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Only fast languages are interesting
If this isn’t a Zawinski quote, it should be. I have avoided the JVM my entire life. I am presently confronted with problems which fit in the JVM; JVM libraries, concurrency, giant data: all …
Yammer moving from Scala to Java
Following up on my recent Scala posts , some commented that because I haven't used Scala seriously, my opinion is of little value. I respo...
The Clojure Community and Me
This website is for sale! raynes.me is your first and best source for information about raynes. Here you will also find topics relating to issues of general interest. We hope you find what you are looking for!
LLVM 3.0 Type System Rewrite
One of the most pervasive IR (and thus compiler API) changes in LLVM 3.0 was a complete reimplementation of the LLVM IR type system. This change was long overdue (the original type system lasted from LLVM 1.
Xmonad 0.10 was released
This page is for keeping a record of significant changes in darcs xmonad and xmonad-contrib since the 0.9 releases. See darcs changes in the source repositories for the patches and more details covering documentation and bug fixes not noted here. Xmonad 0.9 was released on 26 October 2009, and Xmonad 0.10 on 18…
Scala Feels like EJB 2
At Devoxx last week I used the phrase "Scala feels like EJB 2 to me". What was on my mind? Scala For a number of years on this blog I'v...
PyPy 1.7 released: widening the sweet spot
We're pleased to announce the 1.7 release of PyPy. As became a habit, this release brings a lot of bugfixes and performance improvements ove...
Clojure & Python, Side by Side
Function order has been rearranged here and there to appease Clojure's single-pass compiler.
Strange line of Python
Hi 👋 you're reading a pretty old post! I started writing on here back in high school and this page may not reflect my current views. Recommend checking out related articles and categories down below, I've likely published more recent thoughts on this topic.
How to read Haskell like Python
Have you ever been in the situation where you need to quickly understand what a piece of code in some unfamiliar language does? If the language looks a lot like what you’re comfortable with, you can usually guess what large amounts of the code does; even if you may not be completely familiar how all the language…
Beyond Exception Handling: Conditions and Restarts
One of Lisp's great features is its condition system. It serves a similar purpose to the exception handling systems in Java, Python, and C++ but is more flexible. In fact, its flexibility extends beyond error handling--conditions are more general than exceptions in that a condition can represent any occurrence during…
The Go Programming Language turns two
Happy 2nd birthday, Go!
Why Lisp Will Never Win (2003)
For 2003 OSCON I proposed to give nine five-minute talks in a 45-minute slot. To avoid confusing this with the real lightning talks sessions, Nat decided to call my talk ``Nine Views of Mark Jason Dominus''. At first I didn't like that title, which sounded too much like self-promotion. But I warmed up to it after a…
In the Shadow of John McCarthy
John McCarthy was a genius of the highest order. Much is known about his contribution to Lisp as its inventor, but he was also the mind behind much of early AI research, the progenitor of much of computer chess, and the initiator of time-sharing. As a Lisp advocate I have many thanks due to John McCarthy and it…
Ruby is beautiful (but I'm moving to Python)
I'm a Product Manager at Google. I use data and UX to drive great products. And it turns out—the toughest problems are won in translation.
Elements of Modern C++ Style
“C++11 feels like a new language.” – Bjarne Stroustrup The C++11 standard offers many useful new features. This page focuses specifically and only on those features that make C++11 really feel like…
Perl tutorials suck (and cause serious damage)
Before reading this entry, please note that this problem has been solved. You can now find fresh tutorials at the:
A Python Optimization Anecdote
Dash knows your context, your team, and your work, so your team can stay organized, easily find and share knowledge, and keep projects secure, all from one place.
Perl is no more accurate than randomly-generated language
IEEE Software is publishing a short retrospective on this project in 2024. A preprint is available on the magazine's site , or you can download a PDF directly.
The Roots of Lisp
(I wrote this article to help myself understand exactly what McCarthy discovered. You don't need to know this stuff to program in Lisp, but it should be helpful to anyone who wants to understand the essence of Lisp � both in the sense of its origins and its semantic core. The fact that it has such a core is one of…
Code Like a Pythonista: Idiomatic Python
The home of pythonistas