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Levi is a Computer Science student with interests in programming language theory and other software topics. More info about him can be found at his main page.
This blog is an exercise in Lisp programming, a repository for information related to programming languages, and an effort to keep up-to-date with web and blogging technology.
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MJD on Typing
I've recently had discussions with people on IRC where I've claimed that C is a flawed language. I think that's a pretty reasonable thing to say, and one of the primary flaws as far as I'm concerned is the type system. I don't dismiss the idea of static typing as fundamentally flawed, only the particular implementation in the C language family. I just came across a talk by M-J Dominus that illustrates my point far better than I managed to.
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Posted by: Levi
at 11:48 AM on Monday, August 29, 2005
Comments: (0)
Categories: C Language-design
When To Use Macros
One of the most powerful features of Lisp is the ability to mold the language through syntactic transformation. This tool, though indispensable at times, is often overused to the detriment of readability and maintainability. This blog entry gives a good summary of how to decide whether a particular task is best tackled by a macro or some other means.
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Posted by: Levi
at 5:48 PM on Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Comments: (0)
Categories: Lisp Scheme
New Look
As you can see, I finallly got around to updating the style of the site to something like what I originally envisioned. There's still a lot of work to do on it, as I have features I want to bring over from my development code that still need to be styled. It's definitely big progress, though.
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Posted by: Levi
at 11:35 PM on Saturday, August 20, 2005
Comments: (0)
Categories: Blog
Programming Language Theory Library
I just hit the jackpot for online freely-available programming language theory texts. Check out PLT Online for a pretty hefty list of textbooks, lecture notes, tutorials, and other information online about programming language theory.
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Posted by: Levi
at 10:21 PM on Friday, August 12, 2005
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Categories: Language-design
Condition Handling in Common Lisp
The condition handling system in Common Lisp has a very rich feature set compared to the error handling features in commonly used languages today. Kent Pitman wrote a paper entitled "Condition Handling in Common Lisp" for a book, published in 2001, about advances in exception handling techniques. It's a great overview of the history of error handling techniques in programming languages as well as a great overview of how Lisp handles the issue.
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Posted by: Levi
at 11:26 AM on Tuesday, August 9, 2005
Comments: (0)
Categories: Lisp