April 2006 Entries
I've been teaching myself Ruby and I'm pretty impressed with it - particularly its metaprogramming capabilities and implementation of code blocks. However, I'm not so happy with some of its scoping rules. I also would like to see a formal grammar and specification rather than the current definition by implementation route. Here are some pointers if you want to give the language a shot:
install InstantRails from RubyForge
order a copy of Programming Ruby (Thomas, Fowler, Hunt)
lookup Ruby on Wikipedia for various links and get a flavour of the language
check out the Ruby Home Page
current Ruby documentation is at Ruby Docs
explore the Ruby...
Excellent article (as usual) by Martin Fowler on Language Workbenches as the killer app for Domain Specific Languages.
Things to do:
take a look at the MetaCase Tools.
revisit Ruby and using it for embedded DSL's
products from JetBrains - esp. their Meta Programming System
I was previously running .TEXT .95 but the source code had been dead and rotting for a while. Thankfully, Phil Haack forked the code and got it moving again in the guise of the Subtext Project. The first public release came out last month.
It's looking good. Had no problems compiling the source myself and ran the migration on the live database. Sweet. Looking forward to the better spam control and new features trickling out. Now I have to tweak some skins the way I want them.
If you're still on .TEXT, it's time to move.