Fanciful Magic

thanks for sharing...

2012-03-13T09:06:14.506-05:00

thanks for sharing...

Hi Blaine, Hope things are going well. I was sad ...

2011-10-27T09:48:35.988-05:00

Hi Blaine,
Hope things are going well. I was sad when I heard John McCarthy's passing away. I don't know if you read this webpage of his but it's very interesting:
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/

Ram Nukala

My problem with the current HTML/CSS/JavaScript/Ra...

2011-07-19T08:47:53.557-05:00

My problem with the current HTML/CSS/JavaScript/Random-Server-Technology stack is that it is a huge CF and every level/layer requires you to learn a different "language". There aren't any good IDEs (that I have found -- haven't looked recently) that support this stack. Personally, I also find that the JavaScript side starts to become difficult to maintain very quickly.

I still prefer my old frameworks that were all in one language (C++, Smalltalk or Java -- I built a framework for each) where I had Document objects that could contain Table objects and other Component objects, etc. After your document was built, you called a method and it emitted HTML/JavaScript/CSS (well, most of my frameworks were before the CSS craze). It did exactly what I wanted to do, completely supported the MVC pattern, scaled beautifully and I could run a debugger on the whole damn thing if I wanted.

But, from the other comments I see, maybe I've just become an outdated curmudgeon.

2011-06-06T18:09:22.059-05:00

This comment has been removed by the author.

Very cool!!

2011-06-06T18:09:07.255-05:00

Very cool!!

Hi Blaine, I agree; I've been doing (basicall...

2011-06-06T17:18:53.489-05:00

Hi Blaine,

I agree; I've been doing (basically) the same thing lately with GWT client-side handling all UI generation in JavaScript and then REST(-ish) calls to the server for data operations.

I have two caveats/clarifications: one is that I think, client-side, templating is still handy. GWT's UI widgets are very component, which can be nice, but also a PITA to layout (think Swing). They recently added the ability to layout components with HTML-ish templates, which end up being a bunch of DOM.create calls. I've seen a similar approach in other JavaScript libraries too, and it seems much nicer to work in HTML as much as possible.

Second, doing all HTML/UI operations client-side means you end up with a fairly large REST API. While this isn't bad, in my experience, it takes more work than a server-side-only solution that can "cheat" and just slosh out HTML and not worry about providing a nice API. So, for smaller/simpler/Web 1.0-style projects, I think server-side templates can have a (potentially large) productivity win.

This productivity difference probably varies wildly depending on the client-side/server-side technologies and developer abilities/experience. I just know I'm on the wrong side of it right now. :-)

Yes, Ajax has been around a long time, but I think...

2011-06-04T20:11:06.858-05:00

Yes, Ajax has been around a long time, but I think it's only been in the past couple of years were the Javascript engines could handle complex tasks. Now, we have Dojo, jQuery, MooTools, etc that give us the power to write powerfully rich clients. I just thought to myself why would anyone want to deal with templates any more? We have the power to do more.

Hi Blaine, This is the best approach which allows...

2011-06-04T10:47:34.033-05:00

Hi Blaine,
This is the best approach which allows the almost total separation of concerns of the three disparate roles - CSS designer, JavaScript developer and the server side developer. This has been made possible really when Microsoft made XmlHttp available. I have been using it at least since 2002. Good luck with your mobile app.development venture.

- Ram Nukala

Hey! I wrote an entry about a clever coding too. ...

2009-10-18T22:07:18.038-05:00

Hey! I wrote an entry about a clever coding too.

http://squeak.preeminent.org/blog/?p=325

- Steve

This post reminds me of the all-too-true quote by ...

2009-10-17T21:51:30.900-05:00

This post reminds me of the all-too-true quote by Brian Kernighan:

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.

Thanks Kesmit and MikeHoss! To Luca, Where am I c...

2009-10-01T06:14:31.248-05:00

Thanks Kesmit and MikeHoss!

To Luca, Where am I copying deeply? The clone method creates a brand new object and it is not a copy. The parents attribute is the proto attribute you were talking of. The __getattr__ is only called when an attribute is not found and then it searches for it in the parents (and if they are Prototypes, then they will do the same.

How am I copying the entire object? I want to make sure I'm not doing something wrong.

You shouldn't copy objects so deeply. You have...

2009-10-01T03:43:19.889-05:00

You shouldn't copy objects so deeply. You have to make a class-like thing. You create a new object with a proto attribute. Then when an attribute is requested you find it in the local attributes. If it's not found you search in the proto, and so on until the proto is None. Your way you always copy the whole object, and it becomes heavy in memory terms.

Welcome to the world of Python. You will like it h...

2009-09-30T21:48:17.334-05:00

Welcome to the world of Python. You will like it here.

You can actually shorten your constructor down to ...

2009-09-30T09:28:12.713-05:00

You can actually shorten your constructor down to self._parents = list(args).

Glad to hear from another convert.

2009-09-14T22:27:06.653-05:00

Glad to hear from another convert.

Yes. Your point is clear!

2009-09-14T20:21:15.969-05:00

Yes. Your point is clear!

I always use automatic formatting in any language ...

2009-09-14T19:06:11.723-05:00

I always use automatic formatting in any language I use. I thought it was cool that it is unneeded in Python. It's also nice that the formatting is the same from developer to developer, no more taste wars.

The more the language takes away mundane issues (formatting), the more time you have to think about your problem at hand which is the whole point of languages.

I had kind of the same feeling you mention here. A...

2009-09-14T15:23:29.742-05:00

I had kind of the same feeling you mention here. As Smalltalker, at first I didn't like the indentation, but when I have had to start coding python I discovered that it's useful.

But, I must say that anyway I believe Smalltalk is always a step ahead. Why? Because you have prettyprint. You can write your code in a faster way and get it automatically formated in a standard way.

But, also, I think it could be taken forward in this way: Suppose you don't like the prettyprint why of formatting. You can modify the IDE to show you the code prettyprintted in the way you most like, anytime, and save it in the standard formatting for your office standards, for example.

Glad to have you back. That which does not kill yo...

2009-09-13T21:58:03.997-05:00

Glad to have you back. That which does not kill you makes you stronger!

Glad to hear you'll be writing again. I enjoy...

2009-09-13T14:19:55.658-05:00

Glad to hear you'll be writing again. I enjoy you stuff. I'm even more glad that you've survived your trials this year.

Glad to hear you'll be writing again, and that...

2009-09-13T14:19:05.362-05:00

Glad to hear you'll be writing again, and that you've come through the challenges you've faced this year.

awesome! Welcome back man!

2009-09-13T08:44:41.530-05:00

awesome! Welcome back man!

Glad to see you're back.

2009-09-13T08:18:04.029-05:00

Glad to see you're back.

Good luck to you, Blaine. Have you stopped doing ...

2009-09-13T07:41:16.025-05:00

Good luck to you, Blaine. Have you stopped doing Smalltalk development altogether?

I'm with you on hoping classes never become a 'sta...

2009-04-05T03:52:00.000-05:00

I'm with you on hoping classes never become a 'standard' part of Javascript. In fact, Javascript probably should have standardized the __proto__ property and left off 'new', 'instanceof', and the whole constructor charade. These things can be built on top of the prototype model.

Thanks for commenting.