite not needing a computer to write, all three are computer languages — they are languages used by, understood by, computers (and trained humans). However only one of those (JavaScript) is a programming language.

This is a brief explanation of which is which and why.

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I Have a Spelling Checker

27 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun

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Tags

Friday, funny poetry, humor, poetry, spell check

These days it seems like spell checkers exist in almost everything. Word processing software has had them a long time, although in the early days you had to invoke the spell check function. These days software  handily underlines misspelled words in real-time (with sometimes an advanced function we can invoke).

It always struck me as pretty lame how people (well, let’s be honest: managers) would present PowerPoint documents in important meetings with the red jagged “you misspelled this” underline sprinkled throughout their document.  What exactly did they think that meant?

But enough about managers. It’s Friday and time for some fun, so here’s an old, old poem about spelling checkers…

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Wyrd Smythe

Wyrd Smythe

The canonical fool on the hill watching the sunset and the rotation of the planet and thinking what he imagines are large thoughts.

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