Ruby: Whitespace significant?

Many people claim that they do not like Python because of the significance of whitespace. Well, whitespace is also significant in Ruby. E.g.

>> def say
>>  puts 'hi'
>> end
=> nil
>> say
hi
=> nil
>> def say puts 'hi' end
SyntaxError: (irb):5: syntax error, unexpected tSTRING_BEG, expecting ';' or '\n'
def say puts 'hi' end
              ^
(irb):5: syntax error, unexpected keyword_end, expecting $end
        from /Users/cdunn2001/bin/irb:12:in `
'
>> def say; puts 'hi'; end
=> nil
>> say
hi
=> nil

See? The newline is a substitute for the semicolon, not equivalent to a space or tab. This is not pedantry. To me, the main value of whitespace-independence is that you can insert the code into something else -- e.g. an HTML template -- without breaking it.

I wouldn't mind if I could use curly brackets instead of 'end', but that works only for blocks, not function definitions. So I wish that Ruby fans would quit bragging that their language is whitespace-independent. There are such languages, e.g. Perl, where whitespace merely delimits tokens and can be removed completed by relying on parentheses and other delimiters. Ruby is not one of them.

I do understand the objection to Python's syntax. It's not the enforced indentation; it's the lack of an 'end' delimiter. The result is that copy-and-paste operations can introduce mistakes. I get that.

I'm just sayin' ...

StartupWeekend - We won! (Judge's prize)

My team won the judge's prize at StartupWeekend Seattle, Nov. 14 2010. It's more than just a software event, but software was a large part of it. Here is a good summary of our experience, from one of our team members. Including the votes from other teams, we came in 2nd overall. I guess that's like winning the coaches' poll but losing the BCS.

Git: Why?

Here is a funny and informative blog on problems with git, and why the benefits outweigh them. I liked this part the best:

... by far the best justification I’ve ever seen for git rebase (or git lie, as I prefer to call it).

Anyway, the comments are where the real information can be found.

Lots of ideas on NULL

There was quite a discussion on this at StackOverflow. The arguments are often language-specific, but basically folks like a Null option as long as it's part of the type system.

Objective-C: Slow?

Here is an interesting discussion of speed problems in Objective-C. I guess the bottom line is that it's generally only a little slow, not too bad, but some standard libraries are terrible. I assume that applies to iPhone apps.

C#: Async on the way!

Easy asynchronous communication, coming in C# 5:

I am pleased to announce that there will be a C# 5.0 (*), and that in C# 5.0 you’ll be able to take this synchronous code:

void ArchiveDocuments(List urls)
{
  for(int i = 0; i < urls.Count; ++i)
    Archive(Fetch(urls[i]));
}

and, given reasonable implementations of the FetchAsync and ArchiveAsync methods, transform it into this code to achieve the goal of sharing wait times as described yesterday:

async void ArchiveDocuments(List urls)
{
  Task archive = null;
  for(int i = 0; i < urls.Count; ++i)
  {
    var document = await FetchAsync(urls[i]);
    if (archive != null)
      await archive;
    archive = ArchiveAsync(document);
  }
}

Where is the state machine code, the lambdas, the continuations, the checks to see if the task is already complete? They’re all still there. Let the compiler generate all that stuff for you

Haskell/Python: Calling Python from Haskell

Interesting. I don't know what else to say. Embedding Python into Haskell? I can't imagine this is useful, but maybe for someone.