I've just had a "discussion" with a developer about naming classes in C#. My final throw away line was, "Let's not put any emoticons in our class names." I can't think of a way you could put emoticons in C# class names, but I haven't thought too hard about it. Is this possible? Does any programming language allow it? What would be the...
http://code.google.com/p/noop/ Noop (pronounced noh-awp, like the machine instruction) is a new language that attempts to blend the best lessons of languages old and new, while syntactically encouraging industry best-practices and discouraging the worst offenses. Noop is initially targeted to run on the Java Virtual Machine. What's...
I know that NULL isn't necessary in a programming language, and I recently made the decision not to include NULL in my programming language. Declaration is done by initialization, so it is impossible to have an uninitialized variable. My hope is that this will eliminate the NullPointerException in favor of more meaningful exceptions or...
My college is going to start soon, but I want to do something in the remaining weeks :) I've taken a course last semester about programming languages and I want to bring my knowledge into reality. What simple, elegant language can a junior programmer implement an interpreter for? I don't mind if the language is very small or experimen...
How do you emulate Python style generators in your favorite language? I found this one in Scheme. It must be interesting to see other implementations, especially in those languages that don't have first-class continuations. ...
When it comes to online or desktop presentation we've options like actionscript, java, picolo, flare, prefuse. Now choosing a perfect language for needs is subjective and depends on project. But if you've to choose Processing (language), then on what basis you'll choose? what are the pro's and con's of processing in your opinion? ...
I refer you to the following video, which describes how to implement Conway's Game of Life in APL, using a few dozen keystrokes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4 This video was featured prominently in the Return of Uncle Bob Martin podcast, in which Scott Hanselman complains that "his hands hurt" from programming in languages...
I'd like to protect the PHP and JavaScript program source code from the prying eyes of my client. How can I do that? ...
I'm putting together some brief pages on programming and programming languages for a corporate wiki. We are not a software or IT company, but we have many technical employees (engineers, geoscientists...). I'd like to implement a brief example program (think no more than 5x the complexity of "Hello World", if that's a measurable metri...
It is well known that different people have different aptitudes regarding various programming paradigms (e.g. some people have trouble learning non-procedural, especially functional languages. Some people have trouble understanding pointers - see Joel Spolsky's blog for musings on that. Some people have trouble grasping recursion). I wa...
I know that Algol language is super-uber-extremely important as a theoretical language, and it also had a variety of implementations as per Wikipedia. However, what's unclear is, was Algol (pure Algol, not any of its derivatives like Simula) ever actually used for any "real" programming in any way? By "real", I mean used for several ...
What are some examples of a dynamically scoped language? And what are the reasons for choosing that design? Is it because it is easy to implement? ...
how to add a member variable/attribute to a structure from main in C? ...
I'm guessing many of you have thought about writing your own programming language...I know I have. But once you've hurdled the complexities of implementing it, then you have the much weightier task of actually naming your creation. This question was inspired by Fog Creek's decision to call their compiler Wasabi instead of "Bone Crusher...
Is it legal to call a C compiler written in C or a PHP interpreter written in PHP metacircular? Is this definition valid only for languages of a specific type, like Lisp? In short, what are the conditions that an interpreter should satisfy for being called Metacircular? ...
This may be subjective, I don't know: I have this problem, which I'm kind of equating to the "what language for this project?" question, since I can't seem to solve it. I've been commisioned to write a book about a certain domain (let's say a very specific branch of physics) for a very technically savvy community, but who are not progr...
I'm interested in building a site that has several interactive features for the users, yet want the site to be relatively light and avoid using Java or Flash. The site will start small but will hopefully be scalable. I realize developers tend to prefer a specific language and/or CMS and am wondering if you think a particular language wou...
Like: Employee: Person name: String id: int + employeeCount(): int { --------------- return employeecount } + name():String { return name; } - secret():void { ///private method } ...
I've heard that Perl is the go-to language for string manipulation (and line noise ;). Can someone provide examples and comparisons with other language(s) to show me why? ...
My father would like to use Ubuntu for LPT programming (via a relay card). He is used to QBasic and PowerBasic but willing to learn a new (simple) language for his goals. What recommendations can you give me for this task? Python would be my favourite if the module pyParallel worked. If there are other modules available for Python, let...