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Programming

Which Compiler to Extend for a Small Project? 89

Posted by Cliff from the ground-floor-of-computer-language-construction dept.
Andreas(R) asks: "While planning the design of my small programming language, and would appreciate some lessons learned from experienced programmers which have already tried this. I was investigating whether to start from an existing compiler and extend it. The compiler will be based on yacc, or bison. The programming language will be interpreted, object oriented and have higher order programming. Perl 1 seems like a decent starting point, as it's yacc based, and 5000 lines of code. Later versions of Perl are too large to get a good understanding of the whole program in a short period of time. Perl also has the right license (GPL). Is Python out of the question for such a project, since it's not GPL? What other small languages can be used instead? How do I go about designing a small programming language in practice, using what I already know about compiler theory?"
Programming

Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide 231

Posted by timothy from the who-could-hang-a-name-on-you dept.
James Edward Gray II writes " Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide (Second Edition), known as the Pickaxe II to its fans, is an extremely current view of the Ruby programming language. Revised primarily by Dave Thomas, a founding father of the English Ruby community, Programming Ruby is distilled expertise from a reliable source. In the past, quality English documentation of Ruby has been in short supply, but if any one volume could solve that problem, this is it." Read on for the rest of Gray's review.
GUI

Rob Pike Responds 284

Posted by Roblimo from the straight-talk-express dept.
He starts by clearing up my error in saying he was a Unix co-creator in the original Call For Questions. From there he goes on to answer your questions both completely and lucidly. A refreshing change from the politicians and executives we've talked to so much recently, no doubt about it.
Books

Foundations of Python Network Programming 144

Posted by timothy from the connecting-stuff dept.
Sarusa writes "This may be the easiest book review I've ever written. If you program in Python and you want to write Internet applications, go buy Foundations of Python Network Programming by John Goerzen. There. What, you wanted more? Well, okay, but then I'm back to playing Katamari Damacy." Read on for the rest of Sarusa's review.
Perl

Parrot 0.1.1 'Poicephalus' Released 224

Posted by timothy from the link-fever dept.
Pan T. Hose writes "The long awaited release of Parrot 0.1.1 "Poicephalus" has been finally announced on perl.perl6.internals newsgroup and perl6-internals mailing list simultaneously by Leopold Toetsch followed by an announcement on use Perl by Will Coleda and now also on Slashdot." (Read on for a list of changes since the last release, as well as a number of useful links.)
Java

Java 1.5 vs C# 790

Posted by Hemos from the battle-rages-on dept.
SexyFingers writes "Sun released Java 1.5. The non-API stuff that they've added made it finally "catch-up" with C# - since both languages are built to support OOP from the ground-up, their constructs become almost identical as additional OOP "features" are supported. So if you're doing C# and your foundations in OOP are rock-solid, there really isn't any difference whether you're coding C# or Java."
Media

MPAA Sends Linux Australia Dubious Takedown Notice 520

Posted by timothy from the takedown-is-two-points dept.
L1TH10N writes "News.com has a story on how the MPAA sent a takedown notice to Linux Australia for the movies 'Twisted' and "Grind.' What was actually hosted with Linux Australia is Twisted (being a Python framework) and Valgrind (being a tool for finding memory management problems in programs). An interesting question that the article raises is whether automatic takedown notices based on blind keyword searches constitutes spam."
Sci-Fi

The System of the World 140

Posted by timothy from the advance-word-of-past-events dept.
maximino (Shawn Stewart) writes "Due to a shipping error at Amazon.com, I received my copy of this book early. I like everything Stephenson has written, but this one, although well written, just leaves me cold. Anyone who is contemplating reading this book has either already read Quicksilver and The Confusion, or is entering a world of confusion and pain. The System of the World holds up all right under its own substantial weight, but is simply incapable of shoring up the whole trilogy. I think it reads better than the first book, but cannot stand up to the second for sheer manic joy. As far as the whole work, I find it disappointing at the last." Read on for the rest of Stewart's review.
Graphics

Irrlicht - Fast Realtime 3D Engine 221

Posted by michael from the do-it-yourself dept.
Surye writes "Though a few days late on the release, Irrlicht has released version 0.7 of its engine. The site describes it as 'an open source high performance realtime 3D engine written in C++. It is completely cross-platform, using D3D, OpenGL and its own software renderer, and has all of the state-of-the-art features which can be found in commercial 3d engines.' Bindings for java, perl, ruby, and python, and it is platform independent (only implemented currently on Windows and Linux, but when it moves to other platforms, the code will be completely portable). The feature list is simply amazing, and since it's still being quite actively developed, I can see this becoming a major player soon."
Books

Dive Into Python 309

Posted by timothy from the sploosh dept.
AccordionGuy writes "If you've ever spent an afternoon in the "Computers" section of a bookstore going through the programming language books, you've probably noticed that most of them seem to exist only to boost a publishing company's fortunes by capitalizing on the hot new programming language of the moment. These books -- essentially glorified bookends -- seem to follow the same format, cover the same subjects and aside from the tiny flourishes that are part of each author's particular writing style, are indistinguishable from each other. Reading them, one gets the feeling that its primary purpose is to allow the author to make some payments on a car or mortgage. I have a few of these books and they're gathering dust on the bookshelf farthest away from my desk." For deVilla's review of Dive Into Python, a book that inhabits a completely different category, read on below.
Ximian

