An AWK Hammer

31 Saturday Oct 2015

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In the Unix world you sometimes hear someone mention an “AWK hammer” or an “AWK nail” — usually in reference to an unexpected, possibly suspect, way of using some tool. In that history repeats itself, in the corporate world, one might have (but never did) hear reference to a “Lotus 1-2-3 hammer.”

The implication is that someone has fallen in love with a particular tool and is using it everywhere. In particular it applies to a situation where using that beloved tool may not have been the ideal choice.

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LPL-1

23 Friday Oct 2015

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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My Ideal System v.1

27 Saturday Jun 2015

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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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HTML is not a programming language!

22 Monday Dec 2014

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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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