Emacs and Lisp

I enjoyed reading this report on Lisp | Emacs: Advanced Codemunging: A Report from the Trenches

Why Ruby is my favourite platform and language

First, read about yellow, red and green code.

Ruby is the only language that I’ve encountered so far that

• helps me separate the green code from the yellow,
• provides enough library and community support to help me “get the job done”.

I’ve found that the elder lisps are good at keeping green and yellow apart, but I have not found library support to be very strong.

Maybe Clojure has something to contribute here.

I keep coming back to emacs

…and keep coming back.

I’m back at emacs again. I now realize that I never gave up on it. I’ve finally decided to go the route of keeping a cheat sheet open. This iteration, I’ve been through common lisp, and emacs once before. So I should be able to get more out of it.

Platforms that help you build more

Look at your favourite platform, and ask: what would you NOT have thought of building, if it hadn’t been for that platform?

I’ve found that a good way to answer that question is to look back at things that you’ve done. Looking back at what I have done in Ruby, and at what I have done in .NET/C#, have taught me a lot about the differences in the way these two platforms helped me think. .NET/C# has more support for anything I could ever think of. But C# doesn’t excite the gemcutter in me.

The ideal requirement to code ratio

Requirement:code as 1:1

As a software developer, I have often fallen into the trap of trying to design a “powerful” framework that satisfies all my wants. I would often end up trying to solve food, clothing and shelter, when what I really needed was a simple templating system.

But in any software project, the requirement to code ratio must be 1:1, only as much code to satisfy the requirement as absolutely necessary.

With this sudden clarity has come resolution. Frameworkitis no more.