Mono's Cocoa# Underway, GTK# Takes on Windows.Forms 378

Posted by CowboyNeal from the portability-now dept.
Gentu writes "OSNews posted some exclusive screenshots of a new project in the Mono community: Cocoa#. Apparently there are a couple of Apple engineers helping out the project that allows developers to create graphical Cocoa applications under Mac OS X using the C#, Python or Basic language. Mono seems to be doing well in the Windows land too, allowing developers to use GTK# instead of Windows.Forms to create multi-platform apps."
Programming

The Python Paradox, by Paul Graham 726

Posted by CmdrTaco from the something-to-read dept.
GnuVince writes "Paul Graham has posted a new article to his website that he called "The Python Paradox" which refines the statements he made in "Great Hackers" about Python programmers being better hackers than Java programmers. He basically says that since Python is not the kind of language that lands you a job like Java, those who learn it seek more than simply financial benefits, they seek better tools. Very interesting read."
Perl

Parrots, Pythons And Things That Go Splat 43

Posted by timothy from the stage-condom-is-a-slippery-meme dept.
ajs writes "As you may know, there was a contest between Dan Sugalski and Guido van Rossum over the performance of Parrot running Python byte-code, and the loser was to take a pie in the face. Well, in the end it was between Dan and time and Dan lost... he was unable to get the Python bytecode translator to work sufficiently well for the contest (it was fast, but not complete), but when Dan conceded, Guido was gracious enough to decline to throw a pie, what a sport! The Perl community, however, was not quite so gracious (they wanted to see Dan take a pie for the team), and the final event ended up being a benefit for the Perl Foundation. Meanwhile, see Dan's Blog for details on what sorts of Parrot goodness came of this."
Programming

IronPython-0.6 For .NET/Mono Debuts 28

Posted by simoniker from the trouser-python dept.
Sunspire writes "IronPython, a Python implementation for the .NET and Mono platforms, has just released its latest version, IronPython-0.6. Touted features include speed, with IronPython being supposedly faster than the native C version of Python, and CLR integration giving full access to the .NET and Mono libraries while still being fully dynamic like regular Python. Is Python, Mono and GTK# the new killer combo for rapid Linux desktop application development?" We previously covered IronPython back in May.
Programming

Komodo 3.0 Released 54

Posted by michael from the tools-of-the-trade dept.
darthcamaro writes "Looks like Komodo 3.0 has been released according to this article on InternetNews.com: If you use Perl, Python, Tcl, PHP and XLST in any combination than you've probably heard of Komodo and if you haven't you should have - it's the only IDE that I know of that handles all of those languages (in one real slick environment too)...and it looks like version 3.0 has also got an updated object browser and a new debugger that I'm looking forward to trying out."
Music

Monty Python's Spamalot Musical Gets Cast 132

Posted by simoniker from the pram-pushing dept.
Frisky070802 writes "Slashdot reported last fall that a musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail was in the works for Broadway. A new CNN article talks about the latest news, including casting (Hank Azaria and Tim Curry, as well as David Hyde Pierce of Frasier fame as Sir Robin!) and scheduling. And, oh yeah, it was Spamalot after all.... not Spamelot as the last Slashdot article claimed. Watch for previews late this year and Broadway next spring."
PHP

Advanced PHP Programming 189

Posted by timothy from the high-praise dept.
sympleko (Matthew Leingang) writes "PHP5 has hit its third release candidate, so get used to the idea of using it. George Schlossnagle has written a great book on PHP programming which ought to generate some enthusiasm. But it's not just about PHP5: the book includes great information on everything from coding style to high-level problem-solving. I met George through a friend of mine who works for the Developers Library, and I'm glad to have finally gotten a look at his book." Read on for Leingang's review of Advanced PHP Programming: A practical guide to developing large-scale Web sites and applications to PHP5.
Movies

Win a Part in the Hitchhiker's Guide 390

Posted by CmdrTaco from the sign-me-up dept.
jweatherley writes "The BBC are offering someone the chance to win a part in the forthcoming Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. You just have to send them a picture of somewhere on Earth that deserves to be spared from the Vogons by 25 June - oh and be British!" Python impressions don't count ;)

Searching for the Best Scripting Language 673

Posted by michael from the less-filling!-tastes-great! dept.
prostoalex writes "Folks at the Scriptometer conducted a practical survey of which scripting language is the best. While question like that is bound to generate flamewars between the usual Perl vs PHP, Python vs Perl, VBScript vs everything crowds, the Scriptometer survey is practical: if I have to write a script, I have to write it fast, it has to be small (less typing), it should allow me to either debug itself via a debugger or just verbose output mode. sh, Perl and Ruby won the competition, and with the difference of 1-2 points they were essentially tied for first place. Smalltalk, tcc, C# and Java are the last ones, with Java being completely unusable in scripting environment (part of that could be the fact that neither Java nor C# are scripting languages). See the 'Hello world' examples and the smallest code examples. Interesting that ICFP contests lately pronounced OCaml as the winner for rapid development."

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