tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-122047592011-08-21T07:01:39.939-06:00Can you hear it?the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.comBlogger171100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-72635885298764211822008-10-29T00:17:00.003-06:002008-10-29T00:33:49.433-06:00

Bwah ha ha, see what I did there in the topic? It's a programming-language-nerd pun.This blog thing deserves some followup. I have abandoned the Noodle effort. It was a terrifically fun project, and I learned a lot about Python internals and about languages in general that I'm not sure I would have been able to learn otherwise. It's just not something that I see going anywhere useful. There are

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1147477357316024902006-05-12T17:16:00.000-06:002006-05-12T17:42:53.996-06:00

I gave a presentation on the work I've done on Noodle at last night's Utah Python User's Group meeting. I made an alpha release of Noodle available to complement that presentation. You can find both a tarball and the slides (OpenOffice format) at xillion.org. The slides are in PDF format on UPyUG's site here.The conclusion I made in the presentation was that designing a language is far harder

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1141416489441515042006-03-03T12:42:00.000-07:002006-03-03T14:13:34.476-07:00

So yeah, almost an entire year after Noodle was "almost ready to be released", it's.. well, it's almost ready to be released. I haven't had as much chance to work on it as I'd like (and am unlikely to have, as long as I require income), but it has continued to get better and I still quite like working on it and in it (a good sign).LNoodle vs. PyNoodlePython plus the benefits of Lisp is great, but

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1129659627689091752005-10-18T11:26:00.000-06:002005-10-18T13:03:24.700-06:00

Okay, Jonathan linked here so I feel obligated to actually say something more useful here. I have neglected my webloggage duties.I've been rewriting the Noodle reader in Python instead of the lex/yacc combo, so that I can build macro characters into it. It's more straightforward to read normal Lisp with a recursive one-item-at-a-time read.The syntactic sugar added for Pythonicness makes things

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1121383693782424932005-07-14T17:23:00.000-06:002005-07-14T17:28:13.786-06:00

Still doing some work on Noodle, in between other stuff, and it is slowly getting closer to a release. I'm not going to make myself write all the possible unit tests beforehand, and the docs will be minimal at release, so I've made the goals a bit easier to reach. Possibly others will help with the tests and docs and so on once it's released. Not that I'm depending on that--I'll still do it

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1118112192962798782005-06-06T20:25:00.000-06:002005-06-06T20:43:12.966-06:00

I've been spending a bit of time on another marriage of Python and Lisp- embedding Python in sbcl, along with convenience functions for creating Python objects, accessing them, and so on. My friend Travis Hartwell started this by embedding Python using UFFI- enough to allow execution of a string of Python code- in only a few lines of Lisp. I was impressed and jumped in to help add stuff.It's too

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1117574645396885622005-05-31T14:21:00.000-06:002005-05-31T15:24:51.496-06:00

For the few people who already know about Noodle and are waiting for the release: It doesn't look like I'll make the expected June 1st date. But over the holiday weekend (and in the course of a road trip to see in-laws in Sacramento) I was able to get a lot of good work done on Noodle.There were some elusive problems caused by assumptions made by Python bytecodes. See, in Python, the stack is

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1116738916785552352005-05-21T23:01:00.000-06:002005-06-13T16:52:16.266-06:00

I have now had the opportunity to peruse the online pages of Peter Seibel's excellent work, Practical Common Lisp. I'm not quite finished yet, but it's been absolutely perfect for filling in the gaps in my knowledge recently lamented. I recommend it as strongly as I am able to anyone wanting to learn more about Lisp- and I'm not usually one to enjoy or recommend books on technical topics. I may

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1115852444327878782005-05-17T18:15:00.000-06:002005-05-17T18:16:06.716-06:00

PEP (Python Enhancement Proposal) 340 suggests adding a new block construct to the Python language which would "provide a mechanism for encapsulating patterns of structure". I don't understand the details of the whole proposal just yet, but it looks like the point is making it simpler to execute a blocks of code between other steps, without having to put all the other steps into the code

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1115835065499473382005-05-11T14:55:00.000-06:002005-05-11T14:57:50.176-06:00

The list of items to be completed in Noodle before the public alpha release (at 0.1.0) is continuing to dwindle. Some of the bigger items currently there include:Sufficient documentation for easy learning and usage of NoodleLarger suite of acceptance testsRewrite parser (and possibly scanner as well) to be in C, using bison or PyBison. Bison is much more powerful, faster, etc., makes it simpler

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1115399341439483002005-05-06T11:04:00.000-06:002005-05-06T11:09:01.446-06:00

I found the Python Challenge a couple days ago and haven't been able to do any work on Noodle as a result. The puzzles are much too engaging! Hard, too. I've just started on #16, and I don't know how many more there are, but hopefully I run out soon, because when the problems are right there waiting to be solved, I can't ignore them!I have a suspicion it was put up by Perl enthusiasts (or maybe

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1115052149499939972005-05-02T10:35:00.000-06:002005-05-02T10:42:29.500-06:00

I met with Novell's Open Source Review Board to make sure the Noodle code was in the clear. The process may not have been completely necessary, but I wanted to be safe down the road, just in case. Most likely simply paranoia.So Noodle is now approved for release. The existing code will have a "Copyright (C) 2005 by Novell, Inc." added but I've got it under the MIT license, so that doesn't bother

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1115051533159290412005-05-02T10:12:00.000-06:002005-05-02T10:32:13.160-06:00

Noodle can now do limited tail call optimization. Only the tail recursion case is optimized in this way. That is, when a function calls itself and immediately returns the result of that call, Noodle can transform the bytecode so that the new function call doesn't take up any extra stack space. The initial function's stack space is no longer needed, once the arguments to the function call are

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1114885371084298522005-04-30T11:55:00.000-06:002005-04-30T13:01:54.866-06:00

Precedence? For a language with a Lispish syntax? I'm kidding, right?Nope. In addition to some syntactic-sugar shortcut notations like the backtick (`), common in Lisps, Noodle has two trailers: attribute access, via dot (.), and subscription, via brackets ([]). When I wanted to use Lisp on Python those were a couple things that held me back, thinking they would necessarily be inconvenient

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1114708878093956982005-04-28T11:15:00.000-06:002005-04-28T11:21:18.096-06:00

In writing Noodle, I've spent a good deal of time looking around for decent Python-oriented scanner and parser tools/generators. I ended up writing my own scanner (since the needs were not very complex) and using yacc.py standalone from the PLY project.But since that time, my friend Travis Hartwell pointed me to this (discussion on the undocumented and "experimental" sre.Scanner stuff in the

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1114019412220715342005-04-20T11:40:00.000-06:002005-04-20T11:50:12.220-06:00

I recently found myself reading Peter Norvig's essay on Python for Lisp Programmers. It makes a good comparison of Python and Common Lisp, although it's a little out of date. I'm happy to note that Noodle fixes quite a few of the shortcomings of Python as listed there. (Noodle won't be any faster than Python, but fortunately Python's been making some very good progress in that area with recent

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12204759.post-1113607185055763552005-04-19T23:01:00.000-06:002005-04-19T23:01:35.376-06:00

I enjoy programming. My brother taught me BASIC when I was 8 years old, and I've been finding ways to make the computer do what I want ever since. And I've always been looking for a better language; one in which complex ideas and plans can be expressed simply and which provides the best transport between thoughts and bytes.I've been using Python more than anything else for quite a while now, and

the paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04473135091883661753noreply@blogger.com0