tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119168672011-10-25T03:58:39.484-07:00Steve Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13152987443498571745noreply@blogger.comBlogger71100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11916867.post-1118747531614265082005-06-14T04:09:00.000-07:002005-06-14T04:14:18.876-07:00

My little interactive C# interpreter CSI has been coming on nicely. It originally started as a small experiment of about 160 lines; it's now closer to 1200 lines. This happens to all programs, eventually; they take on a life of their own, and suddenly other people want to use them.The Code Project article gives an overview, but what I wanted to discuss here are some of the cool things that can be

Steve Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13152987443498571745noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11916867.post-1117177874036924822005-05-27T00:07:00.000-07:002005-05-27T00:15:22.670-07:00

I think I've had my Python conversion experience, except with a similar (but distinct) language. The sheer compactness of Boo programs is very seductive. But is shorter always better? At university we got to play with APL, and the game was to print a histogram using one line of code. The results were not easy to read; having to express everything in matrix notation makes some otherwise obvious

Steve Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13152987443498571745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11916867.post-1115111124735206362005-05-02T23:52:00.000-07:002005-05-03T02:13:26.610-07:00

I've always enjoyed learning new programming languages, espcially those that force a fresh look at things. Boo is a fresh new language by Rodrigo de Oliveira (continuing a Brazillian tradition which marries Python-like syntax with .NET. If Boo did not exist, I would probably have needed to invent it, since I had started to ask similar questions, asking why we needed so many braces, why couldn't

Steve Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13152987443498571745noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11916867.post-1113895932920575992005-04-19T00:28:00.000-07:002005-04-19T00:40:55.923-07:00

A good programmer's editor is an essential tool. It's amazing what people have done just using Notepad, and sometimes that's all you need (use a good replacement for a superior driving experience). To do serious work, you need a text editor which understands how code works.Programmers have strong opinions about editors, which is actually not too suprising considering that it's basically where

Steve Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13152987443498571745noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11916867.post-1112787116197736862005-04-06T04:30:00.000-07:002005-04-06T04:33:39.903-07:00

The best way to understand C++'s strengths and weaknesses is to look at four major design principles, which I've called the Four Non-Negotiables because they are essential to what C++ has become and will not be compromised.Non-Negotiable #1: C CompatibilityBjarne Stroustrup is quite happy with C programmers using C++ as 'a better C', and in fact a lot of modern C comes from C++, like the

Steve Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13152987443498571745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11916867.post-1112690141911893082005-04-05T01:31:00.000-07:002005-04-05T06:14:11.420-07:00

Occaisionally it makes sense to borrow a style from somehwere else. For example, I come from a C++ background and would be comfortable with this way of reading items from standard input: CInStream cin = new CInStream(Console.In); double x,y,z; cin >> out x >> out y >> out z;There must be an 'out', because C# requires references to be specially marked, but otherwise it looks rather like the

Steve Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13152987443498571745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11916867.post-1112615904453406832005-04-04T04:54:00.000-07:002005-04-04T05:13:19.803-07:00

This may seem like an elementary topic in .NET programming,but it's not as obvious as it seems at first. It is ofcourse easy to read in lines from a text file:TextReader rdr = File.OpenText(file);string line;while ((line = rdr.ReadLine()) != null) Console.WriteLine(line);}rdr.Close();Getting numbers from these lines is the part that isn'tobvious; TextReader provides us with no help here. We

Steve Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13152987443498571745noreply@blogger.com3