Comments for Steve Cooper

Comment on A lisp macro virgin tells all by Steve

Steve — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:35:48 +0000

jeff: --

I don't think so in all cases, but it certainly works for some.

Also, it's just prettier to write

(domanytimes (x 10 y 10)
  (print (* x y))

than it is to write

(domanytimes (x 10 y 10) (lambda (a b) (print (* a b))))

Comment on A lisp macro virgin tells all by jeff

jeff — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:03:38 +0000

can’t u just do the same thing with a function that takes a closure as an arg. You would have the loop in this function call the closure.

Comment on A lisp macro virgin tells all by Steve

Steve — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:53:34 +0000

timbo: --

I actually meant it this way round, since this is the form you'd see in an SQL statement. Inside a macro, you can rewrite the list

'(DUEDATE > TODAY)

into your second form, within the body of the macro. SQL programmers don't get as thrown.

Comment on A lisp macro virgin tells all by Timbo

Timbo — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:03:58 +0000

(....(DUEDATE > TODAY))

???

(....(> DUEDATE TODAY))

Excellent work, otherwise.

Comment on A lisp macro virgin tells all by Steve

Steve — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:24:31 +0000

@Foo:

Thanks for taking the time to code this, Foo. I appreciate it.

Comment on A lisp macro virgin tells all by Foo

Foo — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:05:52 +0000

Try this one, which is more in the spirit of dotimes. If there are zero loop-list items, it runs the body once and returns nil. Else it works like yours except if there's an extra single expression at the end of the loop-list it evaluates and returns it afterwards; else it returns nil.

(defmacro domanytimes (loop-list &rest body)
  (if (oddp (length loop-list))
      `(progn (domanytimes ,(butlast loop-list 1) ,@body)
          ,(first (last loop-list)))
      (if loop-list
      `(dotimes ,(subseq loop-list 0 2)
         (domanytimes ,(rest (rest loop-list)) ,@body))
      `(progn ,@body))))

Comment on Modifying large codebases in dynamic and static languages by Steve

Steve — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:18:51 +0000

@jay

Thanks for the reply, Jay. I think I'm becoming convinced of your position. When I can next justify a decently-sized hobby project, I'll try to do it in a dynamic language with lots of tests. I'll probably do it in python.

I suppose the key will be to make sure there's 100% code coverage and enough permutations to be confident of the code. How do you make sure your tests are getting enough coverage?

Comment on Modifying large codebases in dynamic and static languages by jay

jay — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:00:00 +0000

i understand, but in 3 years of full time usage of ruby, it’s never happened to me. Even if it happened it would be caught automatically on the staging box where I’d get an email as soon as the first exception is thrown. Also, if you do comprehensive testing it will include testing with a framework like selenium which would also catch it.

Comment on A lisp macro virgin tells all by Steve

Steve — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:19:58 +0000

@bob

Thanks, Bob!

I haven’t got to destructuring-bind yet…

Comment on A lisp macro virgin tells all by Bob Bane

Bob Bane — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:09:56 +0000

Your macro would be slightly prettier (and a little more Lisp-idiomatic) like this:

(defmacro domanytimes (loop-list &body body) (if (null loop-list)

(progn ,@body)
      (destructuring-bind
         (fst rst . tail) loop-list

(dotimes (,fst , rst) (domanytimes ,tail ,@body)))))

Untested, and I hope I got the markup right...