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  • Nested contexts in newLISP

    newLisp does not have nested contexts. This is because contexts are not OO-style objects, although they can be used to prototype other contexts. In fact, contexts are name spaces that can be manually created as needed. However, since they create efficient hashes that can be used for many of the same purposes [...]

    Jun 21st, 2007 | Filed under Programming
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  • Validating parameter format

    newLisp is a loosely-typed language. However, if you are developing a library or module that other projects may mix into their own code, it is useful to give helpful errors when a function receives incorrect input. Especially if your documentation is lax (which we know it never is), throwing usable errors when a [...]

    Jun 19th, 2007 | Filed under Programming
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  • Simple error handling in newLISP

    When I first began to program newLisp, I was concerned that it lacked the structured error handling syntax of the imperative languages I was used to. As my software begins to mature and I add more sophisticated error handling, I find that newLisp’s simple functions result in cleaner, more expressive code.

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    Jun 12th, 2007 | Filed under Programming
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  • Avoiding excess redundancy

    There is an interesting article at Irrational Exuberance about anti-objects and reflective design. The author states, “The first – and only – programming paradigm I was taught at college was OO.” Another recent blog post by a college CS tutor laments that object oriented design is the first (and often, the only) abstraction [...]

    Jun 8th, 2007 | Filed under Programming
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  • Evolving lisp

    Paul Graham notes that, “A popular recipe for new programming languages in the past 20 years has been to take the C model of computing and add to it, piecemeal, parts taken from the Lisp model, like runtime typing and garbage collection.” This is what has made Python such a wonderful, elegant, and concise [...]

    Jun 7th, 2007 | Filed under Soap box
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Archive for June, 2007